QUESTION A. We watched the video "Are Babies Born Good?" What did you learn from this video and how did it challenge what you thought about people prior to watching the video? How do you relate this material to a Business Ethics Class?
Respond One of the biggest things that I learned that stuck out to me was that when things get messy, we regress to the ways we knew when we were younger. Which makes so much sense with how I deal with past trauma now, when something happens that takes me back to a moment in my life that wasn't ideal, I revert to the ways I would have acted then, even if I know how to handle it now because that's just the way humans are hardwired. The study shows that babies inherently know right from wrong, so when we grow up we as adults should keep that notion. Based off that, I find it difficult to think that people like serial killers, were born inherently good and not the monsters they turned into, because how does someone someday see murder sprees as justified if they weren't born that way? I am able to relate this to class because when dealing with others, I need to remember we were for the most part born with the same likes and dislikes and that I can find common ground on some ethical standpoint after conversing with them, no matter how different they are, we were all the same once.
QUESTION b. Walter Pavlo ends the video saying that he is no different than most of us and that we could do the same thing that he did. Do you agree? Why or why not?
Respond: I would have to say as much as I don't want to agree with Pavlo, I do agree with him. He was doing the same thing as everyone else was doing: going to work and trying to do well at his job. As the pressure continued to mount at his work, the stress to continue to be perfect started to take a toll. In order to make sure that his perfect illusion was maintained, he had to start lying. He got so wrapped up in trying to be the best employee that he committed a felony in the process. Before he knew it he was in too deep, and it all started with the pressure of perfection and trying to be great at what he did. It's not that he necessarily wanted to commit a crime, he just didn't know how to stop the lie once it got started.
Unfortunately, I know I have been in situations where I sacrificed my morals because I wanted to be the best student, athlete, etc. even if I didn't really mean to. For example, I remember when I was in middle school I was on the soccer team and our coach trusted us to run a mile outside of practice and record our times each time we ran it. This led to a portion of the team shaving a minute or a few seconds off of our time since our coach wasn't around to witness us run it. Ultimately, it caught up to us when we had to run the mile in front of our coach, who caught on pretty quickly. Lying about our time wasn't meant to have bad intentions, it was just so our coach would think we were in better shape than we were.
