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Moral Correctness And Its Effects On Society Essay

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Societies have traditionally set up a system of laws that a culture learns to accept as the moral and just norm. Cultures and societies then learn right and wrong from this system of laws and rules and soon accept them as the moral truth. However, some individuals choose to side with innate morals of emotions and of nature, rather than the learned system of moral ‘truths’. These people would believe that there is no such thing as inherent good and evil in the world, as defined by law, that those labels are simply artificial constructs of their society. Right and wrong are so often determined by the people who hold positions of authority: that is the way it has always been so how then can anyone know the ‘truth’ of right and wrong or the ‘truth’ or morality? The world is, in fact, one big moral ‘grey area’; it cannot be carefully categorized into good and bad or good and evil as people would like it to be. Moral correctness cannot be as simple a matter of obeying the laws and rules set up by authority while ignoring one’s emotional and natural code of ethics. This idea of good and evil and of moral correctness is explored within Herman Melville’s novella, Billy Budd, Sailor. Captain Vere, who serves as the authority aboard the ship, Bellipotent, although believing he was upholding the proper morals of the situation at hand, from the view of the laws upon his ship and under the king and country he serves, made the morally wrong decision in sentencing Billy Budd, an ethically

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