Jason Frost Philosophy 224 Interview Project: A Moral World

Do you see morality in the world today?

For this assignment, we were asked to interview five people and ask them the question Do you

see morality in the world today? I was interested to see the varied answers that I received

from the people that I interviewed. These ranged from No to I see it on many different

levels For this project I interviewed my wife (Thais) and four friends and neighbors (Cory, Joe,

Eric and Jon).

The first person who I interviewed was my neighbor and friend Cory. Cory is paralyzed from the

chest down due to an accident several years ago, and I was curious to hear the response from

someone who had suffered such a tragic accident in their lives. Cory told me that he sees

morality on various levels. I asked Cory if he could give me a couple of examples and he

referred to someone helping a stray dog and someone going into a burning building to save

people. What I took from this is that Cory sees morality in the world today but gives different

levels of morality based on the deed or misdeed that was performed.

I found this perspective interesting on two different levels. One that someone who had

suffered such a devastating injury only chose to use examples of people doing good and the

second being that we see some moral behavior as having higher value than others. On the

other side of that coin is the immoral behavior and how we choose to shape what is immoral

and moral. Are you more willing to take a dime from petty cash or take a pencil from your
Jason Frost Philosophy 224 Interview Project: A Moral World

office? (Ariely, 2013) Our minds give us the ability to perceive moral and immoral behavior on

different levels.

The next two interviews (Thais and Eric) gave similar responses in that they saw morality in the

world today. They also put morality on varying scales but only pointed out positive acts of

morality, such as, coming to the aid of bombing victims. The interesting part was when I

interviewed Jon and he indicated he doesnt see any morality. I was very surprised by this

answer but when Jon was done explaining I began to understand his point of view. Jon is a self-

described and admitted selfish individual and only truly cares about Jon. Jon feels that he is not

much different from other people in that we are all selfish in everything we do. If you stop to

give a homeless person some money you are not doing it to help that person you are doing it to

make yourself feel better.

The closest that I could relate Jons perspective was rational egoism (or rational selfishness).

With rational egoism, everything we do is done with our own interests in mind. Although this is

a very cynical way to look at morality in the world it is an honest way of looking at morality.

The question is then asked do we do anything of free will that is not in our own best interest.

The last person that I interviewed was my friend Joe and he gave a rather interesting response.

Joe said I see the answer as a product of one's outlook, as morality and a lack thereof both

exist in different concentrations in different locations. Doing some research led me to believe

that Joe prescribes to moral relativism. In moral relativism, it is believed that morals are a

human invention that fundamentally is different depending on your location. Additionally,

Jason Frost Philosophy 224 Interview Project: A Moral World

fundamental values will clash depending on those locations so where one thing maybe moral in

another place that same thing would be immoral in another. (Feiser, 2015)

In conclusion, this exercise brought some awareness to how varying peoples view of morality

can be. It also showed that when most people think of morality they think of the positive things

that people do and not the immoral things that happen every day. Even in examples given by

Eric he cited the recent bombings in Paris and how people responded. He failed to mention the

immoral acts that the terrorists performed. This leads one to believe that most people look to

see the good in what is being done more than the evil and similar. I also found that peoples

view of what was moral could be slightly changed to allow themselves to believe what they are

doing was still within their moral limits.

Jason Frost Philosophy 224 Interview Project: A Moral World

References
Ariely, D. (2013, 8 10). Varying Morality Speech. Retrieved from www.trendhunter.com:
http://www.trendhunter.com/keynote/varying-morality-speech

Feiser, J. (2015, 1 1). Moral Issues that Divide Us and Applied Ethics: A Sourcebook. Retrieved from
https://www.utm.edu/staff/jfieser/class/160/1-ethical-theory.htm

Wikipedia. (n.d.). Rational Egoism. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism