In Good Conscience

What is a conscience?

Each person has a conscience. It is your/ my inner moral faculty, a sense of right and wrong. 

What does your/ my conscience do for you?

Your/ my moral compass is designed to direct the actions of your life.

About 38 years ago I bought a course on what happens to a persons' conscience if they choose actions that go against their inner compass feelings.

Let's choose a simple subject- Stealing. Stealing is taking something that doesn't belong to you.

When discussing these topics, it is necessary to start at the beginning, childhood and parenting.

When I grew up... We were taught not to steal. The dictum 'Thou shalt not steal' was the authoritative statement my parents quoted to all of us children.

I was raised in a very large family and I don't ever remember a situation where anyone, within the family, accused another family member of stealing something from the other. Our family was so large, we even had to share bedrooms, so we had great respect for personal 'possessions.'

Almost all of my experience of 'theft and stealing' was quite a shock, to me. When my bicycle was stolen off the second floor of the apartment I rented, I was in disbelief. The year was 1981 or 1982. I was aghast. I contacted the insurance company immediately, made a claim, and received a cheque to replace the stolen 'goods.'

In my self- published novel, I write about a lot of situations to represent 'life problems.' I studied a little criminology and then decided to write the scenes in layman terms. 

A novel 

needs to be readable to day to day living. Imagine that someone would try to steal your novel, that you wrote and self- published. I would be willing to sue them so fast because of the time, and money that it took to complete this type of project. It's impossible to steal, of course, because I self- published. 

Self- published intellectual property cannot be stolen.

Now, let's detail how the conscience works, from the perspective of a 

                                             child to adult process.

Situation

A five year old child steals a candy, puts it in his/ her pocket so the parents, who drove the child to the store, don't discover the 'theft.' 

Immediately, you know that the child feels guilty about stealing the candy because he/ she hides it and waits to eat it when the parents aren't watching.

At the tender age of 5, a child certainly has a conscience.

If the child gets away with this 'theft' (isn't caught, isn't taught) the conscience is dulled and the likelihood of the child repeating the 'theft' becomes... more likely.

There is another step in this process that is called 'confessing.' A child might confess if they know enough about right and wrong to 'feel guilty.' A child who doesn't feel guilt is not a good thing. 

So, the course that I purchased, about 38 years ago, detailed progressional incidents that lead to the searing of a conscience, searing meaning 'dulling.' With each theft a child 'gets away with,' the possibility of thefts becoming larger and larger is the rational conclusion to each 'next' theft.

Moral lesson of this story-

Teach your children well. 

A parents' peace of mind is going to be connected to childrens' behaviour and the behaviour of children is going to be connected to parents' ability to teach principles of moral living.