The Path to Moral Behavior
Doctrine, Principles, Values, and Beliefs are the Waypoints
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How do you know when your behavior is moral?
The Bootlegger’s Guide to Personal Strategery refers to “moral behavior” as positive moral behavior, such as actions that have a positive impact and build up rather than tear down.
The opposite of moral behavior is immoral behavior. It is also known as wrong or damaging behavior.
Good moral behavior is when you consciously choose the path of good, clearly distinguishing between good and evil in your actions.
Yes, this is all very basic.
Good parents have been teaching children the principles of good behavior for centuries. Unfortunately, today, the lines between right and wrong are being blurred if not erased altogether.
That is why I have returned to stating the basics of moral behavior.
Knowing the secret combination, we can link human behavior to the waypoints of values, beliefs, principles, and doctrine.
I appreciate using a good GPS device.
I like and use my Gaia GPS app for hunting, fishing, hiking, and road trips. I even use it for walks around my neighborhood with the property owners' map activated so I know who owns each parcel of land as I walk by.
Gaia allows me to plan a course before wandering through the woods. To avoid getting lost or to get back on track if I get distracted, Gaia has a common GPS feature allowing me to input “waypoints” on the GPS map along my path of travel.
The waypoints can be landmarks like a cave, a bridge across a creek, next to a lake, and a nice camping spot.
When I begin the hike, I usually progress sequentially from one waypoint to another. If I don’t care about any features or obstacles between the beginning and the end, I can plot a direct path from the starting place to the destination.
Doctrine, principles, beliefs, and values provide the waypoints of moral behavior.
Using these waypoints to mark your moral path is also a great tool to validate that your behavior aligns with your moral stand on any topic.
Most frequently, we question our moral behavior. This kind of morality check is Inward-looking.
Did I treat my child fairly? Was I kind to my spouse? Was I sincere and above board in that entire transaction? Did I tell the whole truth?
Sometimes, we observe perplexing behavior in the world we need to make sense of, or we face confusing circumstances that require a decision.
Such moral dilemmas are frequently due to external forces and require some action (behavior).
Why is that person yelling at me? Should I vote for that candidate? My employee just stole $110,000 from our business. What should I do?
Whether the result of an internal inquiry or some external force, this simple moral self-check process answers this question: Can the motivation for your behavior be traced back to the waypoints of values, beliefs, principles, and solid doctrine that you can easily define and defend?
Here are three ways to think critically through a morality check.
The process may progress either forward or reverse linearly or can be dynamic.
Reverse Lineal Morality Check
This morality check begins with behavior and ends with doctrine.
Start by understanding and defining your current BEHAVIOR.
Identify the personal underlying VALUE you care enough about to take action on to behave the way you have chosen.
Challenge the BELIEF, that idea, driving your willingness to value it and take action. Ensure your belief is not biased and simply based on an emotion, desire, or preference. Make sure the belief truly defines who you are.
Affirm a PRINCIPLE or group of principles you can accept and defend as true, aligning with the belief you justified in the previous step.
Finally, the principle or principles supporting your belief must be based on true DOCTRINE. As we learned in a previous post, the doctrine is true or false. There is no middle ground.
Forward Lineal Morality Check
This process is the exact opposite of the reverse lineal morality check. The exercise begins with doctrine, moves forward through principles, beliefs, and values, and ends with your behavior.
Dynamic Morality Check
This test is indeed dynamic, meaning you can start anywhere!
Sometimes, the differences between doctrine, principles, beliefs, and values become fuzzy.
When that happens, just pick one element and start thinking about it. One thought will lead to another, then another, and another until the sum of the parts (doctrine, principles, beliefs, and values) come into focus.
The Approach you take does not matter.
The important thing is that you think critically and can justify your behavior.
As long as you can tie your behavior back to values, beliefs, principles, and solid doctrine in an accurate, open-minded manner, you can easily define and defend your behavior and claim to act according to your moral imperative.
The Morality Check process is the essence of critical thinking.
And critical thinking requires effort!
That’s why it is easy to opt out and rely on someone else, some other group, or a media outlet to tell us what to think.
Don’t give in!
When you surrender, you lose sovereignty.
Doing the work is one currency of freedom.
That’s a Wrap for this post!
In the next post, you will receive more tools to help streamline critical thinking.
Thanks for reading and thinking for yourself! Be sure to subscribe so you do not miss out on future posts.
Russell Anderson
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