What is morality and what is not?

Is it a human problem or a system failure?

When it comes to morality and related immorality, different questions come to mind. For example, is the thing we complain about a lot today, namely 'immorality', a system issue? Or are people getting more and more immoral? Does this phenomenon already exist in the essence of human beings? Why are some societies more moral than others?

Here are some crazy questions that I have in my mind and the answers I'm looking for.

Socratic Ethics:

Laws have always been made for people, and these laws have also been ignored by people, and a contrary behavior has been developed. The concept of the "rule of law" that each of us talks about has become a reflection of this mentality. Then I think it would be useful to open this issue up a little bit!

Let's start with an example from the life of the great philosopher Socrates. The one who sends the rope, the moral or the outgoing? As you know, Socrates, who was sentenced to death, said in his last speech, "If my children will be more fond of wealth than virtue when they grow up, deal with them as I dealt with you." Socrates, even while going to death, said that the value that society attaches to morality and virtue is a higher priority than his own life. seen as.

Indicator of Civilization:

When I decided to write about this subject, one of the contemporary philosophers, Sigmund Freud, "What is the greatest invention of civilization?" The answer to the question is "only conscience". I guess if it wasn't for the conscience, we should have put a policeman on everybody. The adventure of people to live together collectively, that is, the history of civilization, can also be read as a more moral struggle for life. What then is the source of morality? Is it innate or learned?

Humanbeing as a Social Being:

When the sociological side of man is examined, it is seen that he has the potential to be extremely selfish in order to survive. The thing called human is a being who thinks about his own interests first and foremost. Don't we test this in the decisions we make every day? The third pages of the newspapers are full of stories of those who commit immorality to their relatives for their own benefit. People can easily commit immorality to others in order to maintain their own lives. Don't you think it's a big contrast that a being that couldn't survive without others the moment it was born can be so selfish?

Human beings can be inherently selfish, and this may also provide a certain benefit to the person in the short run. However, when we look at the history of humanity, we see that individual and social interests are blended in a balanced way in successful societies.

Human Development:

Human development is possible by educating the selfishness inherent in human nature, just as Freud said, with the ethics of living together. Even economists now accept the fact that morality is the foundation of civilization. History writes that the nations that institutionalized immorality disappeared from the stage of history. We see that the nations that have been successful in history have systems that have institutionalized the law of coexistence. I define the concept of morality not as an abstract virtue, but as a concrete behavior. You may have a very virtuous intention, but if you cannot put it into action, you cannot speak of morality! In a way, we can say that morality is individual.

The behaviors of individuals living in any society are shaped not only by their inner selves, but also by the social system in which they live. Therefore, we can say that morality is as systemic as it is individual. I would like to state that I am closer to this systematic of thought. In other words, the reason why the number of moral individuals is the majority in some societies and the reason why immoral individuals dominate the general society in others is not the accumulation of immoral individuals in a society; on the contrary, it is the establishment of a system that encourages immorality in a society!

Psychologist James Rest's Moral Model:

While I was writing this article, I did not only examine philosophers and sociologists, but also thought that the subject was related to the science of psychology when the subject was human, and I found it necessary to look at the model of the famous psychologist James Rest.

Rest's determinations and analyzes on this subject are as follows: Moral behavior emerges in four stages. The absence of any of these stages leads to immorality.

