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Unhappiness- The Supreme Evil As I sat here and pondered what to write for this paper, I was amazed to discover that I had never really contemplated my own moral philosophy. I had no reasons to give for why I act the way I do. As I began to think more deeply, I was inundated with numerous questions I felt that I had to ask myself in order to get to the answer. What makes me act the way I do? How do I determine the right course of action? Do I value my own opinions and feelings over those of others? Why do I feel that morality is mostly subjective? What role does religion play? Where did I learn my moral philosophy – is it even learned? I realized that I would need to be able to answer those questions before I could completely know my moral philosophy and myself. My moral philosophy is not simple and although it is not nearly as complex as Kant, it may be a challenge to assimilate. To understand my moral philosophy, you must first understand what makes me who I am. I was born in the suburbs away from the violence and corruption that floods our television sets. The violence that I saw on television might as well have been an action movie and not the nightly news, because it didn’t pertain to life, as I knew it. I was not a sheltered child and I was aware of the ways of the world, however, I chose to ignore that which I could not see on a daily basis. My parents were very young when I was born and with no child rearing experience, they taught me to be my own person. I was given the freedom to make my own decision from the time I was old enough to decide. My relationship with my parents has always been an extremely close one, and I learned to look at them as the ideal role models in all aspects of life. As a child, I adopted their faith, witnessing how they turned towards religion when times got rough. I attended Sunday school on a regular basis and even practiced bible studies with some of my church friends. I believed in God, but my faith was never something that I pushed on others, or even something that I wanted others to understand. My faith was something deep inside me. It was very personal and something that I could believe in to give me hope. Through religion, I learned to respect the opinions of others, and at a young age I began to weigh consequences when choosing a course of action. I began to consider the feelings of others as well as what I felt was right in my heart. I can remember being invited to spend the night at two different friends houses on the same night, and I couldn’t decide whom to choose.
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