Personal Conscience Research Articles

LAW ENFORCEMENT IN THE INDONESIAN CONSTITUTIONAL SYSTEM IS IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAW THE ENFORCER’S CONSCIENCE

The purpose of this research is to analyze and evaluate the role of law enforcement in the Indonesian constitutional system, specifically focusing on how the enforcement of laws aligns with the personal conscience and ethical judgment of law enforcers. The study utilizes secondary data gathered through literature reviews, drawing from primary, secondary, and tertiary legal materials, such as legislation, books, journals, and articles. The collected data is analyzed following the Miles and Huberman (2014) model, which includes processes of data reduction, data display, and data verification, to derive conclusions pertinent to the research questions. It sheds light on how ethical considerations influence decision-making, offering insights into the moral dimensions of the law enforcement beyond formal legal frameworks. Furthermore, this study contributes to discussions on judicial integrity and accountability, providing a foundation for evaluating how personal conscience impacts the fairness and effectiveness of law enforcing. It also offers practical recommendations for strengthening the ethical standards and professional judgment of judicial officials in Indonesia. Comparative studies on how different countries' judicial systems integrate human rights and democratic values into their law enforcement structures could provide valuable insights for reforming Indonesia's judicial system to meet global standards of justice and fairness.

Exploring the Dimensions of Religious Freedom: A Global and Comparative Analysis

Religion constitutes a fundamental aspect of the cultural and spiritual lives of individuals globally, encompassing an array of traditions, rituals, and practices. Within the context of liberal democracy's evolution, religion emerges as a critical element of political liberty and personal conscience. On an international scale, the right to religious freedom has been established as a core human right, essential for the sustenance of democratic governance. Despite its recognition, the right to religious liberty remains a highly contentious issue. Even in democracies that provide constitutional protections for religious freedom, debates persist regarding the extensive interpretation and implementation of this right, particularly concerning the rights of religious minorities within these nations. This study explores the concept of religious freedom as a globally recognized right, examining its representation and interpretation across various international and regional legal frameworks. Through this analysis, the paper endeavors to provide a comprehensive overview of religious freedom on both a global and regional scale. Furthermore, it delves into the state of religious freedom in various political systems, ranging from democracies such as United States to theocracies and monarchies like the United Kingdom and countries characterized by a strict demarcation between religion and state affairs, exemplified by France's secularist approach.

Personal conscience and the medical profession

When we speak of ‘conscience’ (implying ‘moral’), we are referring to a kind of permanent inner sensitivity to that class of values we call moral, and which ethical norms help us to grasp and promote in various concrete situations. This does not pretend to be a definition of conscience, but merely a telegraphic reminder of the reality that is in question.

Pain Management of Cow Before and After Cesarean Surgery

Background: On-farm pain reduction treatments are used depending on whether or not they are feasible and how important they are to the producer. The Iraqi beef industry lacks understanding on the various methods of pain treatment. The aim is to management the pain in cows of caesarean section operation. Method: This article provides an overview of agricultural pain techniques as well as producer pain mitigation strategies. A questionnaire covering calving and processing was given to one hundred cow–calf producers in the southern region of Iraq. Interviews on farms were semi-structured, and 25 people who had filled out the questionnaire were chosen to participate. Results: Between fifty and one hundred percent of respondents utilized cesarean pain relief. Reports. In most cases, pain medication was not offered. 66% of them employed branding, while just 7% focused on pain alleviation. The perception of pain by producers is influenced by factors such as common sense, relatability to cattle, visual evidence of suffering, and the age of the animal. The reason for reducing pain was impacted by factors such as the age of the animal, the benefits of operation, costs and logistics, market needs, and personal conscience. The management adhered to the norms of Iraq. Conclusion: The findings of this research might potentially provide future efforts in policy making, research, and extension with a route to follow in order to expand the adoption of pain reduction techniques.

