Character 2018
Doing What is Right When Everyone is Looking
Doing What is Right When Everyone is Looking
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
As of this writing, Wikipedia describes the concise difference between ethics and morals. “Ethics refer to behavior customary in culture or society, while, Morals refer to personal standards of right and wrong. Moreover, morals do not change as a person moves from one society to the next.” In this framework, it follows that as individuals experience examples of ethical behavior within their culture they internalize standards of behavior that are representative of the collective definitions of “right” and “wrong”.
Continuous examples of ethical societal behavior produce the emergent property of morality within the individual.
This is the way of emergent properties. When a human smothers a puppy with acts of love, kindness, and caring, a consistent bond of loyalty and affection emerges between them that is unshakable during transient episodes of environmental confusion and duress. Conversely, treating the same puppy with indifference, violence, and deprivation will instill values of distrust, suspicion, and self-loathing. And yes, substitute the word “puppy” with “human child”, “fellow citizen”, or “someone different than me”, and the same emergent process applies.
Wikipedia continues this examination by defining Moral Character, or simply, Character, as an “evaluation of an individual’s stable moral qualities” and relates that psychologist Lawrence Pervin defines moral character as “a disposition to express behavior in consistent patterns of functions across a range of situations.”
Removing qualifiers of right and wrong, it follows that character is a measure of the presence and strength of the emergent property of morality within the individual.
In this context, character is a handle that is used to define individuals though various “characterizations”, such as, “so-and-so is such a character” or “something must be wrong, they are acting out of character”. In August 1963, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. eloquently expressed his vision of a shared American character:
“I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be jusdged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.
August 1996 Republican National Convention
J.C. Watts
J.C. Watts at the 1996 Republican National Conventionwww.c-span.org
7:43
“You see, friends, young people, high school students, college students, character does matter. And you know, I’ve got a pretty simple definition of character. It’s simply doing what is right when nobody’s looking. For too long, we have gotten by in a society that says ‘the only thing right is to get by and that the only thing wrong is to get caught.’ Parents and adults, I don’t just challenge the youth tonight. I challenge you. For what we build, and nourish, and encourage in the youth of America to be today is what this country will look like twenty years from now.”