Neysa Gorski

Carroll, Crain-Davis, Marrs, Uribe, Wilczynski

American Literature

7 April 2019

How to Live a Moral and Happy Life

Ethics are the morals that one holds themselves and others to. In other words, morals

conditioned by one’s culture. Morals ultimately hold everyone accountable for their words and

actions which causes someone’s character to develop. Morals are guidelines that lead to living a

happy and healthy life. Justice, on the other hand, means being treated fairly and without bias.

Justice can be seen through many circumstances and places all the way from courtrooms to

classrooms. Ethics and justice are related due to the situations they are used under. Both follow

morally motivated rules. For example, judges in courtrooms use certain criteria in order to

determine a person’s fate. The same goes for ethics which are used by everyone in everyday life.

Though there are different elements or factors to what is going on, they both coincide. The

framework that guides the 10 rules would be natural duties.

Naturally, all of the rules can be grouped. The theme of the rules are evident due to the

category they can be put into. For example, some rules deal with communication with others

(relationships) and some rules are more about someone as a person and their character. The 10

rules are: respecting everyone, being truthful, doing no harm to animals or innocent people,

having self control, not forcing people into things (peer pressure), being unbiased, not judging

intelligence based on grades/test scores, appreciating your surroundings, treasuring the things
you own, and caring for the environment. As mentioned before, these rules deal with multiple

different situations. They can be explained by revealing that each rule has its own characteristic.

They all go into the natural duty framework because of how each rule is written and described. In

a book titled ​Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?​, the author states, “Natural duties are

universal. We owe them to persons as rational beings. They include the duty to treat persons with

respect, to do justice, to avoid cruelty, and so on” (Sandel 223). This evidence relates to the

claim because the rules directly go back to what the criteria for natural duties are. For instance,

the rules “being respectful”, “being truthful”, and “not harming animals or innocent people”

relate by giving example of what natural duty entails.

These rules were developed by me thinking about what I thought could change not only

in the local community, but also everywhere in the world. It was hard to think of ten straight of

the bat since some ended up being similar. Because of this, I had to make revisions to my list. I

had a few that were similar or could be combined such as “respecting everyone” and “treating

everyone equally”. The person who revised my rules and I talked about how being equal goes

into respect and I agreed with them. Another revision I had to make was making sure the rules

could be grouped. It was difficult trying to think of rules that were all over the place so I decided

to group them by relationships with others and what ​you​ can do for yourself or the community.

If I had to live my life abiding by these rules, I think everything would be a lot more

peaceful and happy. Sometimes I forget to appreciate what I have and who is around me so I

think it would be useful to take a few moments out of my week to fully appreciate different

things. The only thing that could possibly hurt someone is “being truthful”. The truth hurts and it

can cause conflict. As for the world, I think it would also be more peaceful. There are so many
stories about deaths on TV and because so many happen everyday, it almost seems like it’s

normalized. If the world lived by these rules, many of these bad situations could be avoided and

so many more people could live a happy life.