why is it hard to do the right thing essay

Mind by Design

Doing the Right Thing when no one is looking: The Power of Integrity, Even When No One is Watching 

In a world that often seems driven by self-interest and instant gratification, the concept of doing the right thing might appear to be overshadowed by personal gain. However, the truth remains that integrity is an indispensable virtue that defines our character and influences our choices, even when no one is looking.

As C.S. Lewis once wisely stated, “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” In this article, we will explore the profound significance of choosing the right path, not only when you’re being observed, but especially when you think no one is watching. We’ll delve into the reasons to prioritize ethical behavior, how it can positively impact your personal and professional life, and why it’s worth considering, even when it seems no one else is.

Reasons to Do the Right Thing, Even When No One is Looking

Upholding personal integrity.

At its core, integrity is the foundation of our character. It reflects the alignment between our actions, values, and beliefs. While it’s tempting to think that our actions only matter when others are present, it’s crucial to remember that every choice we make contributes to the shaping of our identity. A person of integrity understands that their behavior isn’t just a response to external expectations but an indicator of their personal values. When you consistently do the right thing, even when no one is watching, you build a strong sense of self-respect and self-esteem. These internal rewards are invaluable and can lead to greater overall well-being.

Impact on Relationships and Friendship

Ethical behavior extends beyond the individual . It has a significant impact on the relationships we build, especially in friendships. When you consistently demonstrate integrity, your friends and peers recognize your authenticity and trustworthiness. This fosters a deeper bond based on mutual respect and honesty. Choosing the right thing , even when no one is watching, strengthens the foundation of trust within friendships, making them more resilient and meaningful. After all, being able to trust a friend who does the right thing, regardless of the circumstances, is a rare and valuable trait.

Motivating Others and Setting an Example

Behavior is contagious. When you consistently do the right thing, even when nobody else seems to notice, you become a beacon of ethical behavior for others. Your actions inspire and motivate those around you to follow suit. Imagine the positive influence you can have on your family, friends, colleagues, and even strangers by demonstrating the importance of integrity through your actions. By acting as a role model , you contribute to a culture of ethical behavior that can create a ripple effect in your community and beyond.

Enhancing Mental and Physical Health

Choosing to do the right thing, regardless of the circumstances, has a profound impact on your mental and physical health. Acting in alignment with your values reduces feelings of guilt, anxiety, and stress. When you know you’ve made ethical choices, you’re less likely to be haunted by regrets, allowing you to enjoy greater peace of mind. Moreover, studies have shown that people who consistently engage in ethical behavior tend to experience better physical health. This connection between ethical behavior and well-being highlights the importance of making decisions that prioritize both our mental and physical health.

Doing the Right Thing Even When No One is Watching: Practical Applications

Ethical decision-making in the workplace.

In a professional setting, making the right choice can be challenging, especially when personal gain is on the line. However, acting ethically is not only a matter of personal integrity but also a reflection of professional standards. Upholding integrity in the workplace can lead to increased trust from colleagues, superiors, and stakeholders. It can also foster a healthier work environment, where individuals feel valued and respected. Moreover, consistently choosing the right thing, even when nobody else is looking, can help you build a reputation as a reliable and ethical professional, opening doors for career growth and opportunities.

The Role of Integrity in Relationships

Integrity plays a pivotal role in relationships. Whether it’s with family, friends, or romantic partners, being true to your values and consistently doing the right thing can cultivate deeper connections. Honesty, trust, and respect are essential components of any healthy relationship, and they stem from a commitment to ethical behavior. Even when you’re facing difficult decisions or tempted to take shortcuts, remember that the foundation of a strong relationship is built on integrity. By prioritizing the right thing, you nurture bonds that stand the test of time.

Personal Growth and Development

Choosing the right thing, even when nobody else is watching, is a powerful catalyst for personal growth . Every ethical decision you make contributes to your own development, helping you refine your sense of self and values. It also challenges you to confront your fears and biases, enabling you to become a more compassionate and open-minded individual . Through these experiences, you become better equipped to face moral dilemmas, and your decision-making becomes more aligned with your core principles.

In Conclusion

In a world where shortcuts and quick gains may seem tempting, choosing to do the right thing, even when no one is watching, is a mark of true character. Upholding integrity not only reflects your personal values but also influences the people and world around you. By consistently acting ethically, you inspire others, build deeper relationships, and experience greater mental and physical well-being. Remember, integrity is not just about doing the right thing when you’re being observed; it’s about who you are when nobody else is looking.

Key Takeaways:

• Integrity Matters : Upholding personal integrity , even when nobody is watching, shapes your character and builds self-respect.
• Relationships Benefit : Ethical behavior strengthens relationships, fosters trust, and sets a positive example for others.
• Motivation and Influence : Doing the right thing inspires others and contributes to a culture of ethical behavior.
• Mental and Physical Health : Choosing ethical actions improves mental and physical well-being, reducing stress and promoting a healthier lifestyle.
• Workplace and Personal Growth : Ethical choices enhance your professional reputation and contribute to personal growth and development.

Remember, every decision you make, even when you think no one is watching, defines the person you are and the legacy you leave behind. As Aldo Leopold once said, “Ethical behavior is doing the right thing when no one else is watching—even when doing the wrong thing is legal.” It’s a reminder that our actions have a far-reaching impact, and the world becomes a better place when individuals choose integrity over convenience.

Q: What does it mean to do the right thing when no one is looking?

A: Doing the right thing when no one is looking refers to acting with integrity and making ethical decisions even when there is no external pressure or observation. It is about following your own moral compass and doing what you believe is right, regardless of whether anyone else is watching.

Q: Why is doing the right thing important?

A: Doing the right thing is important because it aligns with our values and helps us maintain our self-respect . It also contributes to a better society and promotes trust and fairness. Acting ethically can empower us and make us feel good about ourselves.

Q: How does doing the right thing make you feel?

A: Doing the right thing can make you feel good about yourself. It gives you a sense of satisfaction and inner peace, knowing that you have acted in accordance with your values and principles. It can also increase your self-esteem and confidence.

Q: Can doing the right thing motivate others?

A: Yes, doing the right thing can serve as a source of motivation for others. When people see someone consistently making ethical choices and behaving with integrity, it can inspire them to do the same. Leading by example and displaying good character can have a positive influence on those around you.

Q: How does friendship influence doing the right thing?

A: Friendship can play a significant role in doing the right thing. Good friends can provide support and encouragement to make ethical decisions, and they can hold you accountable for your actions. Surrounding yourself with friends who share similar values can help reinforce your commitment to doing what’s right.

Q: Why does it really matter to do the right thing even when nobody is looking?

A: Doing the right thing even when nobody is looking is important because it reflects your true character. It demonstrates that your ethical behavior is not dependent on external rewards or consequences, but rather a genuine desire to do what is right. It showcases your integrity and values, regardless of the presence or absence of others.

Q: What does “ethical behavior” mean?

A: “Ethical behavior” refers to actions that are morally right and aligned with accepted principles of conduct. It involves making choices that consider the well-being of others and adhering to established standards of fairness, honesty, and respect. Ethical behavior promotes trust, mutual respect, and the betterment of society .

Q: Does doing the right thing when nobody’s watching mean that you don’t care about what others think?

A: No, doing the right thing when nobody’s watching doesn’t mean that you don’t care about what others think. It mean

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Doing the right thing.

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Sometimes doing the right thing isn't the thing you expect.

Doing the right thing generally means making decisions that are not based on your own personal needs, that don't expand your popularity, or enforce your personal beliefs. It means doing what is best for the greater or common good.

Some examples are:

• Maintaining your character when no one is watching.
• Focusing on alignment at the expense of short-term profits and conflict avoidance.
• Being honest with a client about a product defect that may cause them not to buy from you.

Another example is being willing to terminate those who are great at what they do but are unwilling to stay true to the core culture values and vision of the company. That was what happened to us with someone who I will refer to as “Larry.” Larry was a senior management team member at Carolina Ingredients who was a great example of a silent tumor in the workplace. Larry worked hard and usually produced above-average results. You could even say he was in the right seat on the bus. The problem was his attitude. The core culture values he displayed in the senior management team meetings were not the same values he displayed toward his direct reports. As in many cases, the CEO is last to learn of a leader running rogue. Such was the case with Larry. I didn’t know just how negative of an environment he was creating among his team until much later than I should have. We learned he was undermining the senior management’s processes to build his own agenda within his team, creating a divide among the departments as a result. Rather than explain to his team the reasoning behind certain decisions we made in SMT meetings, Larry often opted to stoke the fire and encourage their confusion and dissatisfaction. In other words, when Larry had an opportunity to do the right thing, he preferred to take another road.

