Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Lets have another round on personal Integrity!

Its legal! So what do you think when you hear this. It means that the laws of the land have said it is ok to do so or the laws dont have any explicit opinion about it, hence its legal.

Think about it. Where do the laws come from? They definitely do not originate from human nature, otherwise we would not go about breaking so many of them on a regular basis. These are created by people based on their judgement about right or wrong at the time of framing the law.

Now this does not mean that the law is all encompassing. In fact laws are created when people find ways to do things which are not right but the law at that time did not object to it. Think about hoarding. Inherently it means that you are utilizing your resources to stimulate market demand without exerting direct compulsion. This would have been perfectly fine if you were not dealing with food.

My point is that even if the basic values of a person are in the right place, he cannot always depend on the legality of a situation and decide accordingly. He may end up violating his values without even knowing about it, unless some one explicitly points out to him. So it is necessary that you question your own move and be comfortable with it personally, cause if you seek solace or justification externally, you probably will twist the message to suit your frame.

These thoughts are not mine. They are credited to my professor, Dr. Mark Kamstra from the Financial management class at Schulich. I am really glad that they have shaped my thoughts in this manner and the experience has compelled me to pen my thoughts down...

1 comment:

Shubhra said...

Aditya,
I agree with these thoughts completely. Relying on justification of your actions on any external factor - May it be law, social norm, etc can always be an internal dilemna
I have similar thoughts on practice of religion. Culture, law, religion are all super imposed by humans on themselves to restrain themselves to a civilization