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Rule No.66 - Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right


Morals are taught to us by our parents, guardians, teachers and elders. They are concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct, distinction between right and wrong.

Gandhi's brand of civil resistance is built around this quote. It's okay to break the rules as long as you do it non-violently, the rule is unjust, and are willing to accept the consequences. Another example of this rule is all the people that who hid or otherwise helped Jews during World War II. In the US military, you can get away with breaking the rules to do the right thing provided that you have a legitimate excuse and someone in a position of authority believes you.

Similar to the Jewish rules, Islam also has exceptions in order to save someone, including oneself. For instance, eating pork is perfectly acceptable if no other food is available in an emergency. Human is not actually on the list of food prohibitions, in dire situations (though if you murder someone to eat them because you're starving, you are on the bad list). Various denominations of Christianity also permit this in dire situations (the human thing, not the pork, because pork is not a prohibited food for most Christians).

All examples, some a little more hectic than the others, are when you need to put your morals aside to do what is right. Sometimes it is easy to not do the right thing and then blame your morals that you were taught. We have curve balls thrown at us daily, testing our morals and ethics but sometimes you need to look at the bigger picture and think what the right thing would be to do. Imagine if Ghandi never did anything because it was morally incorrect, or no-one helped the Jewish people during the war. There are millions of examples of times when someone has gone against their morals but knew they were doing the right thing instead and thank goodness for that.

So next time you need to choose between morals and the right thing, remember to the right thing is always the answer.

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