Conscious

What is having a conscious? I'd like to know in clear, defined, upholding and never changing terms that are universally accepted. Though, this changes often and from person to person, time to time, incorporating the widely held values of the time and the people inhabiting an era.

As a person, it's so easy to say that we won't be this way or that way. It's easy to think that nothing good or perhaps bad will happen to us. We will continue living our lives in the status-quo that it has always been in. It's also easy to sit up at a pedestal and judge, condemning those who has fallen from graces, "hell suits you just fine" looks, taking away a hand of help and saying, "I would not have done what you have done, if I were in your shoes." It's so easy to say these things. Pretending we'll have the moral uprightness and rigidity to not only know what is right, virtuous and moral, but also uphold it, apply it and execute it in every moment of our lives. It's easy to see ourselves from a morally superior step. I hardly think many of us have clean enough hands to preach that to the choir. The thing is, we wouldn't have fared and better and we won't when similar or different situation hits us far. In no means am I excluding myself. I also belong to the majority in this case. I have done many things I am not proud of it and fear the day they will be leaked to the public. In that time, I will seek the mercy of my beloved ones and hope they can still accept me as they used to and understand my shortcomings as a human being.

Though, things I believe, from my observations and experiences work much differently. When moral ambiguities strike us, we blame it on the situation, circumstances, people, shortcomings, fortune, fate, God and so on and so forth. We want anyone but us to take the blame, downfall and pay the consequences. We justify ourselves into rationalizing our actions, making ourselves believe we have no other choice (though sometimes there are no other choices). We expect understanding, acceptance, understanding, pity, humility and to be treated humanely.

We want second chances to show that we are good, to redeem ourselves and prove that we have learned from our mistakes. But, it is so easy to suspend our moral judgements and create this another illusionary world, suspended from reality where we allow ourselves all kinds of improper misconduct that we would other wise never do, judge others who do, but grant ourselves the immunity we never extend to anyone else; youth.

So, is that the sum of a conscious? Who knows? Does it grow over time, gradually as we make mistakes and our knowledge accumulated via different, alternating, polarizing sources? Probably. When do we really become aware of the rightness, wrongness and morality of our actions? I think in psychology the age limit begins at three. But, are most of us in our thirties still capable of applying those rules to our lives, continually in an effort to be a good person? Do we even really know the differences between right and wrong at the age of thirty?

Is it that when you think about executing an action that might be deemed immoral, you fast forward into the future and try to see when the consequences play out, seeing unfavorable results, opt out to go with one of the other options? Or is it because, your soul and mind really cannot reconcile with the world you have created within yourself and the guilty action you are able to commit cannot reconcile and the heavy burden of slighting, wronging someone else, hurts you enough, unable to carry the excess baggage it creates that it becomes a stopper, puts on the brakes for you?

It's nearly five in the morning, I am sleep deprived, and my mind unable to probe any further and come out in a healthy state.