Masum Billah
Morals and values play a significant role in determining the path of an individual. It also helps shape the individual to the type of person he will be in future. Morals guide an individual to the right path according to the law, society and the religion he belongs to. Values guide him that he is following the path that he believes he should follow as a person. In many cases, people are so pressured to follow morals that belong to the society, that they disregard their own values. Values have major influence on a person’s behavior and attitude and serve as broad guidelines in all situations. Some common business values are fairness, innovation and community involvement.” Values are a set of rules that are defined by an individual person. It can be influenced by morals, family, background, upbringing, etc. Personal values are believed to provide an internal reference for what is good, beneficial, important, useful, beautiful, desirable, and constructive. They determine how the individual’s behavior will be during his lifetime. For example, if a person believes that women should be inferior, he would go on to treat women as inferior beings even if the law states that men and women are all equal. Examples of values include: respect, honor, patriotism, compassion and honesty.Morals are formed from the inborn values which is a system of beliefs that is taught for deciding good or bad whereas values are personal beliefs or something that comes from within. These are emotionally related for deciding right or wrong. Morals have more social value and acceptance than values, therefore a person is judged more for his moral character than the values. One is said to be immoral for a person without morals but no such term is there for the person without values. Moral is a motivation or a key for leading a good life in right direction whereas value is imbibed within a person, it can be bad or good depending on the person’s choice. It can also be called as intuition or the call of the heart. Morals do not determine the values but are formed because of the values. Morals contribute to the system of beliefs and are the values which we get from the society. Morals are like commandments set by the elders and to be followed by the descendants. They can be set by one’s elders or religious teachers or leaders of society who want to lead people away from immoral thoughts. One always treasures the morals throughout his life and they never change with time or conditions. While on the other hand values are not set by the society or teachers, but are governed by an individual. Morals are deep seated whereas values keep on changing with time and needs.
Morals have a greater social element to values and tend to have a very broad acceptance. Morals are far more about good and bad than other values. We thus judge others more strongly on morals than values. A person can be described as immoral, yet there is no word for them not following values. You can have professional ethics, but you seldom hear about professional morals. Ethics tend to be codified into a formal system or set of rules which are explicitly adopted by a group of people. Thus you have medical ethics. Ethics are thus internally defined and adopted, whilst morals tend to be externally imposed on other people.
Morals and values often dictate the behavior, personality and the way of living for a particular individual. Though many people believe that they are the same and can be used interchangeably, they are mistaken. These two terms are related to each other and do often correlate in a person’s life; however they are different from each other in many ways. Morals are a set of rules that differentiate the right from wrong based on the belief system of society, culture, religion. These are ethics that have already been set for us and we have to conform to them while growing up. From the moment that a person is born, they are often told that steeling is bad, being polite is good, offering help is good and being mean is bad. These are examples of morals, which have been passed down from generation to generation. Morals vary significantly depending on the region, culture, religion etc. Many cultures stated that Gods demand a human sacrifice and this was morally acceptable; however other cultures state that murder of any person, under any condition is morally wrong. Merriam Webster defines ‘moral’ as, “of or relating to principles of right and wrong in behavior; conforming to a standard of right behavior; sanctioned by or operative on one’s conscience or ethical judgment; capable of right and wrong action.”
Values are a person’s most deeply held beliefs, while morals revolve around actions. Morals are linked to values. For example, a value might be that community is family. A moral related to this value would be that you do not steal from others. Both morals and values can come from religious or cultural affiliations.
Values describes individual or personal standards of what is valuable or important.
Ethics describes a generally accepted set of moral principles. Morals describes the goodness or badness or right or wrong of actions. Values describes individual or personal standards of what is valuable or important. Morals describes the goodness or badness or right or wrong of actions. We greatly encounter moral and ethical issues, in our day to day life. Perhaps, these two defines a personality, attitude and behaviour of a person.
The word morals is derived from a Greek word “Mos” which means custom. On the other hand, if we talk about ethics, it is also derived from a Greek word “Ethikos” which means character. Now let’s start learning the difference between Morals and Ethics philosophy. (i)Morals deal with what is ‘right or wrong’. Ethics deals with what is ‘good or evil’.(ii)Morals are general guidelines framed by the society . For example, we should speak truth. Conversely, ethics are a response to a particular situation. Example can be like this. Is it ethical to state the truth in a particular situation the son of a big politician has committed a crime and he uses his powers to free his son from legal consequences? Then this act is immoral because the politician is trying to save a culprit. A very close friend or relative of an interviewer comes for an interview and without asking a single question, he selects him. This act is unethical because the selection process must be transparent and unbiased. A grocer sells adulterated products to his customers to earn more profit. This act is neither moral nor ethical because he is cheating his customers and profession at the same time every single individual has some principles which help him throughout his life to cope up with any adverse situation; they are known as ethics. On the other hand, morals are not the hard and fast rules or very rigid, but they are the rules which a majority of people consider as right. That is why the people widely accept them.
(The writer works for BRAC Education Programme and formerly taught in Cadet Colleges and Rajuk College. Email: masumbillah65@gmail.com)
