Sunday, February 13, 2011

Morals

I have to say, I enjoyed the reading. Although difficult at times for me to grasp, I thought a lot of what Hayek had to say was quite noteworthy. The one section that stuck out most to me was item number 7 on page #62: The Moral and the Social. The various ideas that were put forward in regards to this were, in my case, enlightening.

Without a doubt, the thing which stood out most to me was when Hayek quoted Edmund Burke in saying that individuals "could easily find the morals which suited it." Boom! This has been seen time and time again throughout history. You can see everywhere people being of a mindset which was detrimental to their fellow man in the name of what's right. One of the most notorious and more modern examples being Adolf Hitler's careful use of appeal to the people of Germany to turn against people which were painted and seen as immoral themselves and less then human. Another example can be the current world wide crisis of terrorism where you have people, in the name of God and what's right, killing others.

While I firmly believe that there are certain self evident truths held by everybody, lets face it, nobody likes to be lied to, there are a great many "morals" which are peddled for a number of reasons. We must always be careful what we believe and question all that is presented to us and be careful in believing the wrong "morals."

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