It took me some time to realize that we elevated Larry’s status and position inside the company based on him being a good performer rather than him being right for the role. He was the right person on the bus for an earlier position, but he wasn’t the right person to sit in the operations manager’s seat. He was over his head, and the pressure and demands of a role he was not qualified for were heavier than they should have been.

When people reach a point where they can’t lead or do the job to the level that’s required, they often use a deflection process. This is where they create scenarios that deflect focus from them and place it elsewhere. So rather than see the individual and his shortcomings, you’re looking at another problem because he has created noise around it.  That’s why it took me so long to see the reality of Larry’s shortcomings. As a leader, you have to be intentional about listening to others and keeping your pulse on the organization by engaging regularly with everyone throughout the organization.

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Sometimes, as a leader, you are too willing to overlook a person’s personality so long as they’re a good performer. Because Larry was a good producer in the company, I didn’t look at him as objectively as I should have. However, everyone is watching and listening to what the leader does. When I received more complaints about Larry and discovered incriminating emails he had written, I knew if I did not terminate him, it was going to increase negative morale throughout the company. It was not our culture to let someone create a toxic environment, and it was of paramount importance that I prove my dedication to our core culture values.

Doing the right thing is often the hard thing to do, which is why it can be an uncommon outcome. In Larry’s case, we weren’t aligned and while it was a difficult and painful decision to go our separate ways, it was the right thing to do.

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The Importance of Doing the Right Thing

Table of contents, building character and personal growth, fostering healthy relationships, promoting societal harmony and progress, leaving a lasting legacy, references:.

• Aristotle. (2000). Nicomachean Ethics (T. Irwin, Trans.). Hackett Publishing.
• Kant, I. (2017). Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (M. Gregor, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.
• Kohlberg, L. (1971). From Is to Ought: How to Commit the Naturalistic Fallacy and Get Away with It in the Study of Moral Development. New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development, 1971(5), 51-57.
• MacIntyre, A. C. (2013). After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. University of Notre Dame Press.
• Solomon, R. C. (1993). The Passions: Emotions and the Meaning of Life. Hackett Publishing.

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Home — Essay Samples — Entertainment — Do The Right Thing — Analysis of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing”

Analysis of Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing"

• Categories: Do The Right Thing

About this sample

Words: 750 |

Published: Jan 29, 2024

Words: 750 | Pages: 2 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Background and context, cinematography and visual style, sound and music, character development and performances, narrative structure, themes and messages, reception and controversies.

• Elberse, A., & Jullien, C. (2019). Spike Lee: A Film Case Study. Harvard Business School Publishing.
• Harvell, E., & Kardashian, K. (2020). Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Wayne State University Press.
• Sharrett, C. (2015). Spike Lee: That's My Story and I'm Sticking to It. Rutgers University Press.

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Do the right thing Essay

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Do the right thing is a film that was authored and directed by Spike Lee in 1989. The film has been one of the most ground-breaking comedies and it exposes the simmering racial prejudices that dominated America at that time (Reid 3).

The author uses a large cast in the film making it possible to bring out the major themes on issues dominating American society. In the scene, the author exposes his complex study on the dichotomies of daily life among diverse ethnic communities thus making the film to appear more of a comedy than an ordinary drama (Cooper 456).

Previously, the comedy has gained commercial success where the author received myriad awards and accolades due to its cultural significance (Cooper 454). One of the key issues dominating the scene includes various forms of bigotry such as racism existing in Metropolitan cities of US. This essay aims to examine how the concept of “Right” thing has been developed citing examples from the film.

How the concept of the “right’ thing has been developed in the film

Spike Lee has made a deliberate attempt in the scene to develop the concept “right” thing in a manner that delivers a true meaning to distinguish good from evil.

According to the way the concept has been used in the scene, it is definite that there is a true law that distinguishes a right act from a wrong one. In other words, Spike Lee attempts to bring out some of the characteristics of a “right” thing. From a careful analysis of the film, the author has clearly demonstrated that there are universal and natural laws governing the “right” thing.

For example, as the film ends the author projects an utterance by Martin Luther king which says that, “Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral” (Cooper 459). From this phrase, it is definite that in every society, there is a recommended way of doing “right”. In this case, one can argue that the concept “right” thing should be practiced naturally since it is the only way to conform to true laws that operate in a given society.

This also implies that there are actions that are unacceptable and for this reason, they cannot be regarded as right. On a slight note, Spike Lee intends to reveal to the audience that a “Right “thing is that action which is socially acceptable (Reid 27). However, the author fails to demonstrate the fact that a “right” thing might be socially acceptable in one society and unacceptable in another. For example, there are certain taboos held by Whites that are unacceptable among the Black people.

In line with this, the concept “right” thing has been depicted as the action that brings joy and happiness to a human life. A good example from the film include a case of Mookie, one of the main characters in the scene who is seated so happily counting his money after working very hard.

One can also discern that as he works, he keeps reminding Sal (his employer) to give him his salary early enough to cater for his upkeeps. Since there is no single moment Mookie ever neglected his responsibilities in the work place, Sal eventually gives him his pay without delay. The author also portrays how the concept helps to eradicate social conflicts and possible losses in the society. For example, in the scene, Mookie does right by working hard to earn in order to silence his problems.

From the scene, doing the right thing requires one to think and act critically (Reid 43). In this case, Spike Lee develops the concept “right” thing by defining it to be a critical and a rational action. It is arguable that when one think and reason rationally, the action that follows will definitely have positive impacts. Failure to do the right thing eventually increases chances of conflicting with people as observed at the beginning of the scene.

For example, as the film unfolds we find long-simmering racial-based tensions in Brooklyn neighborhoods (Reid 23). Racial prejudices escalate to numerous tragedies and violence simply because some people perceive themselves to be better than others (Reid 41). For instance, the Latin American fails to reason that they are not in any way better than Black Americans. Consequently, this results to racial intolerance, hatred, conflicts and deaths of innocent people from minor races.

In the scene, the author develops the concepts “right” thing in a way that it becomes synonymous to that action which conforms to nature. Though this is not explicitly expounded in the comedy, this is evident from Martin Luther King’s quote which says that, “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind” (Reid 161). From this phrase, it is definite that blindness interferes with the law of nature by making people immoral, cruel and impersonal. In this case, the “right” thing is that action which does not humiliate or even annihilate the opponent.

At some point, the author poses a controversial question in the viewer’s mind. After viewing the film, one tends to ask, “What is the right thing to do in a society dominated by racism such as America?” This question might appear simple from the film’s outset though it is not easy to get a straight answer (Cooper 459). In fact, the author himself does not provide a clear answer to the question. This is due to the fact that in the scene, it appears very difficult to break some dominant taboos exhibited by characters on stage (Reid 45).

For instance, the White people perceive other races as minor and this is acceptable to them unlike a case where Black people perceive every race to be equal to others. Notably, the author uses characters that are good while others are bad yet we do not see him take a stand on what is perfectly “right”. Instead, the scene is full of suspense leaving the audience to carefully scrutinize what the author perceives to be “right” thing in the society.

To recap it all “Do the Right Thing” is a comedy that depicts how a society should respond to critical issues such as racial intolerance. It also emphasizes how people of diverse races and gender should become accountable to their actions. In line with this, there are numerous ways in which Spike Lee has developed the concept of “right” thing in the film.

In other words the concept “right” thing has been developed in diverse viewpoints as portrayed in the film. For example, one can discern from the scene that the concept “right” thing has been used to denote actions are well guarded by natural laws. Moreover, the concept simply refers to an action that conforms to the state of nature. In line with this, the author to some extent develops the concept to denote a rational and critical action that is socially acceptable.

Works Cited

Cooper, Jill. “What is the Right Thing? A Self-Psychological Discussion of Spike Lee’s do the Right Thing.” Psychoanalytic review 86.3 (1999): 455-64. Print.

Reid, Mark. Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1997. Print.

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An American soldier with British war orphans adopted by his unit; London, early 1943. Photo by Robert Capa, International Centre for Photography/Magnum

The right right thing to do

The ethical life means being good to ourselves, to others, and to the world. but how do you choose if these demands compete.

by Irene McMullin   + BIO

Conventional wisdom depicts moral struggle as an internal conflict between a higher moral self and an untamed dark side. This picture pervades popular imagination: the angel and the devil on either shoulder, the ‘two wolf’ parable, the Ego and the Id, the ‘true self’ and the ‘false self’. It resonates with religious traditions that place us between angels and animals in a Great Chain of Being, leaving us torn between higher and lower, spirit and body, good and evil, the demands of conscience and the lure of sin.

