Conscience

Brooks 1

Wendi M. Brooks

PHI2100 Sec 080

Professor Smillov

10 February, 2004

            I was the proud owner of 100 shares of a certain stock, until I found out that they supported something that I find to be extremely immoral. Immoral to the point that I refuse to support this stock in any way now that I am aware of this. My immediate reaction is to sell this stock to whoever will buy it. Then I got to thinking that by selling this stock to a new person, I would be demoralizing them without them even knowing what was going on. I was torn because here I was with this sort of important decision to make, and fast. I finally determined to sell the stock, I just had to decide whether to tell the buyer of the immoral things that this stock is supporting, or leave them to find out for themselves.

By telling them about the immoral problems with the stock, they most likely wouldn’t be interested in buying it from me, but at least I would feel like I had done the right thing by not leading these people astray. So, my conscience would be in check. On the other hand though, I could withhold this information about the immoral stock and get my money for selling the stock and be done with it. With this option, I would feel horrible and my conscience would probably eat away at me for a while to come, and I would feel like I was harming an innocent person. If I simply don’t tell him about these issues, he could possibly never find out, and would therefore never be harmed by this immoral stock. So, in all actuality it would be best for me to simply deal with my

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conscience bothering me for a short time, and go ahead and clear myself of this immoral stock and let someone else deal with it and decide for themselves if they disagree with it, if they even find out. There was the slightest possibility that I was going to tell them about the stock supporting this immoral cause, but I decided not too. I know it is the selfish thing to do. I should have been more concerned with the morality of both myself and the other person, but instead I decided to worry more about my moral status than the other persons. That way I was clear, in my mind, and could go about my life knowing I didn’t support something like that. After a little more contemplation about the issue, I decided that after selling the stock to someone else I would try to get the stock to stop supporting such immoral causes and to tell all the other stock holders that these things were going on. That way there was hope that the company would stop because so many of their stock holders were upset and ready to protest. I went about this by sending a newsletter to all the stock holders, and telling them what I had so recently found out, and giving my reasons for getting rid of the stock. I included that I thought that we could make a difference if we got together to try to get this stock company to get their morals back on track. The other stock holders felt very similar to the way I did, and we ended up causing the company to rethink their decision to support this immoral cause. They withdrew their support from this cause and gained many of their customers back. I chose to stay away from them, but I was glad that I was able to do something right about the wrong that was being done in this company. They were withholding information from their stockholders, and as we saw, many of them were very unhappy about this, and wanted to do something about it.

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In conclusion, I am glad that I didn’t simply sell the stock and move on, because I was able to make a difference in the way this company was operating. Also, I am glad that I didn’t just leave it alone after telling the one person about what the stock company was doing behind all of our backs. I felt as if I did the right thing, and my conscience is clear.