Ethics and stuff

The basics of morals and ethics are very similar to people around the world. I think most of our ethics comes from a universal understanding of what is right and what is wrong. The very basics of our ethical beliefs have to do with killing, stealing, lying, or hate speech. This can be seen through history as well, people have been punished in various ways for stealing or killing. Today most of our moral code is translated into laws. Laws serve as legal guidelines to what we can and can’t do, they are not only for the rights we think we are entitled to like freedom of speech, but they also serve as a reminder that our culture shares similar values. We all agree to not kill so murder is illegal, we all agree to not steal so theft is illegal, we all agree not to set shit on fire that doesn’t belong to us so arson is illegal. We form our laws based on the ethical code we all share as a people and we believe there should be punishment if these laws are broken. So we all have this idea that some things are just wrong but what about the more personal morals we live by. Most people aren’t faced with having to kill someone on a day to day basis, but what are some of the moral issues we face that force us to resort to our own ethical codes?

Ethics to me doesn't really mean anything specific, it's not always easy to tell what is right from wrong. There are many examples of tricky moral issues, such as stealing to feed your family, this is why I believe that there can be no solid code of ethics that we live by. You cannot get so specific with ethics to just say do not lie, steal, or even kill. Every situation has to be evaluated to find out whether the actions carried out were moral or immoral. Most people do not want to kill, but would you kill someone if they were a direct threat to you or your family? It's easy to make a list of good and bad things to do and tell yourself your going to live a good life but sometimes we are faced with problems in this world that are not solved that easily. Not everything is black and white, so how do we get through the gray parts?

My definition of living an ethical life can be narrowed down to two things. First you must always strive for happiness while looking out for the happiness of others. This means you can be happy and that should be your main goal in live, but you cannot achieve happiness by taking others away. You should get what is it that you want in life, you should get what makes you happy but you can't step on others to get it. The second thing is to live a life where you can say that you have given more than you've taken, this is very important and I believe if you have balance between those two rules you will live an ethical life. If everybody focused only on happiness but at the same time were fully aware of other peoples happiness, I have a hard time thinking anything could go wrong. But that's not our human nature.