old brain acquired any knowledge from was my parents. They were my soul teachers on what was and what was not ethical. Then one brisk fall day my tiny right foot hit the bus steps and I was off to my first day of school.
It was in this one isolated incident in whBeginning from birth until I was about five years old the only source that my five-year ich my brain began to fog up from the entire worlds views on ethics. Basically in the fraction of a second that it took my foot to make contact with the rubber stuff on the bus steps, I became perpetually confused as to what was right and what was wrong. As I made my way down the aisle of the bus I found a seat with a very scruffy little kid (Danny McCormick), whom would soon become my partner in crime. This was my best bud back in the day when days lasted weeks and weeks lasted years. Now being an extremely shy child I was his lackey, he said jump and I responded how high? We were that children who always had to sit on the wall during recess for throwing dirt at little Billy or for teasing little Susie about her stupid pink bow. To this day the smell of Windex will send me straight back to the days of cleaning the chalkboard and the desks during recess.
Also we were the well-published chalkboard names with the vivacious yellow check mark strategically placed directly following. The two of us could be found at any given time together and probably causing trouble. So my best bud until about fourth grade basically taught me to be a little punk. Which totally went against everything my parents had taught me. Here is where I need to flashback to fill you in on my parent’s background and what they had taught me until I started attending school.
My parents are the basic run of the mile middle class parents. They are not: drug addicts, alcoholics, quick-tempered, violent, or in any way emotionally scaring. To sum it up my parents are the Huxtable’s without all the sappy make you want to vomit scenes. They had always grilled a sense of love everyone, treat others the way you want to be treated view into my head. So meeting my little scruffy Danny was something extremely new and exciting to me.
He taught me it could be fun to get in trouble, my parents of course thought otherwise and would try at all lengths to keep us apart. This was like trying to keep Bert away from Ernie. During the summer before fourth-grade Danny and his family moved to the upper- peninsula and we lost contact after about five years of what seemed like an everlasting friendship. I’m sure my parents were pained to see me hurt by the whole ordeal of losing my best buddy, but I also believe that they jumped for joy internally when he left in his parents beat-up old station wagon that day lost so long ago. The memory lives on and what he taught me will always be apart of what I hold ethical.
Upon returning to school in the fall of the fourth grade I found myself surrounded by all the familiar faces minus one. I realized all these kids were the ones that we had tormented for so many years, why would they ever speak to me. So for a few days I basically kept to myself, went back to being really shy and I spoke to no one. My whole personality had changed into something these kids had never seen; I was not being a little bad ass. And one day a little curly-headed girl, (Heather Ross), whom we had repeatedly tormented, approached me and asked me to come over to her house and play and I did.
This was the beginning of my second most beautiful friendship. Heather and I would do everything together just as Danny and I had, but this relationship was quite different. We didn’t do everything to physically or emotionally injure another person, which was what I basically was doing for my first four years in school. With her I discovered a true sense of do unto others, as you would have them do unto you. She taught me that you do not need to cheat on the spelling test to do good or you did not need to lie to always get your way. Now of course my parents had taught me long ago about not cheating or lying but I had picked up differently from the on true friend I had always had, and I had not forgotten what I had picked up just because he was gone.
It took a few years until those old bad ethics crept back up to the surface, we were in seventh grade and I knew it all. All the early days of scamming and poking fun at others was revitalized this time I was the ringleader. Many of the kids in my class had never cheated or really told a big lie and they needed to know how to do it right, it just so happened that I got to be the one to teach them. Just like any other seventh grade across the country the whole class locked in on certain targets, and we rapid fired smart remarks at them, or actual rapid fire through the throwing of any object able to take flight. For the second time I had strayed from the standpoint of do good to others but this time it was different because the first time I went against what my parents taught me.
The second time I went against what Heather had re-taught me which essentially was what her parents taught her. From the comparison of these two friends and from talking to all my other friends and foes which I have meet along the way I have come to realize that all parents start off teaching there kids basically the same things. Share your toys, don’t cheat, don’t lie, treat others the way you want to be treated, are the soul components of what parents teach their children. It is not until we learn otherwise from friends or television to act differently.
During my childhood days I learned all from my friends but today’s kids learn on the television level anything that they didn’t hear from parents or guardians. I have learned something good or bad from every single person whom I have ever came in contact with had I not meet any one of those people my whole ethical stand-point would be seriously altered. My whole ethical view is a culmination of a little bit of every one I have had contact with in my nineteen years of roaming this planet. It would be extremely hard for me to ever try to put my definition of what I view as ethical into a neat little dictionary definition. The situation takes a total one eighty when you ask for a definition of ethics pertaining to persuasion because persuasion is not a living breathing creature whose views change as often as the seasons.
To make persuasion ethical I believe that it needs to be honest, and open for discussion. When I say open minded I mean that yes you can have your own opinion, but for a successful persuasion you must also be open to taking in info from others. I will explore these ideas in more detail as I read through Jerry Fallwell’s speech on abortion to decide if his speech was ethical or if not. Upon finishing Jerry Fallwell’s speech on abortion I really do not have too much toSay.
The whole time I was reading the speech I was continuously finding myself shocked by some of the incredibly childish remarks. I am using the word childish in a sense, of I think this way and I can not or will not explain any different way, listen to me talk, and change your opinion. We may not agree with every person here on every aspect of the abortion debate but we can and must agree on one thing-that we must use our collective energies and
