ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on major influences in your life that have shaped your moral compass. We may think we have free will, but seldom ask who or what has shaped that will. That is explored here through a bevy of philosophers who theorize about the nature of conscience and consciousness, those twin aspects of the human condition. How we react to challenge and pressure is at the core of an uncompromising value system. The question now concerns whether ethics can be taught and, if so, how “family values” play into that experience. We discover that U.S. history has a role in molding our media conventions and moral benchmarks. We are also influenced by our time in history (generation, experiences, etc.) and the social mores defining what society believed to be true at that time. Ending journal exercises explore mottoes that a parent, mentor or relative repeated often enough to have become family lore. The communal exercise puts those mottoes to the test to see whether they are true, partly true, partly false, or false.
