The Link Between Time, Money, and Morality

Humans have been using the measurement of time to dictate their day since the early eras of ancient civilizations with sundial then evolving into the mechanical clocks we use today. For thousands of years with time measurement tools, humans have depended on a strict schedule to determine what to do to use up the time they have. In today’s modern world, adult humans use their time to contribute to society by working nine to five jobs and young adults spending their childhood in a classroom. In Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden; Life in the Woods, Thoreau discusses the concept of time. In Thoreau’s excerpt “Economy,” he offers the paradox whether humans live off borrowed time or stolen time from their employers. He explains in a rhetorical statement that by reading his own book would be “robbing your creditors of an hour,” implying that the human civilization has been putting their work in front of their own self-interests in hope of success and money. Although Thoreau wrote the paradox as a brief commentary for the money driven human civilization, this paradox acts as a metaphor towards Thoreau’s view on the use of time for humanity.

as ”you ought to eat because you are hungry.” These type of non-moral prescriptive ’oughts’ are

In the book Money and Class in America written by Lewis Lapham, the way Americans look at money is exposed. It compares other nations view on monetary value against that of the Americans. It is a fact that we place more value on money than anything else. This book illustrates the corruptness of the “American Dream” as it focuses money as the “currency of the soul” and through the dream, men remain free to rise or fall. Their life is the product of the effort and the decisions put forth by them.

By using the downfalls of this study, Saxe is able to prove more thoroughly that morality-related research can be done but does not reveal the most important aspect of the inquiry: how one arrives at a certain moral

John E. Stapleford, Professor of Economic Development at Eastern College in St. David’s, Pennsylvania, expresses that morals and financial aspects are the ground-level points of this book. Stapleford likewise makes the substantial point that both financial matters and morals created as branches of philosophy. He further watches that throughout the years, barriers between the two disciplines have created with most financial experts maintaining a strategic distance from any express specify of the moral ramifications of the monetary speculations and ideas tended to in mainstream financial writings. Stapleford tries to address this situation

The excerpt from “On the Want of Money” by William Hazlitt is an outcry to humanity in response to the realities of a world that revolves around currency. Hazlitt implores his audience through his rhetoric to reflect on what they deem to be important, and to realize that their desires can be the very thing restraining them from attaining their ambitions. Through the use of irony, hypothetical examples, and figurative language William Hazlitt warns of the dangerous paths the pursuit of money can lead to, and the ultimate demise of anyone who takes these paths.

In order to show the circle in which ordinary people live in our current culture, Ferriss provides applicable examples that differentiate between the new rich and the deferrers in their current lifestyles. Another example in which Ferriss has used current culture in presenting his ideas is in time management. In our current culture, everyone is working long and hard in order to make an extra coin to be happy. Ferriss approaches this issue on a lighter note by

The question of ethical behavior is an age-old conundrum. The prevailing issue with ethics is that it is extremely difficult to measure. A person’s moral fabric is largely based on their particular personality traits, as well as, their psychological state and environmental influences. Many believe that ethics are tied to a person’s conscience, and that good morals are often facilitated by a strong religious background. Furthermore, a person’s moral development can be linked to their economic situation and cultural differences. Interestingly, even while examining the status of one’s moral code is challenging; everyone seems to have their own unique array of ethics.

In this article, ‘How to Make Unethical Decisions,’ I read about how individuals take care of issues and decide. The stressed issue related is that many people quickly make decisions without thinking. Sometimes the use of moral judgment can be set aside for later and decide suitable activities is intensely influenced. It is important to break down and understand commonly used wrong decision-making methods, as well as look at fitting guides that can help with deciding moral activities.

In a specific adaptation of the debitor-creditor relation that was discussed earlier, we owe our ancestors a debt of gratitude for making our society prosperous, at least to the extent that we continue to exist. The more prosperous the society in which an individual find himself, the more debt he find himself owing. It is this situation man is forced to suppress his natural instincts, particularly his will to power, in order to be a social animal reaping the benefits of society. This ironically is done for the sake of survival. “I regard the bad conscience as the serious illness that man was bound to contract under the stress of the most fundamental change he ever experienced—that change which occurred when he found himself finally enclosed within the walls of society and of peace... in this new world

an individual” (382). The men who ‘make’ it are the ‘lovers’ of money and those who ‘take’ it

The most widely valued form of an item in a simple piece of synthetic paper that is said to “make the world go round”: money. Money has always been looked at as a major source of evil because it appears to be essential for greed. In the article Understanding Money and the Meaning of Life, the author, Bill Taylor, asks several questions regarding money and how it affects people's decisions and lives much like the lesson taught in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Pardoner's Tale. He answers the questions mentioned in the article, all in the defense of money and says that anything related to money is in fact the owners fault.

The link between morality and human nature has been a progressive reoccurring theme since ancient times (Prinz, 2008). Moral development is a characteristic of a person’s general development that transpires over the course of a lifetime. Moral development is derived by a wide variety of cultural and demographic factors that appear to influence morally relevant actions. Turiel (2006) defined morality as an individuals “prescriptive judgments of justice, rights, and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to each other.” Individuals’ moral judgments are frequently considered to be a product of culturally specific controls that provide a framework for behavioral motivations that are sensitive to the effects of gender, education, religion and politics (Banerjee, Huebner & Hauser, 2010). While several approaches have been utilized to examine the interaction of multivariate contributors to fundamental moral differences such as: disputes about family life, sexuality, social fairness, and so on, research has suggested that ideological considerations have provided a potent and diverse explanation for the polarization of contrasting views (Weber & Federico, 2013).

By Kohlberg’s (1969) stages of cognitive moral development (SoCMD) cited in Crane and Matten (2010, p.154) Gabriel Resources, just like most businesses, operate at a conventional level which implies that employees are searching for guidance from superiors through various cues (Treviňo and Nelson 2007 cited in Crane and Matten, p.153) which further emphasizes the fact that the decision relies on the superiors of the organisation. Taking this into account, the author considers

Individual factors helps to understand the reason for some people perceive specific action to be unethical whiles others do not. However, the decision-making cannot simply be explained in terms of these individual factors, because after all several people seems to have ‘multiple ethical selves’ (Trevino and Nelson 2007:180) – that is, they make different decisions in different situations. Situational factors accepted to be the most important.