This view also calls to mind a philosophical tradition from Plato to Immanuel Kant that often presents life’s major moral struggles as a kind of combat between the requirements of duty and the dangers of desire. The self is fragmented and must struggle for wholeness by casting out or silencing its evil components, refusing to give immoral intentions a foothold in thought and deed. A good deal of moral theory, therefore, tends to assume that there’s a morally right answer about what one ought to do in any given circumstance. Any difficulty in doing the right thing results from (evil, selfish) resistance, not from the fact that one cannot do all the good or valuable things that one is called upon to do.

However, this familiar view ignores the fact that, in many cases, the problem is not how best to override or silence one’s dark side, but how to cope with having too many good or morally neutral demands on your limited time, energy or resources. In other words, the key issue in many cases is not whether to be moral at all – but rather how best to distribute your moral resources in conditions of scarcity and conflict. Coping well with this latter kind of moral challenge requires very different ways of thinking about moral agency and how to lead good lives.

There are (at least) three different classes of goods that regularly give rise to incommensurable but competing legitimate moral claims, each revealed through a different practical stance that we adopt towards the world as we try to figure out what to do and who to be. On this picture, each agent is indeed fragmented, but this fragmentation is not best understood as an internal conflict between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ selves. Instead, moral conflict should be understood in terms of competing dimensions of the good – not all of which can be accommodated in any given moment.

What are these three basic normative domains or classes of value? It can be helpful to think of these in terms of the traditional literary distinction between the first-, second- and third-person perspectives. A novel written from the first-person perspective provides access to the protagonist’s struggles from the inside; the reader says ‘I’ along with her. In the second-person perspective, the focus is on the other person: the ‘you’ takes centre stage. When written from the third-person perspective, every character’s struggles are viewed from the outside; each is referred to as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’ or ‘it’ in descriptions of their movements in the world of the novel. Though some characters might be more important than others, typically none is singled out as providing the primary lens through which the world finds its meaning.

These perspectives are not just useful literary devices. They are core practical perspectives that we adopt toward the world and our place in it. As we pursue our projects and pleasures, interact with others, and share public institutions and meanings, we are constantly shifting back and forth among these three practical perspectives, each bringing different elements of a situation to salience and highlighting different features of the world and our place in it as good or bad.

F rom the first-person stance, you navigate the world as an agent trying to realise your projects and satisfy your desires. From the second-person perspective, you understand yourself and the world through the lens of other people, who are a locus of projects and preferences of their own; projects and preferences that make legitimate demands on your time and attention. From the third-person stance, you understand yourself as one among many, called to fit yourself into the shared standards and rules governing a world made up of a multitude of creatures like you.

These different perspectives reveal different features of the same object or situation. Take the example of your own body. When weeding the garden or washing the dishes you are – despite the physical nature of the work – largely ‘unaware’ of your body except insofar as it is the vehicle of your will. Indeed, what’s valuable and salient about the body from this first-person perspective is precisely its ability to disappear into the task. If you’re hampered by a migraine or an arthritic shoulder, the body’s status as vehicle of your agency is compromised, and you’re forced to think of it instead as a kind of recalcitrant object that needs to be managed. If it’s a perfect manifestation of your will, it’s no longer ‘your body’; it is, rather, simply you .

From the second-person perspective, your body appears as an object of experience for the other person. Think of how differently you experience your own body when you’re alone, as opposed to when someone suddenly enters the room. From the second-person perspective, one’s own body might seem awkward, desirable, average, ineffectual and so forth, depending on who the other person is. Now imagine that same body of yours being examined by a doctor. Then your body shows up for you as something quite different from a seamless expression of agency or the manifestation of self before another individual. Your attention shifts to a third-person perspective such that your body is revealed as a physical object subjected to the rules and categories of other physical objects. Different features become important. During a medical examination, you experience your own body as an instance of a general physical type, capable of being helped or hindered by generic procedures and processes developed for managing objects of that kind.

You must answer for who you are – if not to others, then to yourself

This kind of third-person practical perspective moves to the background when another perspective is setting the terms for what counts as particularly relevant or meaningful in a given situation. The point is to see how these different perspectives give us access to different forms of meaning, value and reasons – though we never occupy one stance in total isolation from the others. While occupying one perspective, we don’t simply forget the others, but are aware of and answerable to the claims that they make in an implicit way. Each perspective is constantly providing important information about what matters and what’s best, and we’re answerable to all three at once, even when only one is setting the agenda for how best to allocate our limited time, care and attention in a given situation.

The fact that there’s a plurality of these normative perspectives means that there’s more than one way of understanding what’s best. Best for whom? For me? For you? For the many who share the world with us and the institutions that enable this sharing? No single perspective can fully encompass the others. Each shows us a different facet of the world’s irreducibly complex meaningfulness and our place in it. Each gives us access to different ways of understanding what’s important, valuable or good. Our condition of normative pluralism means that we’re supplied with different resources for answering the basic questions of agency: what should I do? What are the better or worse options in this situation? Who am I trying to be? To whom am I answerable? This moral complexity makes living a good life challenging because competing goods from these different normative categories can’t be compared on a single metric. In most cases, there is no simple answer about what to do. To negotiate life’s demands, we constantly move in and out of each perspective against a background sense that we’re answerable to the different criteria of meaning and value constitutive of each of the three perspectives.

This emphasis on ‘answerability’ is a core feature of existentialist accounts of personhood. We experience ourselves as being ‘at stake’ in our choices, aware of the fact that who we are is up to us, and that we care about getting it right. Though we regularly try to cover up and forget this fact by means of bad faith, mindless conformity and self-deception, to be human is to be haunted by the anxiety that comes with an awareness of our freedom and the existential responsibility it entails. Ultimately, you must answer for who you are – if not to others, then to yourself. Our basic status as normatively responsive beings – that is, as beings with a capacity to be oriented towards distinctions of better and worse – depends on this sense of being responsible for who you are.

The awareness of being entrusted with an existence for which you alone are answerable means that we’re always on the lookout for guidance in how to make choices well. The three different normative domains revealed via the first-, second- and third-person perspectives provide tools for answering the fundamental existential questions that underwrite every choice. Each offers a different basic value framework through which the world makes demands on us about what it’s best to do. We are indeed fragmented selves, but what divides us is not, for the most part, a battle between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ intentions. Rather, it’s a tension between different practical frameworks for assessing better and worse options, each anchored in a different aspect of the good.

According to this existentialist picture, you can’t be entirely unmoved by whatever strikes you as better or best in any situation. Why? Because to be utterly indifferent to the considerations that count in favour of choosing one way rather than another is to forfeit one’s agency – to adopt the posture of a thing determined solely by causal forces, rather than that of an agent responsive to reasons. But even this forfeit is a manifestation of agency, albeit one that seeks to conceal this fact from itself. Though it’s not always clear how best to respond to specific normative claims as they arise across different practical perspectives in particular situations – and one might be incompetent or cowardly in facing up to them – we can’t escape the sheer fact that we’re answerable to such claims. We cannot help but care about the difference between better and worse lives, and that means we cannot help but care about responding well to the claims of each of the three practical perspectives.

I n contrast, a good deal of moral theory prioritises one of these practical perspectives and downplays the moral relevance of the others by ruling them out as providing genuine access to moral reasons. This has the effect of allowing any responsiveness to other classes of normative claims to be categorised as irrational or evil. For example, classical utilitarianism enjoins us to think of everyone – ourselves included – as an equal unit in the moral calculus that aims to maximise the satisfaction of legitimate desires and preferences. This is a third-person way of approaching the question of what it’s best to do, since each of us is to be treated as an equal moral unit, subjected to the same categories and assessments as any other. Similarly, Kantian deontology prioritises the third-person universality of a reason understood to be identically present in all agents. In each case, the good life is defined in terms of your ability to submit yourself to universally shared moral categories – to think of yourself in third-person moral terms.

There is something right about this approach. It has the compelling result of putting pressure on us to do more for strangers in distress than we tend to do because we’re so often caught up in our own troubles, or those of loved ones. But it also gives rise to objections that ultimately derive from a recognition of the equal value and importance of the first- and second-person perspectives in our moral lives. For example, critics of Kantian deontology point out that respect for a universal reason that manifests in every other human is hardly the same thing as loving concern for this particular person. Critics of utilitarianism, meanwhile, have pointed out that maximising ‘total expected utility’ – ie, getting as large a ‘quantity’ of good results as possible – might require us to, say, harvest someone’s organs when she arrives for a routine check-up at the doctor’s office, since five of her healthy organs could save the lives of five critically ill people. Allowing her to keep her organs will save only a measly one. Though utilitarians and deontologists have come up with many ingenious responses to such objections, these worries follow naturally from a third-person practical perspective, in which each person is viewed as an interchangeable and largely anonymous unit of general rationality or calculable outcomes for the world at large.