1. For a moral behavior, it is necessary to be sensitive to immorality at the first stage. When you witness immorality, do you stop and focus on it, or do you ignore it? Your answer to the question is very important in this sense. Imagine witnessing an official being bribed. What do you do? Do you go about your business as if nothing happened, or do you pause and think about it? The latter, when you pause and reflect on it, you have taken the first step towards moral action. The second stage of performing a moral act requires moral reasoning. what's right, what 
2. Without a ruler showing that yin is wrong, moral behavior does not occur. Let's say you noticed the bribery thing. You sense that there is immorality, but you are not sure of it. Your moral principle will determine your course of action.
   - If you have the principle or understanding that "in a civilized society, no one can gain unfairly", it would be best to complain about bribery.
   - If you say, "The one who catches honey licks his finger", it is possible that you ignore the event or even "forget" it all at once.
   - If you say "I have to think about myself first" with the fear of "I will get hurt if I complain", then ignoring the bribe is a reasonable option. At this stage, the goal is to rank the options within the framework of your personal moral principles.
3. The third stage of a moral act is moral motivation. Sometimes you may see immorality and know what to do, but you may not have enough motivation to do the right thing. Based on the example of bribery above, if you see bribery as immoral, would you take a certain risk and report the situation? Or do other motivations, such as safety concerns, push you to ignore the situation? At this stage, intention and behavior diverge. Having good intentions and knowing what is moral does not, by itself, lead you to moral action. To do the right thing, motivation is essential as much as intention and knowledge.
4. Moral action is the last step necessary for the emergence of a moral behavior. At this stage, you need to have courage, determination, and the ability to put your intentions into action. You may see bribery as immoral and you may have the necessary motivation to complain about it, but you may not have enough knowledge and skills to put this motivation into action. To whom and how to complain? Should he go to the police or the press? The answers to these questions will determine the pattern of your moral behavior.

The Importance of Rest's Moral Model:

The functional aspect of Rest's model of moral behavior is that it takes the notion of morality from being abstract, otherworldly or purely individual, and presents it as a concrete, observable and social phenomenon. In this sense, the quality of the social system is as important as individual preferences for a more moral society. Immorality is a situation that cannot be explained by individual preferences alone. If we see immorality as a weakness related to the system, then we have determined where to start in order to create a moral society! If we want to build a more moral society, we need to look at how we, as a society, can support individuals in each of the above four phases. Without rest to rest, for example; We can start by increasing moral sensitivity in the first stage and teaching individuals what is right and wrong in the second stage. We can support this with the moral sensitivity of those who shape educational institutions, families and society.

However, with education alone, we can only exalt morality at the level of discourse. Because people's being sensitive and knowing what is right and wrong does not push them to behave morally alone. It would be wrong to talk about a linear connection between education and morality in this sense. Therefore, in order for morality to become widespread at the level of action in a society, there is a need for a just legal system as well as education. If moral behavior is rewarded and immoral people are punished in a society, it means that moral behavior increases in that society. If the opposite is true, that is, if immoral people are rewarded and lives are poisoned to moral people, it becomes more difficult to see moral behavior in the majority of individuals living there.

For a Moral Society:

First of all, the structure of the system should be questioned, not the individual. Morality is as much a systemic situation as it is individual. Explaining morality with individual notions, weaknesses or virtues of individuals would mean missing this systemic dimension of the issue. When we miss this, that is, when we confine morality to an individual concept, we cannot help ourselves from making moral people heroic and demonizing immoral people. Again, with this narrow individual approach, it is not possible to understand why immorality is more common in certain social systems. The essence of establishing a civilized life is to transform the innate tendency of individual interest in favor of social interest. The data revealed in comparative studies on morality confirm this: In societies that establish a democratic legal order, immorality decreases. All forms of immorality are on the rise in totalitarian systems. As trust in others increases in a society, immorality in that society decreases and productivity increases in parallel.

Turkish Society:

When we look at Turkish society from this point of view, we see an extremely pessimistic picture. In summary, I see the generalization of immorality as a systemic weakness, not a human one. This situation, which surrounds daily life and politics, is not only caused by the evil in human nature! It is not due to ignorance or immorality. The source of this situation is in the functioning of our education and legal system, which we have established to live together. If Turkish society can rebuild the ethic of living together through a series of reforms from education to the legal system, we may have the chance to get out of the whirlpool we call "immorality" and take an important step towards building a more civilized and prosperous society. Just as everything is a matter of preference for individuals, societies live according to their own preferences. The choice is ours!

Conclusion:

If people whose moral values are prominent in an immoral society become heroes, it means that society has started to decay systematically. That's why I see that external education and social and religious values affect people fundamentally in shaping the virtue that should exist in human beings. At the beginning of the inner spiritual values comes what we call conscience. What is important for all of us are the vital values in the philosophy of life. People are not born moral or immoral. We all witness that first of all, a good family, then the environment, and then social values and beliefs shape and deeply affect the morality of individuals as a whole so that people can be “kneaded with a good dough”. The interaction that shapes individual morality depends primarily on external factors as well as the internal characteristics of the individual.

Stay respectfuly and with love.