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Caroline Fogel
Mrs. Henry
Service Learning
24 March 2015
Everyone has a set of important ethical values and standards. For me, the five
most important are sincerity, loyalty, commitment, accountability, and creativity. Firstly, I
above all else think that one must be genuine. Sincerity is being truthful in all aspects of
life, beyond only being honest while speaking with another people. For example, I
believe sincerity inherently lies within a person and that that is where self-love comes
from. I will never change myself in order to please another person, and I do not spend my
time with people who change themselves based on who they are talking to. Being
genuine ties in with loyalty. Although loyalty commonly implies loyalty to other people,
which I do think is important, I also believe it is necessary to be loyal to oneself. I define
this type of loyalty to be equivalent to self-respect. I think that in order to care for other
people, I must first be true to myself. Commitment is also essential to me because I think
it is important to have values and carry out actions with devotion and vigor. To me,
commitment is integrity through trial, and someone who is committed is destined to
succeed. Both commitment and loyalty also tie into accountability. For instance, I think it
is incredibly important to be on time for appointments and meetings, and to be there for
friends and family during times of need. Finally, I believe creativity makes the world go
round. Those who invent, write, or make any type of art are incredibly important in
helping the world develop and evolve in all aspect of life. I value the creative process and
those who think outside the box.

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These values listed above, as well as others, are important to me because of a
number of influences on my life. One of my biggest influences has been my parents. I
have observed that children tend to value what their parents value. My fathers side of the
family is Jewish and my mothers is Catholic. For a number of reasons never really
explained to me, my parents decided to raise my brother and I without a religion. This has
shaped my vision of the world to be very concrete and random. I do not believe in any
higher power nor do I think every person has any type of fate. I believe that we, as
humans, have the power to steer our lives in any direction we chose, and that the only
things stopping us is the morals and precedents of previous generations. Life is literally
chaos, and at any moment things can change drastically. That being said, I think that my
values kind of revolve around making sure that I am treated fairly and that I get what I
deserve out of the world. I think this aspect of self-respect is important because I believe
I would not be able to help others if I am not in a position mentally, emotionally, or
physically to give aid. Within Lawrence Kohlbergs theory of moral development,
which used a series of moral dilemmas to place someone on a scale from one to six, I
believe I am at stage 5. According to Kohlberg, this reflects that I think that rules are
created based on what people want, and therefore should be changed and altered as
society evolves. A persons individual values should be respected and that these different
values come together to shape society.
This conglomeration of values is what molds the collective morals of a group of
people. Whether its a family, community, region, or even country, all of these groups
have values. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, civic virtue is defined the habits
and ethics that are important to the development and success of a society. In our society,

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as a whole, one important value we have is our freedom of speech, religion, silence, etc.
What makes a good citizen is someone who protects these freedoms for themselves as
well as others. This civic virtue is important to our society because it is how we ensure
that everyone in our country is being treated fairly. I believe that a society is only made
better through equal opportunity on an individual basis, so if every individual is working
to better help his or her community, that communitys civic virtue is better as a whole.
My values, whether they are from my family, friends, or community, have helped
me make decisions in cases of ethical dilemmas. In one situation, I had to make a choice
whether or not to help my friend on a big research project we had to complete in my
English class freshman year. She asked me to send her my research sources and notes,
even though she was supposed to have completed them herself. Normally, I wouldve
told her that I didnt want her to cheat off of me, however I knew that her grade was
dependent on this assignment. If she did not complete the assignment on time, she would
have to repeat the class that summer. Also, even though that is not my responsibility, I felt
empathetic because I knew she had not completed the research because a close family
member had recently passed away. This became a moral dilemma for me because if I
gave her my notes, I would not be following my ideas of sincerity. Rather than pulling
that sincerity from myself and using it to encourage others to do the same, I would be
allowing my peer to take the easy way out by being illegitimate. In the end, I decided to
not give her my sources, but have a study date where I helped her find her own and
develop her own research materials. I think I did the right thing because I managed to
help her without simply giving her all the work I had done.

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Overall, it is greatly important that people have a code of ethics. In order for a
person to grow and develop their own point of view, they must have a set of values that
they hold to be most important. Developing oneself leads to the development of ones
children, which leads to the development of those childrens children, which leads to the
eventual development of whole societies. Writing this Code of Ethics has helped me
realize not only what I value, but how my values can interact with others to aid society.
Individual values and moral standards are what compose societal ethics, what is right and
what is wrong, and how these ethics aid success on both an individual and societal level.

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Works Cited
"Civic Virtue | Political Philosophy." Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia
Britannica, n.d. Web. 19 Apr. 2015.
McLeod,Saul."KohlbergMoralDevelopment|SimplyPsychology."Kohlberg
Moral
Development|SimplyPsychology.N.p.,2011.Web.19Apr.2015.