The Introduction of Same-Sex Marriage in Germany—A Question of Conscience and/or Faith? A Case Study

On 30 June 2017, the German Bundestag voted in favor of the introduction of marriage for same-sex couples—a historic moment. Only a few days earlier, the then Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel had released the vote as a decision of conscience and thus dissolved the usual underlying factional compulsion—does this mean that rights for homosexual people are a question of personal conscience and values? Such a localization arouses the interest of religious studies to investigate how the discourse actors from the fields of politics, church and society formulate the decision of conscience as a discursive strategy in the negotiation process of same-sex marriage in Germany argumentatively and which positionings as well as descriptions of others and themselves are derived from this. The starting point is a modernity in which the actors move, understand and articulate themselves. This understanding of modernity is based on the process of a vertical transfer (Gladigow) of sociological theories of religion, among others, whereby narratives of secularization, overcoming religion (as a necessary precondition of modernity) and narratives of an opposition of religious vs. secular or religious vs. homosexual reappear as positions and arguments in the discourse. Using the approach of discursive religious studies (von Stuckrad) in conjunction with sociological discourse analysis (Keller), these processes of positioning, demarcation and negotiation based on the premises of modernity will be analyzed for the period from 2013 to 2017 on the basis of the public debate on religious, political, and social actors in Germany.

‘Journalism in another form’: How exile experiences from Burundi renegotiate key elements of journalism

Since the renewed outbreak of the ongoing crisis in Burundi in May 2015, triggering a media crackdown, over one-third of the country’s reporters have gone into exile. They therefore joined an increasing number of journalists worldwide who are forced into exile. Between 2015 and 2021, many of the exiled Burundian journalists continued reporting for newly founded exile media in neighbouring Rwanda. Before their forced closure in 2021, these exile media had established themselves as successful outlets providing the only independent information from an otherwise blacked-out country. Based on semi-structured interviews with 10 exiled Burundian journalists conducted in Rwanda in 2020, this article exemplifies how the condition of exile impacts journalistic practice and norms, and renegotiates ideas of media professionalism. It is shown how Burundian exiled journalists display a strong personal conscience as journalists highlighting the voice of the voiceless and attempting to separate activism from their journalism. At the same time, the findings identify the main struggles of Burundian exiled journalists in maintaining operational objectivity, which depends on funding, providing balanced reporting without access to official sources and conducting verification of information in the unattainable field. These challenges are in line with the findings of several other case studies with exiled journalists from different regions. Therefore, this article complements the rapidly growing body of literature on exile journalism with a Global South perspective, which to date is not well represented on the map of exile journalism that mostly features cases of exile in the Global North. Furthermore, this article shows that situating exile experiences within existing theories and frameworks of journalism presents limits as exile journalism, as in the Burundian case, is journalism ‘in another form’ with new practices and renegotiated standards of professionalism.

Oaths, Conscience, Contracts, and Laws—The Gathering Storm Confronting Medical Professionalism

This Viewpoint explains the 3 trends—personal conscience, employment contracts, and laws—that challenge physicians from putting their patients first and offers ways to reverse these barriers.

A Sufi pedagogy of community-engaged self-cultivation: contemporary approaches to training, accountability, and religious abuse in Sufism

ABSTRACT Contemporary Sufis are addressing the potential danger that stems from asymmetries of power implicit in the student-teacher relationship. This article examines approaches to Sufi pedagogy that acknowledge how gender, power, and abuse can manifest in the tradition. This article posts the emergence of a nascent approach to Sufi training, which I call community-engaged self-cultivation. This approach balances the inviolability of personal conscience (ḍamīr) and moral agency (khalīfah), accountability within community, and rigorous studies under the guidance of a Sufi teacher. The community-engaged self-cultivation model draws from several historical Sufi pedagogies, including the teaching guide (shaykh al-taʿlīm) and training guide (shaykh al-tarbiya) models. The community-engaged self-cultivation model shares three main commitments: 1) resisting patriarchal and oppressive structures discursively and socially, 2) the inviolability of individual moral agency and personal conscience and, 3) practicing shared authority. These three factors work in tandem in mutually reinforcing ways to expand the accessibility of the tradition and foreground accountability as a Sufi value.

