Our Human Conscience Is A Subject Of Debate

Ever wondered how your life would be if you did not have any conscience? That mild but persistent sensation at the back of your mind or an urge from the bottom of your heart trying to convince you about some action that you are contemplating. To a great extent, it is our human conscience that defines who we are. Morals and moral codes are not enough to keep humans on the right path. Not even the law can do that all the time. Only conscience stops a man from stealing something in the dark when no one else is looking.

 

Without our human conscience, many researchers into the field argue that the behaviours of human beings would become practically unpredictable. The boundaries between actions that are rational and those that are not would become blurred and there would be nothing to hold us back from whatever action we contemplate, be it right or wrong. In fact, without conscience, even the differences between what is right and what is wrong as we know them today would be obliterated.

 

Many studies have shown that people throughout history, who have been responsible for the greatest atrocities often showed very little remorse when they were made to account for the crimes. We often wonder how mass murderers and serial killers can actually kill people in cold blood without flinching. Some people argue that it is because they are braver than other people and more determined but none of these is true.

 

The reason is that their conscience is compromised. The compromise may be due to traumatizing events in the past or due to medical deficiencies. Either way, the outcome is the same. These people have little or no conscience left in them and this is why they are able to commit such soulless crimes. They have completely no capacity to sympathize or empathize with their victims, no capacity for mercy and, worst of all, do not feel any sense of remorse or guilt once they have committed such murders.

 

Besides the subject of the purpose of our human conscience, another question that has continued to remain a subject of contention and which has sparked off many debates and studies over the years is the nature of the human conscience. Is our conscience simply the result of a rational analysis of situations conducted by our brains, or is it direction from a supreme being speaking to us directly through our souls? There is also the old good against evil version whereby the conscience is made up of two contending spirits, one good and one evil, each of them trying to steer you to particular paths.

 

All of the information that has been uncovered on the subject has not been conclusive. On the one hand, while the more religious researches argue that the conscience is spiritual and embedded in the soul, non believers are quick to dismiss the idea due to the lack of any physical proof of the presence of the soul. Whichever of the above arguments is true, one fact that stands out clearly is the fact that we are the people we are because of our human conscience.