An adequate account of the good life requires that all three classes of good are accommodated

But if we think of what matters from the first-person perspective – namely, the individual’s power to govern her own life and express her own unique will – then this kind of approach strikes us as monstrous. Indeed, the approach to moral agency dear to economists and libertarians – rational egoism – swings far in the other direction, insisting that the individual’s power to govern her own life and express her own will is the only thing that is truly valuable, the only thing that can show up as a genuine reason to do anything. According to accounts of this kind – which prioritise the first-person perspective to the exclusion of the others – institutions or persons are immoral insofar as they thwart any individual’s efforts to satisfy her own preferences. All ostensible practical reasons must be understood in terms of the individual’s free pursuit of her preferences if they’re to count as reasons at all.

Again, something about this seems right. Each agent is indeed legitimately claimed by a desire for autonomy and individual success, a basic yearning to satisfy one’s preferences and realise one’s projects. But suggesting that this is the only or the primary source of value – the only legitimate way to answer the question ‘What is best?’ – leads to highly counterintuitive conclusions about the nature of the good life. The main objection is that it completely elides the deeply social nature of good human lives, reducing others to a mere means of satisfying one’s preferences.

In contrast, the truth revealed to us from the second-person perspective is that we treasure others and regularly seek to enable them in their projects and preferences, even at great personal cost. From the second-person perspective, the agent experiences herself as claimed by the value of another person, not as a mere representative of a universal moral category, nor as a useful tool for her own pursuits. The other person is instead experienced as intrinsically valuable. Hence the second-person perspective reveals that even actions that don’t promote one’s own interests can count as reasons.

But the legitimacy of the other two normative domains – the goods of shared world-building and self-expressive autonomy – means that they cannot simply be subordinated to the altruism of the second-person perspective. An adequate account of the good life requires that all three classes of good are accommodated. Though the subordination of the self or the shared political domain to acts of extreme self-sacrifice or charity is a compelling moral ideal advocated by many of the world’s religions, it too distorts the moral picture of what counts as a good human life.

D espite the best efforts of moral theorists to simplify the moral terrain by constraining us to a single perspective on the good – a single source of normative claims to which we’re answerable – doing so invariably results in a picture of human life that neglects some of the sources of value that make a good life good. Each of these normative perspectives offers us a set of distinct reasons that cannot be reduced to or translated into the others without erasing some essential feature of our moral lives.

This means that life confronts us with a fundamental and irresolvable tension. We are tasked with negotiating competing legitimate normative claims – a plurality of goods – with no recourse to an ultimate metric or higher perspective through which to eliminate conflict in answering the basic existential questions to which we’re condemned: who should I be? What should I do? To whom am I beholden?

This shouldn’t prompt us to embrace nihilism , but to recognise the only form that a good life can take for normatively fragmented creatures like ourselves. Leading a good human life – what is sometimes called flourishing – requires that we continuously negotiate these three competing ways of encountering goodness. Flourishing demands achieving a fragile and shifting balance between the different normative terrains. Flourishing is human excellence within each of these domains (self-fulfilment, good relationships, and responsiveness to the demands of a shared world) but achieved in such a way that success in one domain doesn’t unduly compromise success in another.

Well okay, you might be thinking, but how do we know what to do in any particular circumstance? The approach outlined here – which emphasises the irresolvable messiness and conflict at the foundation of our moral lives – seems to have the drawback of not offering sufficient guidance for actually figuring out what one ought to do, at least compared with the resources provided by other moral theories.

But those other approaches succeed in offering guidance by ignoring the moral complexity of being in the grip of an irreducible plurality of goods. This is not to oversimplify these positions, of course. Kantian deontology prioritises the third-person universality of reason, but we can see that it attempts to accommodate the other normative perspectives through the notions of respect for others (the second-person dimension) and respect for self (the first-person dimension). It essentially enjoins us to respect ourselves, respect others, and build a world in which all can be respected. As such, it maps well on to the tripartite moral terrain that I’ve specified above, but it tends to ignore the complexity that results, assuming that all three normative perspectives will subject you to the exact same moral demands.

Everyday moral deliberation involves shifting constantly from one perspective to the other

Similarly, utilitarianism prioritises the third-person norm of universal utility, but it attempts to accommodate the other perspectives through the fact that one’s own preferences don’t automatically trump the other person’s (the second-person dimension) and the fact that the nature of its guiding norm – satisfaction – includes a fundamental reference to the first-personal domain.

But in both cases the intention – an intention that’s understood as realisable – is to provide a decision procedure that stipulates adopting a neutral third-person stance that purportedly captures the normative force of the other two normative domains without remainder. It’s this view that must be questioned.

What engagement with these other theories helps us to recognise is how everyday moral deliberation involves shifting constantly from one perspective to the other in an effort to weigh them against each other, despite their fundamental incommensurability. Imagine that you’re trying to decide whether to quit your job to pursue a less stressful career. The lower pay will make things harder on your family, and you won’t be able to help others as much in the new job. Is it self-indulgent to pursue the easier option when you have the skills to help others, and doing so supports your family? But don’t you deserve a break, too? And the stress is taking a toll on your health and mood, which also affects your family. With the extra time and energy the change affords, you could help out in the community more. What should you do?

These perspective shifts demonstrate that it will almost always be impossible to assess the moral quality of specific acts except against the background of the general tenor of one’s life. In other words, when assessing moral success or failure, the primary target should be lives, not acts. In most cases, a specific act is meaningful only in terms of its place in one’s life as a whole; in terms of the role it plays in the general landscape of competing demands from self, other and world. Are you the kind of person who regularly helps and respects others on both an individual and an institutional level? If yes, then you’re entitled to make some room for your own comfort or pleasure. But if you’re always submitting to the siren call of self-indulgence, then you should think about reallocating your limited resources so that your life better reflects the value of the other two classes of good. Responding well to the criteria of excellence constitutive of each normative domain – being good to ourselves, to others, and to the world – demands negotiation work such that these three classes of competing goods can be accommodated in a coherent way. Hence flourishing requires us to organise our priorities – not simply in the moment, but over the course of our projects, relationships and identities.

Of course, there will be certain lowest common denominators in each normative domain. No amount of good behaviour will ever entitle you to torture others – at least, not if you’re to be counted a good person and your life a good life. But these absolute constraints are few, and few of us find them particularly tempting, at least in their obvious forms. They are therefore incapable of offering sufficient practical guidance when it comes to the choices that most people make in their everyday lives.

T he emphasis on lives, not acts, is a distinctive feature of the virtue-ethical approach in moral theory, according to which our focus should be on a person’s character and life context, not primarily on isolated choices or events. My view, which combines existentialism with virtue ethics, endorses this approach, along with another core feature of virtue ethics: the central place of role models in our moral reasoning. When we feel torn between competing legitimate moral demands both within a normative domain (eg, when we’re claimed by the competing needs of two loved ones) or across domains (eg, when the needs of a loved one compete with the demands of institutional justice), we must think about how to allocate priorities in our lives as a whole, and we regularly take inspiration from the models of excellent lives provided by our moral exemplars. What you choose to do should be guided by your understanding of how those actions shape a life. But understanding how specific actions create a certain kind of life or character is information that we learn mainly by looking to the lives and characters of others. How to find good role models and how to break free of bad ones are of course important questions to address, but those challenges shouldn’t interfere with recognising moral exemplars as a key source of guidance as we navigate this complex moral terrain.

One of the ways in which we learn from others how to succeed at the accommodation and negotiation work made necessary by normative pluralism is in terms of the virtues. The virtues are problem-solving stances through which we address obstacles to human flourishing that are built into the human condition. These obstacles to flourishing include mortality and temporal finitude, material scarcity, and temptations posed by desire for bodily pleasure and aversion to pain. The virtues are character traits – tendencies of seeing, feeling and doing – that enable a good person to respond well to all three normative domains even in the face of these obstacles. For example, patience helps us continue to respond well to self, other, and shared world, despite the temporal limitations that make doing so difficult. By habituating ourselves into these exemplary forms of normative responsiveness, we can better accommodate the different ways that the good reveals itself in our lives. Together with certain absolute prohibitions on a limited set of extreme violations of the good, and moral exemplars who orient us in our striving, the virtues can help us cope with deep structural challenges to flourishing.