Психіка нескорених в умовах пропаганди (на прикладі оповідання «Друг уряду» З. Ленца)

Z. Lentz’s creative work has always attracted the attention of researchers. In his literary texts, he pays a lot of attention to depicting the subtleties of the human soul. The characters of his works are indeed constantly faced with the question of personal conscience, choice, introspection, and the search for a humane way of life in not always humane circumstances (wartime and post-war times, pressure from the authorities, etc.), and this is of great interest to Ukrainian readers who find themselves in similar circumstances. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to try to interpret the psyche of the characters in the story «A Friend of the Government» by S. Lenz and to characterise the psychology of this work. The work reveals in detail the psychology of three characters, each of whom performs a different function: the narrator, the friend of the government and the official. Harek, who accompanies the group of journalists, performs an additional function in the novel, but an extremely important one: he emphasises the feelings of Bonzo and his family, because their lives depend on this official. The manifestations of the guide’s psyche fully correspond to his essence as a representative of the government: he is insidious and insincere, speaks in quietly memorised phrases, and is subtle. He is false in all his manifestations. The absolute opposite of him is Bela Bonzo, a sincere but intimidated worker. He is forced to cooperate with the government to ensure safety for himself and his family. They have already paid too high a price – giving up their son to the government and abandoning him to save their lives. He is a victim of the government, but he remains unconquered. The only thing the local wants is to survive, to protect the village children from the fate of his son. Bonzo realises that this bundle could be discovered and they could all be killed, but he takes the risk. The narrator of the text is extremely attentive to his emotions and feelings, as well as to the experiences of others. He notices and records all the details that somehow testify to lies and complete artificiality. It is the artistic details noted by the journalist-narrator that make it possible to reconstruct Béla Bonzo’s true experiences. It is no coincidence that the author rewards us with knowledge of the truth about the area and its inhabitants, who still seek independence rather than friendship with the government.

Vaccine Mandates: Weighing the Common Good vs Personal Conscience and Autonomy.

COVID-19 is a serious illness with significant morbidity and mortality. Vaccines to immunize against it were developed in record time. Mandates followed. The question to be considered is when mandates are ethical. Mandates can be used to prevent spread of an infection, prevent overwhelming the healthcare system, or protect public safety, thereby protecting the vulnerable and allowing for full flourishing of the common good. At the same time, one must be careful about respecting autonomy by allowing those who consciences do not allow them to be vaccinated to refuse. Because COVID-19 knowledge is rapidly changing as more information is known and the virus mutates, the conditions under which mandates are ethical change as well. At present, since vaccines prevent severe infection and death in high-risk individuals with added benefit for those who are vaccinated and have a history of infection, mandates can be imposed on those individuals. With an estimated 95% of the US population believed to have been infected and prior history of infection shown to be as effective as vaccination, with immunity lasting at least 500 days, and ability to prevent spread unknown at present but limited at best in the past, the vaccines therefore cannot be ethically mandated for those who are low risk for the versions released September 2023 based on information as of October 2023.

The Role of Personality in the Adoption of Pro-Environmental Behaviors through the Lens of the Value-Belief-Norm Theory

The present study investigated citizens’ self-reported pro-environmental behaviors by adopting a survey and bootstrapping via structural equation modeling for five different personality traits. Adopting one traditional psycho-social theory, this study investigates how motivations, values, intentions, norms, and behaviors are connected by using different constructs from the value-belief-norm theory extended with external influences and three different pro-environmental behaviors, namely, waste preventer, green consumer, and avoider, and how the connections change between different personality traits from the Big Five personality test, namely, openness, extroversion, neuroticism, agreeableness, and consciousness. According to this study, personal conscience may inspire environmentally beneficial behaviors like green purchasing and waste reduction when appealing to the emotions of the general public. As a result, strengthening the population’s subjective norms requires interventions that concentrate on communication tactics to raise knowledge of penalties and obligations for communal advantages.

No Need for Parental Involvement in the Vaccination Choice of Adolescents.

