Ethics and Influences

Ethics, I think, are morals put into action. I try to live my life adhering to a moral code created in part by my upbringing but mostly forged by what I inherently know to be right. I do my homework religiously, treat others with kindness and courtesy, and don’t participate in activities that I know to be harmful to others or myself. I have a tragic number of flaws but try to make up for them by doing good deeds and attempting to be a good person. I think humans, apart from sociopaths, are born with a moral code and simply know what’s right and what’s wrong. You just know homicide is wrong. Your friends and your family shape your stances on the slightly less defined ethical dilemmas. Your religion, for instance, might shape the way you view controversial topics like gay marriage or abortion. You are not born with an opinion on either matter. Your surroundings dictate such beliefs. Racism and sexism are also things that must be taught. In matters such as these and others, my friends and family have had a profound influence. My mother is an atheist and a feminist, and she unintentionally shaped me into a feminist atheist throughout the years, so now I sound a lot like her when certain topics are brought up. My mother intentionally taught me that I must help others, even if it’s at a cost to myself, so I try to make her proud by doing so. My friends are all very good people who naturally refuse to dabble in nefarious doings and so influence me to do the same. They are fairly open-minded as well, and through listening to their opinions and beliefs, my eyes have been opened to new worlds of thinking.

Cast Down Your Bucket Where You Are

In Washington’s “Up from Slavery,” Washington seems to be declaring that African-Americans should stay in the South. He never speaks against the North, but he praises the South, stating, “When it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world.” He admits the South has problems, but with time, Booker declares, “Our beloved South [will become] a new heaven and a new earth.”
Throughout “Up from Slavery,” Washington seems to be very optimistic about race relations, one of the South’s main problems. He states several times that if whites and African-Americans work together, the South will develop into a region of great peace and prosperity. He urges whites to “cast down your bucket where you are,” and “you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen,” meaning that African-Americans will prove themselves to be sterling partners. He also encourages African-Americans to assist their white brothers. “We shall constitute once-third and more of the ignorance and crime of the South, or one-third its intelligence and progress,” Washington states, and the difference between these two means is either working together with whites or refusing cooperation.
Washington seems to be declaring to both races that despite its problems, the South is a place to stay in because an “interlacing [of] our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life” will occur “in a way that shall make the interests of both races one” if the two races work together.

Loathe Largesse

Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “The Lovers of the Poor” describes a group of ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League who, one day, go down to the slums to aid its inhabitants. These ladies live in comfortable homes with “hostess gowns and sunburst clocks,” and so they find the slums quite shocking. “It’s all so bad! And entirely too much for them.” Throughout their day spent helping the poor, the ladies are aware that they could have been the ones who need aid. They could have been born into these circumstances. They could have been the poor. No matter how far you place yourself from poverty, when you’re amidst its throes, it feels as if anytime you could fall into it. The ladies are so relieved that they do not have to deal with “old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they’re told, something called chitterlings” every day, but they are also horrified that they could have been or could be. "Loathe largesse" is the feeling you get when you volunteer your time to help the poor. You are doing a good thing by helping the poor, which is the “largesse” part, but the whole time you’re helping them clean their house or take care of their children, you hate them for what they remind you. You could have been the poor. In the future, you could be the poor. You are only a few rungs above them on the ladder of wealth. What should happen if you lose your footing? This is the “loathe” in loathe largesse. The ladies of the Ladies’ Betterment League are performing an act of largesse when they visit the slums and help those who live there, but during their whole outing, they loathe the poor for reminding them of what they could be. When the ladies finally leave the slums, they “allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,” so they won’t take any dirt with them and “resume all the clues of what they were” before they came to the slums, “trying to avoid inhaling the laden air.”