More Ethical Than Society

I just read a Facebook post that said, "You are personally responsible for becoming more ethical than the society you grew up in," and I immediately knew I had to blog about it. At first, this seemed odd to me. If the society you grew up in is already ethical (as most societies believe themselves to be), then trying to be more ethical than that might result in "looking beyond the mark," (Jacob 4:14). Many people in the United States today are trying to be "more ethical" than the rest of society, and there is some disagreement about whether they're succeeding or not.

Yet, it's certainly true that no earthly society is perfect. Any society could be more ethical, and many could be much more ethical. As long as there is any room for improvement, we owe it to ourselves to try to improve. That is, I suppose, how societies can become more ethical, through individual members of society trying to improve. Naturally, it's more complicated than that, and certain social systems may reward or punish ethical or unethical behavior, but so long as a society is composed of individuals, the society is only as ethical as its individual members are. We owe it to ourselves and our societies to make ourselves and them and ethical as we and they can be. And if that means being more ethical than they are now, then yes, we should try to be more ethical than the societies we grew up in.

I try to be an ethical person. I try (and often fail) to become more ethical than I had been. I'm not sure if I'm becoming more ethical than the society I grew up in, but I'm trying to become as ethical as I can be, and I hope that the rest of society will gradually become more ethical as well.