Morality As A Community Affair

6 Pages 1412 Words

As Americans we hone a set of individual, community, and national morals that have a
great affect on the world. Morals can be described as our conscience’s, our values, and our
beliefs. How we decipher what is right or wrong also comes from our morals. Our feelings on a
subject and our behaviors are actions of our values. Not only do our morals affect us as
individuals but Amitai Etzioni tells us that our morals affect our communities as well. In
Etzioni’s book Morality as a Community Affair he tells us that we belong to many communities
which can be defined as a place where we interact with other people like at work, our
neighborhood, or even bigger our nation. With in these communities we belong to , we have
moral voices that set the basic rules we live by.
Etzioni believes American communities today have a weak moral voice due to a fear of
speaking up. He tells us that this is a problem that we must correct. Etzioni says that as an
individual our conscience alone is not enough to change this weak moral voice, so we much get
help and support from people with in our communities. It takes both of our individual morals
and our neighbors influence to create this strong moral voice.
Most people’s conscience’s are neither there when we are born or self-enforcing. We
develop our morals from communities in which we are born. Later as we grow older we create
our own versions of the values and morals we already had (515). We find and provide
reinforcement for our morals to our fellow human beings, through the community. Our family
and community are the basic building blocks and preservers of our nations’ value and ethical
system.
We belong to many communities which criss-cross each other and affect one another.
Etzioni describes the overlapping of our communities as a Chinese nesting box, where our
smaller communities (family and neighbors) are nestled with in larger ones (local villages and
t...