Peter Simpson

What I Really Learned in this Junior Morality Course

            I have learned that morality transcends religion and you don’t have to be religious to be a moral person. Morality is more a personal choice of whether or not you will treat people the right way and put others needs ahead of yours. Though this is cliché most of the time it can be summed up in the golden rule. Another thing that touched on how frequently we do make moral choices was the right speech experiment where we kept track of how many times we lied over a weekend. There are situations that we learned about where there is a lot of grey area in what the right moral decision would be and the best thing you can do is use your best judgment even though you can’t be sure it’s the right choice. A good example of this is the case of Aideen Burton where the doctors had to decide whether treating her would help her recover or just prolong pain.

One of the things I learned that was really new was the story of Jim Goodnight, after the recent scandals in the business world and learning about sweat shops that many companies exploit to make a bigger profit his story helped bring hope that there is still some good in the world of business .

The videos on the atomic bombings of Japan were also very enlightening. Before this class (and Fr. Harrison’s) I always thought the reason we dropped the bomb was to make sure we won the war. Though this was part of the decision I learned it was also influenced by politics connected to Russia and I saw how devastating the bombs were to the civilian populations of the cities.