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Nick Smith

Philosophy, Period 5

Mr. Buescher

13 December 2016

The Code of Ethics of Nicholas Lyman Smith

My code of ethics is very vague. I have never given it much thought at all, since I dont

usually find myself in moral dilemmas that require me to have and use a clear-cut set of ideals. I

can have an idea about how I would act in a given situation based upon my ideas and stances, but

I dont have certainties. These are the reasons that I really dont have much of a code of ethics,

or at least a clear one.

Pressing ethical concerns are not exactly common in my life, so its not much of a

surprise that my code of ethics is very vague and doesnt really take a hard line on much of

anything. I dont like to hurt people, I like to act according to circumstance, I like to do things for

other people, I like to do things for myself, and I dont like oblivious extremes. These are the

principles that I go off of when I speak and act.

There are a few reasons behind this mode of thinking. When it comes to personal

morality and views, one of the biggest influences was my transition from Christianity to atheism.

My family goes to church, and I went as well through freshman year of high school. As I kept

going, things began to stop making sense to me, and I eventually asked to stop going. My parents

were very encouraging, and I stopped going. This support has given me a respect for perspective,

since I can see both sides of the God argument, but happen to fall on one side. I have come to

dislike people who blindly claim to fall on one side of an argument and proclaim their hatred for

the other side. My personality for most of my life before high school also contributes to my wish
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to stay neutral in ethics. This is because, looking back, I was very self-important, and I cant

imagine I was much fun to talk to or be around. Going off of Kohlberg, I think that I am closest

to Stage Five, but I can see my personality/moral complexity in every stage. I like doing things

that other people like, and I like the inclusion of the possibility of changing the law to suit more

people as times and circumstances change.

To me, civic virtue entails not hurting people and following civic duties like paying taxes.

Civic virtue is an important thing to have because the society has made a pledge to the individual

to support them and keep them comfortable and safe, and the least the individual can do is help

the society accomplish these goals. Having civic virtue accords with the concept of

eudaimonism, which dictates that doing good things makes people feel good. There are also

practical aspects to being a good citizen, like social acceptance and the promise of safety and

protection.

I go through an ethical dilemma every time an essay is assigned in any class, be it

Philosophy or English. The essay will be on a familiar topic that I am knowledgeable of and it

will be due in a month, and yet I will always end up writing the entire thing at eleven oclock the

night before. The first example that pops to mind was a Response to Literature essay that I had to

write for AP Literature. The essay was assigned in late October and due in early December, with

a week off for Thanksgiving in between. It needed to be seventeen paragraphs long. I read the

book very early, and all that I needed to do was write the essay. I sat down several times over the

next month and would stare at the computer screen, occasionally typing a sentence and then

deleting it. I would rationalize the amount of time I had left, I would take a nap, I would mess

around on my phone and the internet and not type a single word. I understood the necessity of
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doing the assignment, but I didnt do it anyway, and ended up typing eleven paragraphs for six

hours straight at eleven-thirty the night before the essay was due.

Codes of ethics are important to have because they provide one with a moral compass to

operate by. They give a standard for thoughts and actions, and are the basis for informed debate

and complex thought. They provide people with opinions and allow them to act upon those

opinions. In short, codes of ethics are essential to how people think, talk, and interact. They are

indispensable in every society.

I dont really know how much I learned from writing this essay. I learned why having a

code of ethics is important, and I learned that I should probably flesh my code out a bit more. To

me, most of this essay was summarizing my personal beliefs and code of ethics, and explaining

why I felt that way. The essay was definitely interesting to write, but Im not sure how much I

myself learned from writing it.