The popular ‘combat’ view of morality, wherein agents are constantly torn between immoral desires and the demands of duty, gets much of its plausibility from our normatively plural predicament, which requires us to negotiate conflicts and tensions arising from competing normative resources provided by self, other, and shared world. We are indeed conflicted – torn between comparably legitimate, substantively moral demands – but this is often simply a feature of the messy moral landscape to which we’re condemned, not a sign of intrinsic moral corruption. What might count as a ‘bad intention’ on the combat model is often better understood as the manifestation of another legitimate claim to goodness, one that’s at odds with a value that we ultimately take to have a greater claim to recognition in this context or at this point in our lives. Hence doing what’s right isn’t simply or primarily a matter of silencing an evil desire – though it might be strategically useful to think of goods we can’t realise in this way – but rather a matter of figuring out what’s best now in the context of a well-lived life considered as a whole. And there’s no simple algorithm for knowing how to exercise this moral discernment as we struggle to do justice to all of the sources of value to which we find ourselves answerable.

Am I happy? Am I generous? Am I contributing to the world? The moral struggle we face is finding a way to honestly and accurately answer ‘Yes’ to all three of these questions at once, over the course of a life that presents us with many obstacles to doing so.

To read more on ethical living, visit Psyche , a digital magazine from Aeon that illuminates the human condition through psychological knowhow, philosophical understanding and artistic insight.

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Understanding “Do the Right Thing”: a Critical Examination

This essay about Spike Lee’s film “Do the Right Thing” examines the complex themes of racial tension, morality, and community conflict. Set in Brooklyn on the hottest day of the year, the narrative intertwines humor, drama, and tragedy to explore the intricacies of human behavior and societal pressures. Highlighting the diverse cast of characters, the essay discusses how the film portrays individuals with complex motivations, ultimately questioning what it means to “do the right thing” amidst injustice. It also touches on the film’s use of vibrant visuals and music, its commentary on media influence, and its relevance to ongoing discussions about race and justice. Through this analysis, the essay argues that “Do the Right Thing” remains a vital piece of cinema for its ability to provoke thought and discussion about enduring social issues.

How it works

Spike Lee’s 1989 masterpiece, “Do the Right Thing,” isn’t just a movie; it’s a pulsating, in-your-face exploration of race, tension, and the moral dilemmas that tear at the fabric of a community simmering under the heat of both the sun and societal pressure. Set on a single block in Brooklyn during the hottest day of the year, this film manages to blend humor, drama, and a touch of tragedy into a narrative that feels as fresh and relevant today as it did over three decades ago.

It’s like taking a walk through a neighborhood teeming with life, love, anger, and the pressing question of what it really means to do the right thing.

At the heart of the film lies a diverse cast of characters, each with their own stories, dreams, and frustrations, all converging in a tightly-knit community. It’s this diversity and complexity that make the film stand out. Characters aren’t just placeholders for ideas; they’re real, flawed, and incredibly human. Through their eyes, we see a world where doing the right thing isn’t black and white, but a kaleidoscope of choices that can either soothe or ignite tensions.

Take Mookie, played by Lee himself, who’s torn between his job, his family, and his neighborhood. His decision to throw a trash can through the window of Sal’s Pizzeria, sparking a riot, doesn’t offer easy answers. Instead, it throws us into the deep end of a moral quagmire, asking us to consider the place of violence in the fight for justice, the importance of community, and the cost of standing up for what you believe in. It’s messy, it’s raw, and it’s real.

Visually, the film is a knockout. Lee’s use of color, music, and camera angles doesn’t just tell a story; it grabs you by the collar and drags you into the sweltering heat of the day. The soundtrack, with “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy blaring through, isn’t just background noise; it’s a rallying cry, a character in its own right, emphasizing the film’s themes of resistance and empowerment.

“Do the Right Thing” also eerily predicts the role media plays in shaping our views on race and justice. The death of Radio Raheem and the subsequent media frenzy is a gut-punch reminder of how stories are shaped, twisted, and sold to us, and how crucial it is to question and understand the narratives we’re fed.

What makes “Do the Right Thing” stand the test of time is not just its artistry or its bold confrontation of America’s racial tensions. It’s how it refuses to give easy answers to hard questions. More than three decades later, it’s a mirror to our society, reflecting the good, the bad, and the uncomfortable truths we’re still grappling with. Spike Lee didn’t just make a movie; he sparked a conversation about race, justice, and what it means to be a community—a conversation that’s as vital today as ever.

As we navigate our way through the complexities of today’s world, “Do the Right Thing” serves as a poignant reminder of the power of film to challenge, reflect, and inspire. It’s a testament to cinema’s ability to open eyes, change hearts, and maybe, just maybe, encourage us to think a little harder about what it means to do the right thing in a world where the answers are anything but simple.

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Why You Should Do the Right Thing, and How to Do It

One of the hardest things to do in life is to do the right thing. What you think is the right thing. Not what you friends, family, teachers, boss and society thinks is the right thing.

What is the right thing? That’s up to you to decide. Often you have a little voice in your head that tells what the right thing is. Or a gut feeling.

It might tell you to get up from the couch, stop eating those snacks and go to the gym instead. Sometimes you will put on your exercise clothes and go. Sometimes you will not.

It might tell you to stop sulking and feeling like a victim with everything against you and instead look at the opportunities and take action. Sometimes you will. Sometimes you will not.

Now, why should you do the right thing? Here are three excellent reasons:

1. You tend to get what you give.

By doing the right thing you tend to get the same things back. Give value to people, help them and they will often want to help you and give you value in some form. Not everyone will do it but many will. Not always right away but somewhere down the line. Things tend to even out. Do the right thing, put in the extra effort and you tend to get good stuff back. Don’t do it and you tend to get less good stuff back from the world.

2. To raise your self-esteem.

This is a really important point. When you don’t do the right thing you are not only sending out signals out into your world. You are also sending signals to yourself. When you don’t do the right thing you don’t feel good about yourself. You may experience emptiness or get stuck in negative thought loops. Its like you are letting yourself down. You are telling yourself that you cant handle doing the right thing. To not do the right thing is a bit like punching yourself in the stomach.

3. To avoid self-sabotage.

A powerful side effect of not doing the right thing is that you give yourself a lack of deservedness. This can really screw up you and your success. If you don’t do the right thing in your life then you won’t feel like you deserve the success that you may be on your way towards or experiencing right now. So you start to self-sabotage, perhaps deliberately or through unconscious thoughts.

If you on some level don’t think that you are a person who deserves the success you want then you will probably find a way to sabotage that success. You may rationalize it as being about something else or what someone else did. But oftentimes it’s just you standing in your own way. By doing the right thing your can raise your self-esteem and feel like a person who deserves his/her success.

How to do it

Here are a few suggestions that can hopefully help you to do the right thing more often.

Review the reasons why you are doing it.

Whenever you feel unsure about doing the right thing remind yourself of the powerful reasons above (or any other that you can come up with). They might give you that extra push of motivation you need to spring into action.

Go for improvement. Not perfection.

I’m not saying you will do the right thing all the time. I certainly don’t. But I’m saying that we can strive for gradual improvement. If you for instance do the right thing 10 percent of the time right now then try to doing it 20 percent of the time. And then 30 percent. Or you can try to do the right thing at as many opportunities as you find this week. Try some stuff and see works best for you.

My point is just to not get stuck in thinking about perfection or being some kind of saint. This can paralyse you from taking any action at all. Or leave you with negative feelings despite doing the right thing many, many times (since you are still not feeling like you are not quite perfect).

If you seldom do what you feel/think is the right thing now then you will probably not be able to change this completely over the weekend. It might take some time.

Just do it.

The more you think about these things, the more often you tend to come up with reasons to not do it. You need to think but not over think since that often traps you in analysis paralysis. To raise your self-esteem and get a spiral of positive action spinning in your world and with the people around you need to start moving and take action.

Taking the route of doing the right thing takes more effort and can be more painful. It’s often seemingly the harder thing to do.

But when you understand how you are hurting yourself it gets a lot harder to just avoid doing the right thing. The perceived advantages of not doing the right thing – such as it being easier — tend to lose their power and are replaced with a more clearer understanding of what you are doing to yourself and others.

Taking this – perhaps a little less travelled – path is a lot more rewarding than taking the easy way out. Both for you and for the world around you.

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Comments on this entry are closed.

Sometimes people think that if they get the benefit first, then they will do something for others. It doesn’t work that way, only if we give out things to others, then we are in a better position to receive.

Cheers Vincent Personal Development Blogger

Great post (and very relevant for me at the moment).

