Where Do Our Morals Come From?

Our sense of right and wrong is significantly influenced by our families, cultures, religions, friends, experiences, and even the groups we identify with. This shows how people can look at the same situation and feel or think completely differently about it.

Every day, we make judgments about what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes the answer seems obvious. Other times, we argue and wonder how anyone could see the situation differently. But where do these judgments actually come from? Do we carefully reason our way toward them, or do we sometimes feel that something is right or wrong before we even know why?

Think about it. Have you ever said, “I just know it’s wrong,” before you could actually explain why? That feeling is intuition: an immediate reaction that happens before we consciously stop to analyze a situation. We might see something, feel it is wrong, and only then start looking for reasons to explain that feeling. We might see something, feel it is wrong, and only then start looking for reasons to explain that feeling. After this, we can go two different ways: either end up changing our opinion due to someone's really good argument, or become better at defending the opinion we already had. 

Understanding morality isn't as simple as knowing the difference between right and wrong. Maybe it's also about understanding why something feels right or wrong to us in the first place. So when we judge someone else, are we judging their actions, or are we judging them through the moral rules we grew up with?