Glimmerick

I was recently reading a interpersonal communications book, Looking Out, Looking In, and they wrote about a list of “certain moral duties”, that as human beings, we ought to be obligated to abide by in relation to others around us. I read over the list, and I became very intrigued. Here were just seven principles, yet if everyone followed them a majority of the time, the world would drastically change.  Now these are no Ten Commandments, but these guidelines focus mainly on interactions with people, rather than additionally focusing on religion.

1. Fidelity: Strict observance of promises and duties; loyalty.  Just imagine how much more efficient the world would be if we all just kept our promises.  No second guessing, or backup plans, just staying true to your word. Back in the day, a man’s word meant the world to him.
2. Reparation: Making amends for wrongs against others.  We are all human, so no matter how hard we try, there may be times where we simply cannot keep our promises, or something just slips our minds. For example, a person oversleeps, and forgets to take their child to their soccer game. Just admit that wrong doing, and honestly try hard to make it up. Be sincere.
3. Gratitude: Feeling and expressing gratefulness/ thankfulness towards others if they do something kind or give you a gift. Here is a great example of what not to do! Sometimes its easy to take gifts and kindness for granted, but it is very, very important to let others know how much they mean to you.
   
4. Benevolence: An act of kindness, or desiring to do good for others, promoting kindness.  Often this is a stickler for me.  I often have a mindset of, “Why should I ‘waste’ time helping others.  However, when I do help people, I feel good about it- refreshed.  I realized that I need a lot of help from a lot of different people, and if everyone had a mindset of “Why waste time,” it would be an even more cold world.
5. Self-improvement: Always seeking knowledge, and new education.  Imagine if once everyone graduated high school, they breathed a sigh of relief, and just worked at the local McDonald’s.  Or instead of learning coding and program development, the developers of Firefox just stayed at their previous jobs, happy with where they had gotten.  Self-improvement encourages development in many fields around the world.
6. Justice: “To distribute goods fairly, according to what others have earned and deserve.”  One of my biggest pet peeves is seeing people go unpunished for a wrong they have committed.  It is also disheartening to see people not receive what they have worked really hard to attain.  Make rules, and set the standard, and don’t let people slide past these regulations, otherwise enforcement will be even harder the next time.
7. Nonmaleficence: In essence, this means that one should refrain from doing harm to others, whether it be physical or mental.  When I see someone getting bullied, it makes me a angry.  What a terrible idea; that of trying to get an “ego boost” by “ego busting” someone else.

This list is by no means an end, or a complete list of standards to live by, but they are commonly related, and serve as a good reminder as to what people ought to adhere to.

*Sources within book: William D. Ross of: The Right the Good (1930)

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 5:27 pm and is filed under Lifestyle. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.