One feeling that often comes up in these situations for me is guilt. That is an awful feeling and also rather a waste of time. I think that that is often an indication of society’s ideas being an influence.

Another thing that I feel is important is to not look back once you have made the decision (you’ve decided but you are still deciding!). I often fall into that trap and that is of no benefit at all.

I especially like the improvement not perfection thing – that’s definitely what I practice, and when I worked as a Professional Organizer, the industry’s unofficial motto was “professional, not perfect.”

@Maria We are the sum of our cultural influences but we are also our own people. To me, the only way to know is to try it out. If it fits for you because you want it regardless of the approval or disapproval of anyone else, then that’s your voice. When you stop caring about the judgment of others, then you’ve found your voice. I’m still working on that one, but as I said above, I’m all about improvement, not perfection. ;)

Very good post.

Doing the right thing for yourself and towards others certainly makes us better people. Building up our self-esteem is Awesome but what’s even greater is Self-Acceptance, being TRUE to you. When we’re True to ourselves, we’re True to others, and in turn its not as difficult to do the right things. Even when it comes to listening to the little voice in our heads. If you remain True to yourself, the little voice will only be leading you into the right direction. :-)

Many Blessings…. Hugo and Roxanne ~ Believe Achieve ~

You know what will be the sure fire solution to doing the right thing? Telling yourself the truth. Yes, those ten pounds you have gained make a difference and without going to the gym you will not lose it. And by the way, if you don’t lose that ten pounds now, it will be twenty pounds this time next year.

If you hate your job, truly hate your job, you are not going to like it any better next week or next year, be honest with yourself and go find something else, you and your coworkers will be really happy about that, don’t think they can’t tell you are miserable.

I would say your are spot on with the “Just Do It” it is the only way to do the right thing.

Cheers, Tabs

Doing the right thing definitely raises my self esteem. When I’m not honest or when I don’t act with love and kindness it weighs on my mind. There’s only so much room in the attic, so to speak: the more garbage that’s in my mind the less likely I am to feel good. I’m with Hugo and Roxanne regarding the little voice. The committee in my head needs subject matter, and it will take whatever I give them whether it’s negative or positive.

Thanks for a good post! Jenn

What a great article! Thank you….we all need a good reminder to try to strive to be the best person we can, remain positive at all times and just do the right thing- be a good friend and that person we want deep down but loose in the chaos of today’s life!

I was recently given a terrific gift which also speaks to these qualities. It is called The Friendship Stone. I was so touched when someone I met at Starbucks gave me one! It is kind of like the pay-it-forward idea in that this stone helps connect people and say ‘thank you’. I saw this person was having a hard time getting connected with the WI-FI at the table next to me so I offered to help. We struck up a conversation, ‘connected’ and then before he left, he gave me this Friendship Stone. He explained it was about passing it on to others and to remind us that the simple things (like what I did for him he said) and people is what matters in life – cool huh?! He said it is also about staying positive and giving to others. So, there you go….I gave to him and he gave to me and it goes on from there. Now I will always remember this encounter and that it is key to always try to be better, do the right thing and to just give of myself —even to help “strangers” – not to be strangers for long. :) He told me there’s a great website that explains about it: http://www.thefriendshipstone.com

It always sounds so simple.Look through the eyes of the man that scorches in hell for years and tell me if he would have selflessness to do the right thing and override his instinctive need for survival.

The Truth of the matter is its all a myth,its possible by psychologically reprogramming to destroy guilt and be happy.

let me ask you if you had a choice either your family dies or 100 innocent people.what would you choose?.Either choice you choose you will walk through life with guilt.What about soldiers who return from the frontline with blood on their hands to protect their nations.

for the record alot of what this blog says is right but i am coming from a different place here.90% of us have the lovely habit of formulating destructive questions in our minds,heres a tip for the lazy ones just use your negative thinking on your negative thought and doubt them till they put their tails between their legs and skip of like fairies.

interesting…

been there done that

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Can I Just Tell You?

Why doing the right thing doesn't always work in a 'rules world'.

Finally today, there's a story I want to tell you about. Actually, this was two stories that both appeared in my local paper last Friday.

First, at the top of the page was the story about that snowy owl that somehow made its way to Washington, D.C. While you've probably seen them in the Harry Potter movies, they really belong in the Arctic.

So the owl's appearance in D.C. made the news not once, but three times: first when it was sighted on a downtown ledge - a happy surprise. Then when it was apparently hit by a bus, and a third time when three quick-thinking D.C. police officers offered details about how they managed to get it to the National Zoo so its life could be saved.

Contrast this to another story on the very same page, about the very same city, about how a fire lieutenant and another firefighter were placed on leave because a 77-year-old man suffered a fatal heart attack right across the street from their firehouse.

Bystanders apparently called 911, and these good Samaritans also rushed to the firehouse and banged on the door, only to be told by a rookie that he couldn't do anything to help them until ordered to by a superior. Which for some reason, that superior did not do.

Finally, according to the news account, a D.C. police officer flagged down a passing ambulance and the man was treated about 15 minutes after he collapsed. But he died later that day at a local hospital.

Can I just tell you? I'm not mad about the owl. I'm glad that worked out. And I will not be surprised if there was some tragic comedy of errors that caused the very people who are sworn to try to save human lives to fail so profoundly at that duty. And yes, I feel this keenly as the daughter of one firefighter and the sister of another, both of them now deceased, sadly.

They both had their "issues" as we say. But one thing I know is true: nothing made them prouder or gave them more satisfaction than to help someone else. I know my brother could not pass a person with a flat tire that needed changing, or a wheelchair that needed pushing, or something heavy that needed lifting, without pausing to help.

So, unless I am very wrong and these were some very jaded or lazy or burned-out people — hard to fathom since one was a rookie — I find it hard to believe that these people did not want to help. So I have a theory that what was wrong was the rules.

We live in a rules world. There are rules for everything — some of which we follow and many of which we don't. Some of which are well intended, maybe most, who knows, but some are just an excuse to trap people with invisible trip wires, to cover your you- know-what, or to do nothing.

Now this is not the only example we've heard of lately where the rule might be technically right — air quotes — but morally wrong, and at least in defiance of common sense.

I bet you heard the one about the Utah school where the lunch monitors threw out food that they had already served to a number of kids, because they said their parents owed a balance on their accounts. The school officials said they had to throw the food out because they didn't know who had paid and who hadn't until they went through the line, and once served they couldn't put the food back.

But you didn't have to strain to hear the collective "you've gotta be kidding me" when this story went public. Surely there was a better way to handle it.

I'd like to know why it is that these three D.C. police officers had the flexibility and ingenuity to follow their instincts and do the right thing for the owl, but three other public servants in the same city didn't have that capacity to follow the basic human instinct to save a human life — something which, by the way, they are trained to do.

But even more than that it makes me wonder what stupid rules I'm following in my own life that sound right in theory but are really wrong in the real world. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich once told me in an interview that the test of any rule or program should be if you weren't already doing it, would you start?

Maybe another one could be: what if it had been your father lying on the pavement across the firehouse? What if it were you?

Amy Rees Anderson

Do What Is Right, Not What Is Easy

‘When you do the right things in the right way,     you have nothing to lose because you have nothing to fear.” – Zig Ziglar

Today I was reminded how important it is to stand up for what is right, even when it isn’t easy. I was also reminded that it can take a lot of courage to stand up for what’s right when you are in a situation that requires you to stand alone. But no matter how intimidating a situation is or how afraid you might be – it is ALWAYS worth it to do the right thing – ALWAYS!

Today I watched as someone who should know right from wrong tried to pretend that they were unaware of what was right, even with mountains of what was true sitting in front of them, all while justifying their actions by positioning that they are just doing their job. I wanted to scream out loud, “That doesn’t make it right!” Truth is truth. Right is right and wrong is wrong, and there just isn’t a right reason to do the wrong thing.

It’s so easy for people to get sucked into situations where start thinking you can justify doing the wrong thing in order to get the right result you hope for. I just think we have to do everything in our power not to let ourselves get sucked into that trap. We have to constantly remember that no result is ever worth doing the wrong thing for….period.

When we are willing to stand up for what is right and uphold the truth we can walk away without regrets, regardless of the outcome. Because right is right and at the end of the day all that matters is that we live our life with integrity because our integrity defines who we truly are.

“People of character do the right thing even if no one else does, not because they think it will change the world, but because they refuse to be changed by the world.”    -Michael Josephson

I love that quote and I for one refuse to be changed by the world so here’s to doing the right thing 🙂

16 Comments

Agreed 100%

This honestly made me a better me

I love this and I truely think that is poet is a message to people

To paraphrase the Ford slogan: Integrity is Job One!

