Conscience [Song]

Uploaded by ScorpioPetey
CONSCIENCE
By Shadow
Arranged by Art DeCoteau
Album: "Music Fever", T&T, 1981.

I am having a funny interference
I would like to get rid of my conscience
[Get mih conscience out, get mih conscience out!]
If I tell a lie, it's bothering me
If I fake a cry, it's bothering me
I could live nicer without conscience
So I want to get rid of this nonsense.
I want to do wrong things and feel like a king
I want to steal a horse and feel like a boss
Right now, if I do wrong things anytime
My conscience always blowing my mind
Call me madman but do not doubt
I want my conscience OUT!

My conscience is giving me trouble
Don't know why it's so miserable
[Get mih conscience out, get mih conscience out!]
I could rip off blind people in the street
Fool children and take 'way their food to eat
But my conscience acting like a bloke
Beating me like if is a damn joke
Please find me a doc who could do the work
I'll get you rich, this is no old talk
Any time my conscience give me an ease
I'll be ripping off banks like peas
I'll give you money to fill a tank
Just get my conscience blank!

The lousy conscience that I have
Like it really want me to starve
[Get mih conscience out, get mih conscience out!]
If I only think of stealing some food
My conscience will start getting on so rude
You might really think this is nonsense
I does feel I could beat up my conscience
My conscience is really breaking my heart
I shouldn't do this, I shouldn't do that
If conscience was something that I could see
I would beat my conscience mercifully
I would dump it out in the sea
Or give it to somebody.

[Get mih conscience out, get mih conscience out!]
[Get mih conscience out, get mih conscience out!]

Source: The lyrics posted on this blog are often transcribed directly from performances. Although it is my intention to faithfully transcribe I do not get all the words and I have a knack for hearing the wrong thing. Please feel free to correct me or to fill in the words that I miss by dropping me a message via e-mail. I'd be forever grateful. Thanks in advance! ..............................................................................................................................  

 
A Note From The Gull

Thank you, Shadow.

Last year I came across the blog, Ethics Alarms. It is written by Jack Marshall, an ethicist, lawyer, and the president of ProEthics, Ltd.  I became convinced that if it isn't yet, Ethics needs to be taught to our nation's children as a compulsory subject at both the primary and secondary levels if only to reduce some of the fog, under cover of which an environment conducive to wrongdoing has been cultivated. For now I recommend the post Unethical Rationalizations and Misconceptions and share with you below, the first unethical rationalization of the forty-eight illustrated and discussed by the author:

"1. The Golden Rationalization, or “Everybody does it”
This rationalization has been used to excuse ethical misconduct since the beginning of civilization. It is based on the flawed assumption that the ethical nature of an act is somehow improved by the number of people who do it, and if “everybody does it,” then it is implicitly all right for you to do it as well: cheat on tests, commit adultery, lie under oath, use illegal drugs, persecute Jews, lynch blacks. Of course, people who use this “reasoning” usually don’t believe that what they are doing is right because “everybody does it.” They usually are arguing that they shouldn’t be singled out for condemnation if “everybody else” isn’t.

Since most people will admit that principles of right and wrong are not determined by polls, those who try to use this fallacy are really admitting misconduct. The simple answer to them is that even assuming they are correct, when more people engage in an action that is admittedly unethical, more harm results. An individual is still responsible for his or her part of the harm.

If someone really is making the argument that an action is no longer unethical because so many people do it, then that person is either in dire need of ethical instruction, or an idiot.

1A. Ethics Surrender, or “We can’t stop it.”This is the rationalization that argues that if society is incapable of effectively preventing unethical conduct, for whatever reason, we might as well stop regarding that conduct as wrong. This is yet another variation on the most common and insidious rationalization of them all and #1 on the list: “Everybody Does It.”

The Golden Rationalization has many variations, among them…

“It’s done all the time.”
“It’s always been done this way.”
“It’s tradition.”
“Everybody is used to it.”
“Everybody accepts it.”
“Nobody’s complained before.”
“It’s too late to change now.”

…and others. Ethics Surrender, however, warrants particular attention, as it encourages moral cowardice and ethics complacency. “We can’t stop it” is a lazy capitulation that assumes cultures can’t change, and we know they can and do change, both for better and worse, all the time. One society has been convinced, though legitimate, persistent, coherent and ethically valid arguments, that a common practice or conduct is bad for society, society can stop or seriously inhibit that unethical practice of behavior, either by law, regulation, or best of all, the evolution of cultural consensus. The examples of an Ethics Surrender resulting in undesirable societal consequences are too numerous to list, and many of them are still controversial. I would assign having children out of wedlock, adultery, lying by elected leaders and the use of illegal recreational drugs to the “We can’t stop it, so let’s say it’s not so bad” category. The most obvious and currently significant example is illegal immigration, wrong, but increasingly being rationalized by both advocates and lawmakers who have run out of ideas and principle. At this moment, we are hearing the defenders of dubious police shootings making that argument to avoid examining possible changes in law enforcement policy so there will be fewer deaths without putting police in peril.

Ethics is hard. Rationalization 1A, Ethics Surrender, or “We can’t stop it,” wrongly concludes that it is impossible. SOURCE

Not ever labouring under the delusion that I am somehow less culpable or above improvement, I have already carefully read the contents of Jack Marshall's post and noted how I have failed.

"Patria est communis omnium parens" - Our native land is the common parent of us all. Keep it beautiful, make it even more so.

Blessed is all of creation
Blessed be my beautiful people
Blessed be the day of our awakening
Blessed is my country
Blessed are her patient hills.

Mweh ka allay!
Guanaguanare