Individuals have a moral obligation to assist those in need.

IntroWhat if every moral obligation was ignored? What if every moral obligation was fulfilled?The Bad Life: You wife has just died in the midst of a civil war which has encompassed your entire life. Today your daughter was raped, by your son who was forced by the gun point of a gang member to do it. You have experienced only occasional respite from chronic hunger, fear, apathy, and confusion You life has been one long emergency, and now it’s nearly over.The Good Life: You are married to the best person you’ve ever met. You both have intellectually engaging and financially rewarding careers. Your wealth and social connections allow you much time to enjoy activities which bring you immense personal satisfaction. You find happiness in helping others. You can’t imagine your life to be any better. Your closest friends and family live long, healthy lives, untouched by crime, sudden bereavements, and other misfortunes.These two lives are very different, and one should note the empathy one feels toward the less fortunate of the two. It is because some human beings require assistance to achieve the good life that I stand in strong affirmation of the resolution, Resolved: Individuals have a moral obligation to assist people* in need. My opponent made a slight mistake in phrasing the resolution. [http://www.nflonline.org...]I will now define some of the key terms in today’s debate; all of which come from Black’s Law Dictionary and Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary:Individuals: Single persons as distinguished from group or classMoral Obligation: a duty which is valid and binding in conscience and according to natural justicePeople in need: “human beings” who “lack something requisite”Moral Agency: the capacity for those actions which have a moral qualityAltruism: exhibiting a regard for the welfare of othersObservation 1: for the purposes of this debate I do not have to prove that all individuals have a moral obligation, as this would be abusive to the resolution: some humans lack the basic requirements of responsible moral agency.The highest Value of today’s debate is clearly that of Morality. Morality is a right, universal code of conduct that all rational persons would put forward for governing the behavior of all moral agents. It is rationally and ethically defensible with procedural tests for identifying morally permissible actions. It’s moral values exist independently of the feeling-states of individuals at particular times. Morality is saliently important because it gives us the instructions for right action.The Value Criterion I will use to achieve my value of Morality is Moral Responsibility. This is the responsibility of conscience that justifies claims and ascriptions of praise and blame, reward and punishment. This applies to when a person performs or fails to perform a morally significant action, and is a prime importance in this debate because it is precisely what warrants moral action. Without moral responsibility there would be no way to judge morally significant actions; thus, any objective moral action would be done unintentionally. Moral responsibility has little if anything to do with determinism, since it arises from people’s desires and attitudes rather than from the causal origins of their actions.Contention one: Our moral responsibility requires us to be altruistic. The work of evolutionary biologists and psychologists Robert Trivers and Geoffrey Miller on reciprocal altruism examines the psychological and social aspects of altruism which are empirically observable in brain scans, group behavior, and the acceptability of actions. They prove that sexual selection further developed moral behavior as an epigenetic trait. Moral responsibility is a natural component of moral agency. Moral responsibility demands altruism as an essential component of morality. Since moral responsibility warrants action based on inherent altruism, morality is upheld and achieved. When we see a kid fall off a bicycle and get injured, we sense our moral obligation to assist him because of this altruistic quality inherent in agency. The assistance we would offer this child would be medical aid, assurance, and comfort. We are morally obligated to assist him because of our moral responsibility. Numerous moral codes, religions, and traditions throughout history and dispersed globally denote the moral importance of charity, benevolence, and altruism to people in need. This is an extraordinary paradigm of just how pervasive this most essential concept of morality is. This moral norm was discovered in light of an unchanging and objective set of moral principles that find their source in the realities of human existence. It is clear that morality is a universal concept of which people adhere to based upon their deepest integrity. The Philosopher Sam Harris writes in his book, The Moral Landscape, “helping people can be one of humanity’s greatest sources of happiness.” To summarize, the morality inherent in human beings obligates compassionate assistance through moral responsibility which culminates in a mutually beneficial moral exchange that helps humanity.Contention two: Assisting people in need is obligated by Universal Morality. Aristotle’s Law of Identity is that reality is absolute and can be understood through inductive and deductive reasoning. Because reality is absolute, and reasoning is the means by which we understand reality, it follows that reasoning is equally absolute. Once we have this rational foundation, we move on applying reasoning and understanding to morality. As Immanuel Kant aptly synthesized, “Act in such a way that the maxim of your action can be willed as a universal law.” We simply apply the rationale of moral responsibility to action, and when we do that we see that we should act in universally valid and moral ways. Conversely, actions are wrong if the success of the proposed action depends upon making an exception for yourself. Assisting people in need is always moral, because the myriad ways individuals can fulfill their moral obligation to assist people in need ensure morality. Furthermore, the act of assisting people in need passes the seven tests for universally ethical decision making: Harm test (will it hurt anyone?), Publicity test(would I want my action publicized?), Defensibility test (could I defend my decision?), Reversibility test(what if I were in his situation?), Virtue test (what will I become if I do this?). Conversely, when the moral obligation is avoided or ignored, the tests are scored negatively, we feel guilty for not having fulfilled it, and we drift toward the bad life. Thus, morality obligates assistance to people in need in the positive and negative sense. Universal Morality, the ethical code which transcends culture, creed, socioeconomic class, gender, and zeitgeist obligates these actions.Contention three: Moral obligations promote utility in an individual towards society and strengthens society as a whole. Moral responsibility, referring to the “scope of moral obligation and the structure of human interaction”, requires altruism, which is always moral, and uses it to create a mutually beneficial network of moral exchange within society. Moral responsibility warrants moral obligations and good behavior. With it, individuals within a society choose to act according to Kant’s categorical imperative: “act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Essentially, what all of us know as the “golden rule.” Fulfilling one’s moral obligation is not merely financial assisting others in need many mediums of aid however insignificant. This value of assisting those in need greatly strengthens a society and the foundation of morality that it upholds, this concept that forms the foundation of society and the common individual, one’s moral obligation.Thank you! :)