So we live on a small farm with a barn and arena we rent out. A horse trainer rented the entire set up for a good chunk of money every month. Unfortunately, it appeared to me and my daughter that many times the horses in training were short on water in the middle of summer. I hoped that it wasn’t some sort of method to “break down” the tough horses. I brought up the issue with the trainer, that horses need to have water available at all times. I still hope that he wasn’t trying to take training short cuts with this method, but within a few days he had packed up all the horses, equipment and moved to a new place. So, my pointing out the water problem may have cost me the monthly rent, but I felt it was the right thing to do.

Do what is right, not what is easy

I love that …thanks Amy

Tnx Amy this letter make me learn

THis was so perfect for me today. Thank you

Thanks for the encouragement amy #thank you amy

I need example for that quote

Bill Gates once said that he would always “hire a lazy person to do a difficult job” at Microsoft. Why? “Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

can you equate

It means that lazy person are smart enough to have their own method of finishing task fast than others. However, it doesn’t mean that they are doing it the wrong way. Doing something wrong will eventually to something worst.

Amy your a real inspiration! I’ll for sure get a 100 on my essay about courage!

I love you Amy ❤️❤️

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Why is it so hard for us to do the right thing?

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As leaders, we often know what is the right thing to do. Just to pick a few examples…

• We know that ongoing, formative progress monitoring is more appropriate than ‘data days’ or ‘data retreats’ for yearly summative data, and yet many schools still only do the latter.
• When it comes to positive organizational and/or academic impact, we know that the ‘sit-and-get’ professional development model typically is a complete waste of participants’ time and organizational resources.
• Under any reasonable scenario planning forecast, it’s quite clear that the world is going to be quite technological and globally-interconnected, yet we continue to ignore that fact in most schools.
• Under any reasonable scenario planning forecast, it’s quite clear that schooling and/or learning and/or assessment are going to be much more personalized and invidividualized than they are now, and yet few school organizations are preparing themselves for these new ways of doing things.

We’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to be out in front, leading the way. And yet the organizations that we supposedly ‘lead’ are so very far behind in so many areas. We like to point fingers; it’s easy for us to do so and ignore our own culpability.

As leaders, when are we going to own the fact that much (most?) of it is us? Why is it so hard for us to do the right thing?

Scott McLeod Dangerously Irrelevant

The opinions expressed in LeaderTalk are strictly those of the author(s) and do not reflect the opinions or endorsement of Editorial Projects in Education, or any of its publications.

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Essay Writing Tips: 10 Steps to Writing a Great Essay (And Have Fun Doing It!)

by Joe Bunting | 118 comments

Do you dread essay writing? Are you looking for some essay tips that will help you write an amazing essay—and have fun doing it?

Lots of students, young and old, dread essay writing. It's a daunting assignment, one that takes research, time, and concentration.

It's also an assignment that you can break up into simple steps that make writing an essay manageable and, yes, even enjoyable.

These ten essay tips completely changed my writing process—and I hope that they can do the same for you.

Essay Writing Can Be Fun

Honestly, throughout most of high school and college, I was a mediocre essay writer.

Every once in a while, I would write a really good essay, but mostly I skated by with B's and A-minuses.

I know personally how boring writing an essay can be, and also, how hard it can be to write a good one.

However, toward the end of my time as a student, I made a breakthrough. I figured out how to not only write a great essay, I learned how to have fun while doing it . 

And since then, I've become a professional writer and have written more than a dozen books. I'm not saying that these essay writing tips are going to magically turn you into a writer, but at least they can help you enjoy the process more.

I'm excited to share these ten essay writing tips with you today! But first, we need to talk about why writing an essay is so hard.

Why Writing an Essay Is So Hard

When it comes to essay writing, a lot of students find a reason to put it off. And when they tackle it, they find it difficult to string sentences together that sound like a decent stance on the assigned subject.

Here are a few reasons why essay writing is hard:

• You'd rather be scrolling through Facebook
• You're trying to write something your teacher or professor will like
• You're trying to get an A instead of writing something that's actually good
• You want to do the least amount of work possible

The biggest reason writing an essay is so hard is because we mostly focus on those external  rewards like getting a passing grade, winning our teacher's approval, or just avoiding accusations of plagiarism.

The problem is that when you focus on external approval it not only makes writing much less fun, it also makes it significantly harder.

Because when you focus on external approval, you shut down your subconscious, and the subconscious is the source of your creativity.

The subconscious is the source of your creativity.

What this means practically is that when you're trying to write that perfect, A-plus-worthy sentence, you're turning off most of your best resources and writing skills.

So stop. Stop trying to write a good essay (or even a “good-enough” essay). Instead, write an interesting  essay, write an essay you think is fascinating. And when you're finished, go back and edit it until it's “good” according to your teacher's standards.

Yes, you need to follow the guidelines in your assignment. If your teacher tells you to write a five-paragraph essay, then write a five-paragraph essay! If your teacher asks for a specific type of essay, like an analysis, argument, or research essay, then make sure you write that type of essay!

However, within those guidelines, find room to express something that is uniquely you .

I can't guarantee you'll get a higher grade (although, you almost certainly will), but I can absolutely promise you'll have a lot more fun writing.

The Step-by-Step Process to Writing a Great Essay: Your 10 Essay Writing Tips

Ready to get writing? You can read my ten best tips for having fun while writing an essay that earns you the top grade, or check out this presentation designed by our friends at Canva Presentations .

1. Remember your essay is just a story.

Every story is about conflict and change, and the truth is that essays are about conflict and change, too! The difference is that in an essay, the conflict is between different ideas , and the change is in the way we should perceive those ideas.

That means that the best essays are about surprise: “You probably think it's one way, but in reality, you should think of it this other way.” See tip #3 for more on this.

How do you know what story you're telling? The prompt should tell you.

Any list of essay prompts includes various topics and tasks associated with them. Within those topics are characters (historical, fictional, or topical) faced with difficult choices. Your job is to work with those choices, usually by analyzing them, arguing about them, researching them, or describing them in detail.

2. Before you start writing, ask yourself, “How can I have the most fun writing this?”

It's normal to feel unmotivated when writing an academic essay. I'm a writer, and honestly, I feel unmotivated to write all the time. But I have a super-ninja, judo-mind trick I like to use to help motivate myself.

Here's the secret trick: One of the interesting things about your subconscious is that it will answer any question you ask yourself. So whenever you feel unmotivated to write your essay, ask yourself the following question:

“How much fun can I have writing this?”

Your subconscious will immediately start thinking of strategies to make the writing process more fun.

The best time to have your fun is the first draft. Since you're just brainstorming within the topic, and exploring the possible ways of approaching it, the first draft is the perfect place to get creative and even a little scandalous. Here are some wild suggestions to make your next essay a load of fun:

• Research the most surprising or outrageous fact about the topic and use it as your hook.
• Use a thesaurus to research the topic's key words. Get crazy with your vocabulary as you write, working in each key word synonym as much as possible.
• Play devil's advocate and take the opposing or immoral side of the issue. See where the discussion takes you as you write.

3. As you research, ask yourself, “What surprises me about this subject?”

The temptation, when you're writing an essay, is to write what you think your teacher or professor wants to read.

Don't do this .

Instead, ask yourself, “What do I find interesting about this subject? What surprises me?”

If you can't think of anything that surprises you, anything you find interesting, then you're not searching well enough, because history, science, and literature are all brimming   over with surprises. When you look at how great ideas actually happen, the story is always, “We used  to think the world was this way. We found out we were completely wrong, and that the world is actually quite different from what we thought.”

These pieces of surprising information often make for the best topic sentences as well. Use them to outline your essay and build your body paragraphs off of each unique fact or idea. These will function as excellent hooks for your reader as you transition from one topic to the next.

(By the way, what sources should you use for research? Check out tip #10 below.)

4. Overwhelmed? Write five original sentences.

The standard three-point essay is really made up of just five original sentences surrounded by supporting paragraphs that back up those five sentences. If you're feeling overwhelmed, just write five sentences covering your most basic main points.

Here's what they might look like for this article:

• Introductory Paragraph:  While most students consider writing an essay a boring task, with the right mindset, it can actually be an enjoyable experience.
• Body #1: Most students think writing an essay is tedious because they focus on external rewards.
• Body #2: Students should instead focus on internal fulfillment when writing an essay.
• Body #3: Not only will focusing on internal fulfillment allow students to have more fun, it will also result in better essays.
• Conclusion: Writing an essay doesn't have to be simply a way to earn a good grade. Instead, it can be a means of finding fulfillment.

