Moral Development By Kingsley Simeon Duru

Moral Development focuses on the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. Morality develops across a lifetime and is influenced by an individual's experiences and their behaviour when faced with moral issues through different periods' physical and cognitive development. In short, morality concerns an individual's growing sense of what is right and wrong; it is for this reason that young children have different moral judgement and character than that of a grown adult. Morality in itself is often a synonym for "rightness" or "goodness". It refers to a certain code of conduct that is derived from one's culture, religion or personal philosophy that guides one's actions, behaviours and thoughts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_development.

Too many definitions to this subject does not change the message this is trying to portray. Morality is a natural alertness to doing good things, being kind, merciful and considerate. It is also the consciousness towards emotional intelligence. Moral development should be deliberate at some point in one’s life. The causes of crime, violence and evil is the in-activeness, negligence of morals or lack of proper “developmental feeds”. Children who are fed with the wrong information will consider it right when living it.

           The behaviour of an individual is traced back to his/her moral upbringing. Morality is a universal religion with the consciousness of doing what is right or wrong. “Personally I have come across people with a very terrible way of life and I wonder how horrible their upbringing must have been, the funny part of this is that they are not aware of their bad habits". In a situation where parents fail to train their kids properly what then shall the society do about them? Yes it is not too late to make a U-turn. As individuals wake to the consciousness of knowing what is good from evil, is now left for them to choose the right thing to do. “If your sense of religion is very harmful to humanity then your education is a waste”. Whatever thing you believe that does not better or poses threat to mankind is a complete disaster. We must wake up from our slumber as individuals and start making amends from where our parents failed. Let’s reach out to those who are blind by reason of their belief and upbringing, Lets reach out to those who have been molested by the society and heal their wounds. The reason we have people terrorising our peace is because we did not make any effort to help them, they need to be loved and cared for. As a country we have failed in helping ourselves reach the heights we dream of: because of greed, nepotism, pride and corruption. We have lost our sense of morals everyone is struggling to survive as no one cares about others. If corruption must be dealt with we must start from our homes then to our belief system. Strangers take advantage of us when they see disunity and conflict amongst us. Religious leaders must review their sermons and teach their followers great morals that will make our land habitable against all odds of barrier.

HOW CAN YOU DEVELOP THESE GOOD MORALS?

1.    Discover your lapses

2.    Determine to change

3.    Develop yourself

·         Discover your Lapses:

 Ask yourself if you are truly an agent of change in your community or society, have you been able to contribute to the system you met as an individual or you need to work on yourself? “You cannot give what you don’t have”. When you finally discover the areas you are not meeting up then you can determine to change. Nothing will happen to you when you cannot see what is wrong with way you eat, drink, sleep or even treat people, until you see something wrong with it then there will be need for change. This is also applicable to an organisation, association, sects, denomination and nation. Nobody has ever changed without the determination to do so, if you are not intentional about changing your way of life you can never be forced to do so. God made us  free moral agents, what this mean is that you can decide what you really want to be without divine influence,  God gave us the privilege to choose between right and wrong. It is unfortunate that very many people go for the wrong.

·         Determine to Change:

Change is the most difficult thing to do but with determination you can achieve it. Imagine a child who has been indoctrinated to kill and inflict pain on people thus will be doing it passionately without considering the outcome on his/her victims. Talking them into a new leaf will or may amount abortive but with decision and determination from this individuals they can change. They will need new orientations, sermons, affirmations and information to turn over a new leaf. It will take a process of metabolism of whatsoever they have heard or adhered to, those things they have been fed with must be extracted gradually from them tactically with loving and caring methods then their change will come. Morals can be contagious and harmlessly forceful if exemplified by the right persons. At times when two different species of livestock is kept together gradually you see similar behaviour emanating from them as though they were same species. Those with the bad morals needs attention from people who have interest in them and are willing to help them change. You cannot influence people when you isolate them.

·         Develop yourself: the willingness to change is not enough until you make a proactive effort to improve in yourself.  Firstly it starts with you acknowledging your weakness and then deciding to turn over a new leaf, which ordinarily may not be easy but with the right information from those whose stories and lifestyle influence you then it becomes easy for you to change.

Things you must do

1.    You must consciously refuse the things you once believe.

2.    You must be willing to read good materials from men and women of good morals.

3.    Don’t hold back on your past.

4.    Make new friends that will influence you rightly.

5.    Talk about your doubt with the right people.

6.    Don’t stay alone except you want to meditate on those great things you are taught.

7.    Make it a conscious habit to do the right thing.

You are free to make your contributions.

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