Hard and Fast

How much can nurture effect our lives? If a person comes from a broken family and learns how to act within a broken family will their personality show it? Most people say a broken, dysfunctional family
will promote broken dysfunctional people. If someone grows up in a hostile environment they will think that that is how everyone acts. When they are beaten or see their mother or sibling beaten they think all fathers beat their families and either allow their future spouse batter them or batter their spouse. Statistics say that you are so much more likely to become an abuser of people and substances if you grow up around that kind of abuse. Therefore statistics say that you are almost doomed from the moment you are brought into this world.

This idea of society and the people in it is not a hard and fast rule. There is no way to tell who is going to grow up to be successful and who will not be. Simply growing up with hardships and in the face of difficulty does not guarantee that you will be a failure at life. When people say that broken families make for broken people, broken government and broken politics, they are exaggerating. They are using stereotypes to judge the population on a smaller percent of people.

Destiny

Every choice we make, assuming every choice is of our own free will, prevents us from doing something else. We can choose to do one specific event and going to this event could alter our lives by either what we learn or a person we meet or both. However, by going to this event we rule out the possibility of going to another event at the same time that could change our lives just as drastically as going to the other event, simply by showing us different people or knowledge. So, assuming every choice is of our own free will, could we go through life making all of the wrong choices and making our life so much worse by choosing the wrong event, person or thing?

While we could debate on how eating ham instead of turkey can change ones life because they missed out the pleasures of turkey, that effect on your life is probably much less than perhaps, choosing the wrong person to spend the rest of your life with. However, if we spend all of our time worrying if we picked the right friends or the right lover, we will never have time to find out of we are with the right person and if we are making correct decisions.

Assuming that every choice that we make is of our own free will then can we control our own destiny? Can it really be just our own fault for not being able to see what is good for us? Sociology tells us that nothing we do exists in a vacuum. So every choice we make effects something else either by limiting our choices or by introducing us to something else. The chances of some person going through their whole life without making one single correct choice about a life changing even is slim to none yet, sometimes the impossible does happen...

Obedience

Confucius says that to be a good son one must obey his father and when his father dies if the son changes none of his fathers ways for at least three years then he has fulfilled his role as a son. Confucius also says that a father must rule with moral integrity as should any other ruler. Confucius however does not touch on whether a father is moral or not. He assumes that since a father is a father then he will abide by the Decree of Heaven since it is the right thing to do.

What happens when a father is a drunk? What if he is abusive? What should the son do then? According to Confucius he should still follow his fathers ways simply to be a good son. If the son wants to be morally correct however he must disobey his fathers ways. If this son then proceeds to follow a benevolent and morally correct life then that should counteract him not being a good son.

Few people today follow in their parents footsteps directly. Usually they will follow them until they are about eighteen, maybe into their early twenties. From here most children may follow their parents footstep by accident or on purpose. However many choose to stray from their parents little by little until they have formed their own life. This does not make a child any better or worse than another child who does follow their parents footsteps. The only thing that should define the quality of a person is their words and their actions towards others. They should be measured on the quality of their life not by how well they can copy another persons life.

God versus Religion

In chapter one on Confucius is quoted as saying "You are not able even to serve man. How can you serve the spirits?". (p.11) He believed in some higher power and was also said to have founded the idea of the Decree of Heaven therefore believed in another place, an afterlife.

Can a person have these beliefs without the belief in religion? Religion is an arbitrary creation of the human need to have order and to have someone else to blame for all the wrongs that have happened to them. Religion can also be seen as an organization made by "the man" to "keep his subjects in line". Religion can also be seen as societies motif to cope with humans natural death anxiety.

The basis of of religion is centered around one or many God figures. A lot of religions also focus on doing good either simply to better society or to better yourself to go to heaven after death. There is a focus on what Confucius called the Decree of Heaven which is a set of rules about how to act towards others. If someone can learn these morals outside of the organized religion then there is no point in participating in specific rituals.

Overall you can have a sense of the Decree of Heaven as well as God without having to participate in an organized religion of any kind. There are loads of people in this day and age who can relate to a specific religions beliefs while not participating in the logistics of being a 'true' member.