After you write your five sentences, it's easy to fill in the paragraphs for each one.

Now, you give it a shot!

5. Be “source heavy.”

In college, I discovered a trick that helped me go from a B-average student to an A-student, but before I explain how it works, let me warn you. This technique is powerful , but it might not work for all teachers or professors. Use with caution.

As I was writing a paper for a literature class, I realized that the articles and books I was reading said what I was trying to say much better than I ever could. So what did I do? I quoted them liberally throughout my paper. When I wasn't quoting, I re-phrased what they said in my own words, giving proper credit, of course. I found that not only did this formula create a well-written essay, it took about half the time to write.

It's good to keep in mind that using anyone else's words, even when morphed into your own phrasing, requires citation. While the definition of plagiarism is shifting with the rise of online collaboration and cooperative learning environments, always  err on the side of excessive citation to be safe.

When I used this technique, my professors sometimes mentioned that my papers were very “source” heavy. However, at the same time, they always gave me A's.

To keep yourself safe, I recommend using a 60/40 approach with your body paragraphs: Make sure 60% of the words are your own analysis and argumentation, while 40% can be quoted (or text you paraphrase) from your sources.

Like the five sentence trick, this technique makes the writing process simpler. Instead of putting the main focus on writing well, it instead forces you to research  well, which some students find easier.

6. Write the body first, the introduction second, and the conclusion last.

Introductions are often the hardest part to write because you're trying to summarize your entire essay before you've even written it yet. Instead, try writing your introduction last, giving yourself the body of the paper to figure out the main point of your essay.

This is especially important with an essay topic you are not personally interested in. I definitely recommend this in classes you either don't excel in or care much for. Take plenty of time to draft and revise your body paragraphs before  attempting to craft a meaningful introductory paragraph.

Otherwise your opening may sound awkward, wooden, and bland.

7. Most essays answer the question, “What?” Good essays answer the “Why?” The best essays answer the “How?”

If you get stuck trying to make your argument, or you're struggling to reach the required word count, try focusing on the question, “How?”

For example:

• How did J.D. Salinger convey the theme of inauthenticity in  The Catcher In the Rye ?
• How did Napoleon restore stability in France after the French Revolution?
• How does the research prove girls really do rule and boys really do drool?

If you focus on how, you'll always have enough to write about.

8. Don't be afraid to jump around.

Essay writing can be a dance. You don't have to stay in one place and write from beginning to end.

For the same reasons listed in point #6, give yourself the freedom to write as if you're circling around your topic rather than making a single, straightforward argument. Then, when you edit and proofread, you can make sure everything lines up correctly.

In fact, now is the perfect time to mention that proofreading your essay isn't just about spelling and commas.

It's about making sure your analysis or argument flows smoothly from one idea to another. (Okay, technically this comprises editing, but most students writing a high school or college essay don't take the time to complete every step of the writing process. Let's be honest.)

So as you clean up your mechanics and sentence structure, make sure your ideas flow smoothly, logically, and naturally from one to the next as you finish proofreading.

9. Here are some words and phrases you don't want to use.

• You  (You'll notice I use a lot of you's, which is great for a blog post. However, in an academic essay, it's better to omit the second-person.)
• To Be verbs (is, are, was, were, am)

Don't have time to edit? Here's a lightning-quick editing technique .

A note about “I”: Some teachers say you shouldn't use “I” statements in your writing, but the truth is that professional, academic papers often use phrases like “I believe” and “in my opinion,” especially in their introductions.

10. It's okay to use Wikipedia, if…

Wikipedia is one of the top five websites in the world for a reason: it can be a great tool for research. However, most teachers and professors don't consider Wikipedia a valid source for use in essays.

Don't totally discount it, though! Here are two ways you can use Wikipedia in your essay writing:

• Background research. If you don't know enough about your topic, Wikipedia can be a great resource to quickly learn everything you need to know to get started.
• Find sources . Check the reference section of Wikipedia's articles on your topic. While you may not be able to cite Wikipedia itself, you can often find those original sources and cite them . You can locate the links to primary and secondary sources at the bottom of any Wikipedia page under the headings “Further Reading” and “References.”

You Can Enjoy Essay Writing

The thing I regret most about high school and college is that I treated it like something I had  to do rather than something I wanted  to do.

The truth is, education is an opportunity many people in the world don't have access to.

It's a gift, not just something that makes your life more difficult. I don't want you to make the mistake of just “getting by” through school, waiting desperately for summer breaks and, eventually, graduation.

How would your life be better if you actively enjoyed writing an essay? What would school look like if you wanted to suck it dry of all the gifts it has to give you?

All I'm saying is, don't miss out!

Looking for More Essay Writing Tips?

Looking for more essay tips to strengthen your essay writing? Try some of these resources:

• 7 Tips on Writing an Effective Essay
• Tips for Writing Your Thesis Statement

How about you? Do you have any tips for writing an essay?  Let us know in the  comments .

Need more grammar help?  My favorite tool that helps find grammar problems and even generates reports to help improve my writing is ProWritingAid . Works with Word, Scrivener, Google Docs, and web browsers. Also, be sure to use my coupon code to get 20 percent off: WritePractice20

Coupon Code:WritePractice20 »

Ready to try out these ten essay tips to make your essay assignment fun? Spend fifteen minutes using tip #4 and write five original sentences that could be turned into an essay.

When you're finished, share your five sentences in the comments section. And don't forget to give feedback to your fellow writers!

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Joe Bunting

Joe Bunting is an author and the leader of The Write Practice community. He is also the author of the new book Crowdsourcing Paris , a real life adventure story set in France. It was a #1 New Release on Amazon. Follow him on Instagram (@jhbunting).

Want best-seller coaching? Book Joe here.

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Why Should We Do the Right Thing?

When I have apologetics conversations with myself–tell me I’m not the only one who has these–the idea of having an innate conviction to do the right thing and knowing what the right thing is often comes up, in my conversation, with myself. This thought helps prove the existence of an absolute and ultimately the existence of God. Boom, my Christian side wins. But not exactly. More like, my monotheistic side wins.

My Christian side wins when I ask why I do the right thing. Most religions have systems of rules and rewards: follow the rules, you get the reward. Christianity represents the only world religion in which reward can not be earned: follow the rules, you get the reward. Don’t follow the rules, you get the reward. So why follow the rules? Why do the right thing?

For years my answer to this question was this: I do the right thing because it is clearly laid out in scripture how to do the right thing and that we are to do the right thing because the right thing brings us in a closer relationship with God and being in a closer relationship with God helps us make the right decisions and be just overall happier than if we were consistently doing the wrong thing.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know about grace. I knew about grace. I loved grace. It’s one of the bolded words in my memory as a preacher’s kid who spent just as much time at church as she did at home. The problem with my motive above was that I wasn’t obsessed yet. I didn’t get doing the right thing out of an overflow of my obsession with this God that could do such radical, against-human-nature type stuff.

Once that started to kick in (somewhere around the time of my first real heartbreak) and I began to let God, Jesus and the concept of the cross expand beyond my sunday-school walls, the right thing was the best way I could think of to say “I love you.” It was even better than saying, “I love you.” And I trust in that motivator much more than when I motivated myself.

No Comments

Agree, excellent post!. That´s the moment when you turn from doing the right thing because of fear and change it to do it because of love. You forget the rules and you do the right because you want to please Him. I had that process too. But… as christians we have to be careful because then, maybe because of that tradition of “reward”, somehow in our unconsciousness at last make us think that we dont do the right because of the reward, but because we behave and do the right then we deserve all the good for us… and when you go through a hard time you could be disappointed…

Isn’t it weird what heart break can do to our theology, love and reverence for God?

Love your contemplating…

The question I have been wrestling with is how can I get to that point of “obsession” without having to experience heartbreak or tragedy?

I grew up going to church 3 times a week minimum. I went to a Christian school for 6th-12th grade where I had lots of Bible classes. I know a lot about grace, justification, sanctification, etc. but like you mentioned in your post, I don’t feel I’ve reached the point where my right actions are a result of the overflow of love that I have towards God. There is still a part of me that is stuck in a “performance-based acceptance” mentality (partially due to some borderline-legalism in the church I grew up in).

I hear countless stories of those who have run from God only to reach some “rock bottom” point and be brought back to Him as they readily embrace the grace He offers. But for someone like me who never had that “running from God” period and who hasn’t had any huge regrets or tragedies in my life, how can I get that same passion? I don’t want to wish for God to bring me tragedy or heartbreak just so I can draw closer to Him but sometimes I think maybe that’s the only way.

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