Tiange Zou
ESL 102
Kate Murphy
November 25, 2011 Morality: Right and Wrong People knew the meaning of the word morality in their early age because parents and teachers had tried very hard to teach children to possess the virtue qualities of morality such as caring, compassion, and courage. However, there is a tendency that people act differently when they encounter the morality in real life. For instance, some people are hesitant to help out a wounded person on the street when they assume police would do that. These people absolutely know it is wrong not to help a wounded person according to the caring aspect of morality. Knowing something is not right to do but to do, people contradict themselves by the influence of societies, individualism, and governments. First of all, societies can change people’s ideas and behaviors about morality. In other words, people will choose what others doing in a society instead of obeying the criteria of morality. Therefore, this action will emerge a moral contradiction. For instance, there was a shocking incident happened in Foshan city in the south of China. A two- year- old girl was twice hit by two different cars on a very busy street and 18 pedestrians indifferently passed the girl without doing any effort to help the girl. The girl was finally saved by a garbage collector after lying on the street for a long time (The Guardian). Many Chinese people and social medias strongly criticize the two car’s drivers and the 18 pedestrians for their cruel responses to the girl. The author Yajun Zhang from the article Shocking Foshan incident reveals an unspoken illness at China's core indignantly says: Whatever the reasons are and wherever we place the blame, there is no excuse for witnessing a human being dying without doing anything to help. As many Chinese web users have written, it's possible that there is a kind of sickness in Chinese society that has infected us to our core, and which has been growing for a long time (Zhang 26). Zhang means the girl was innocent and those heartless people should be ashamed of their brutal actions. Perhaps, the author also agree the whole Chinese society is been corrupted. Thus, those car drivers and 18 pedestrians think it is the social norm to be indifferent and selfish. As a Chinese myself, I am very sad to see my own people abandoning the good Chinese morality, which teaches people to be good-hearted and helpful. Overall, the societies must be playing a big role in changing people’s mind and actions with morality. Second, individualism makes people to conflict their ideas and behavior with morality. By definition, individualism means the habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant. That is to say, people who have the individualism in mind will be more rely on themselves than others. On the other hand, people with a good morality will care more and be interested in other people. For example, the speaker David Shapiro in the article A Gas station Burns in the Forest: Illuminating Our Moral Legacy recalled his experience with his father as witnesses in a car explosion. David noticed his father’ ignorance of the car explosion and criticized his father for doing nothing to help. On the contrary, David’s father considered it was too dangerous to try to control a car explosion by himself and his son. Therefore, he should leave this car explosion to experts. In the end of this article, David reconsidered the contradiction between morality and individualism. He explained that people nowadays often use the survival-first technique to solve problems instead of look at the moral aspects. Namely, people are individualized and do not have the will to help other people if helping is inconvenience to them. Probably, the reason why people become individualized and ignore the morality is as David says, “Of course, we also do not know how we can help if at all. We are too late, we do not have the skills, nothing can be done. We don’t do anything because we think what we could do will not be enough. What difference will it make anyway?”(Shapiro 92). David’s explanation reflects the contradiction which people leave everything to the experts to solve even if they are supposed to, according to the morality. This kind of contradiction is caused by individualism. Third, there is always a dispute for people choosing morality over governments or vice versa. In other words, it is very hard for people to define their loyalty to the moral standards or government’s decisions. For example, when the U.S decided to get involved in the Vietnam War in the late 1960, there were a lot of pacifists calling for the end of the war. Their argument was that the war would eventually bring economic downturn to America domestically and cause massive casualties abroad. (http://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war). Therefore, it is nor righteous to be involved in the Vietnam War. These pacifists also believe it is immoral for America to interfere other countries for civil rights while ironically America has the segregation on white and black people. The well-known civil right leader Martin Luther King demonstrated this concern in one of his famous speeches The Trumpet Of Conscience, he says, “And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on the TV screen as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them in the same schools” (King 18). King means it is very tragic to see the black and white people finally have the chance to be together in a deadly war. King’s comment about the inequality of the white and black people reflects the contradiction American government made in the Vietnam War. When it comes to a war, every eligible young man has to be patriotic to their countries and participate in the war. There is no exclusion to black and white. Thus, it is very difficult for people to select the loyalty between the morality and government’s actions. All in all, people will be contradicted themselves by the influence of governments. In conclusion, there are three factors societies, individualism and governments are affecting people’s behaviors. Because of these factors, people are either consciously or subconsciously make contradictions in morality. Personally, I believe the only way to solve this complicated and perplexed contradiction is through better education, people have more face to face interaction with one another and people should not forget the conscience. Overall, people should follow the rules of the morality and should not be affected by any external factors as the American writer Isaac Asimov says, “Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what is right” in one of her books.( ThinkExist.com Quotations).

Works Cited
A.Shapiro, David. "A Gas Station Burns in the Forest:Illuminating Our Moral Legacy." R.Smalzer, William. Write To Be Read. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 143-146.
Martin Luther King, Jr. "The Trumpt of Conscience." R.Smalzer, William. Write To Be Read. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 152-153.
"Shocking Foshan incident reveals an unspoken illness at China's core." 19 October 2011. The Guardian. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/19/foshan-incident-unspoken-illness-china>.
ThinkExist.com Quotations. “Isaac Asimov quotes”. ThinkExist.com Quotations Online 1 Nov. 2011. 4 Dec. 2011 <http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/isaac_asimov/>