Is someone watching you ?

In a discussion this morning on TV, it was suggested that :
“Having a conscience is knowing that someone may be watching you”.

What nonsense.
That surely, is having a guilty conscience.


Conscience is, in my opinion, being able to distinguish between whether your own actions are right or wrong and it is then your own choice to decide what further actions you take. This is an individual ‘s decision and based on that individual’s own judgement of their own moral code. It might be that this code is based on religious views, culture, society’s persuasion or a personal philosophy, but conscience is something that is there or not, regardless of outside opinion. It is the outside opinion versus our conscience that informs our attitude.

If we feel that “someone is watching us” (in this context) then it shows that our conscience is in conflict with our morals, but is does not define it. My conscience often gets me into situations that could have been avoided, but then I would have been going against my own morals – and my conscience will not allow me to do that.


Comments

Anonymous said…
Quite right - this defence in the expenses row of "It was within the rules" simply doesn't wash.

Do the MPs using it think the rules are right?- in which case they should be saying 'These claims are perfectly legitimate' I don't hear anyone saying that though so presumably they think the claims are ok in the sense that they are within the rules, but that the rules themselves are not ok.

In which case it begs the question 'did they know the rules were wrong but abuse them anyway, or have they only just noticed (with the illumination of publicity?) that they are wrong?'

In either case it doesn't say much for their judgement or ethics.
Unknown said…
Hello, Lexia. Interesting stuff.
Here are some of my immediate thoughts.
When people are referred to as ‘having no conscience’ .This surely cannot be true. Can it? The interesting thing about ‘conscience’ is that we have it. I don’t think we can decide to have a conscience or not to have one. It is like our mechanism to breathe, or our heart to beat, independent of our will. We should describe people who ‘have no conscience’ more accurately as people who deliberately, for selfish reason, act against their conscience, or their better judgement, in those circumstances which elicit such condemnatory rebukes as ’having no conscience’. Instead of saying ‘you have no conscience’ why don’t we say to people ‘you have deliberately ignored your conscience, what your conscience has reminded you - the right thing to do - because you are selfish’.

Our conscience is only a guide, for there are times when we all have to weigh practical, realistic options. For example, we may let a friend down rather badly for compelling domestic reasons, our duty to our family, for instance.
I say ‘only’ a guide, but what a fantastic thing it is which we take for granted. Imagine if all computers had such a thing, which would pop up every so often and ask you to make a decision...are you sure you should be spending all this time doing this? What about that novel? And the garden? And don’t forget those e-mails - people will be waiting to hear from you etc etc.
And this wondrous thing is in us, hard wired, as they say.

Bill [Talkbalk]

for some reason it seems that this will be posted as 'Joy' [prob because she has a Google ac] and her e-mail add. I dont know how to change this at mo. But you know where I am.

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