Parental decision making is necessary for contracting medical interventions that require personal risk-benefit evaluation, and for overseeing matters of education. In the nineteenth century, exemptions from obligatory vaccination were granted for religious and conscientious reasons. Then and today, religion and moral values play marginal roles in vaccine hesitancy and denialism. Rather, the key values invoked by vaccine hesitants and denialists are liberty and pluralism. Neither is compatible with limiting adolescents' choice. Because vaccination does not require assessment of personal medical risks, because it does not need to occur within the sphere of the doctor-patient relationship, and because the risk involved is within the range of their daily activities, adolescents have the right to free access to vaccination without legal requirement of parental involvement. Drawing on the development of Common Law, and on the development of respect for personal conscience in the history of ideas, this paper does not promote an argument that grants public health an overriding moral power. Rather, this paper rejects the presumption that vaccination of adolescents might involve a conflict between parental authority and public health. Free access to vaccination is compatible with the law and ethics of adolescents' evolving autonomy in relation to healthcare.

Representation of Moral Values in Song of Madurese Children's Games

This research aims to obtain an objective description of the representation of moral values contained in the verses of Madurese children's game songs. The moral values include individual moral values, social moral values, and religious moral values. This research is a descriptive qualitative research. Madurese children's game songs became the data source of this research, while the data were taken from phrases or clauses in the Madurese children's game songs. Based on the results of this study, the author found three aspects of moral values of human life contained in the lyrics of Madurese children's game songs, namely human relationships with God (religious), human relationships with themselves (individual), and human relationships with other humans (social). In more detail, the relationship pattern consists of: Moral Values about the Individual which consists of, (1) the principle of honest living, (2) self-love, and (3) the spirit of hard work. Moral Values about Social consists of, (1) mutual cooperation attitude, (2) love and respect for others, and Moral Values about Religion which consists of, (1) the value of obedience in carrying out religious / God's provisions, (2) praiseworthy values, humble and spacious, and (3) the value of ripples of personal conscience.

Psychological climate: conditioning for student organizational disease

Dear Editor, In an article published in the Journal of Public Health, there is a new issue about how universities prohibit students from effective leadership that must include personal conscience and the value of bad luck itself.1 This is interesting to discuss because students learn to socialize and lead student organizations on campus. Student organizations should be a forum for students to express their aspirations and make changes. For student organizations to run according to their goals, namely, to produce talented student leaders and to avoid organizational diseases, it is necessary to instill a psychological climate in these organizations2,3,4–6 Psychological climate is a psychological climate conditioning within an organization. Illnesses in student organizations have a huge impact on the leadership structure, students’ mentality is formed healthily or not depending on their main environment on campus.7 It is so sad when students who are said to be ‘agents of change’ become embryos of the emergence of an oligarchy disease that kills democracy; when oligarchy develops, there will not be equal opportunities for all students to hold structural positions in student organizations—at the department, faculty, university and even national levels.

Outing Gay Priests: Toward a Theological Ethics of Privacy in the Digital Era

The use of dating app data to expose a gay priest by The Pillar poses important questions for the right to privacy in the era of big data. This paper addresses the lack of engagement with privacy within the Catholic theological ethical tradition. Using insights from philosophical and legal discussions of privacy, this essay argues for privacy as an integral part of human dignity as outlined in magisterial teaching, connected to personal reputation, family life, and conscience. However, privacy is limited when what is done in private violates justice.

Conscience and the Moral Law

The concept of an intrinsically immoral act is unattractive and widely rejected in modern moral theory, with some even going so far as to suggest that no such thing can exist. Such thinkers insist that two distinct realms exist: the moral law and the individual conscience. However, Veritatis splendor expressly rejects this stance and accurately foresees its incoherence and the threat accepting it poses to the credibility of Catholic moral teaching. This article examines the writings of Thomas Aquinas as well as several other important church documents to show that personal conscience cannot be separated from the objective moral law.

Respect for conscientious judgement in health care.

Respect for conscientious judgement in health care.

England's Life of Paradox

England's Life of Paradox

The Constitutional Struggle for Religious Freedom: A Comparative Study of India and Indonesia

Constitutions tend to regulate the relationship between religious and state authorities. Before the rise of the modern state, it was difficult to make proper distinctions between law, religion and morality. With the emergence of Western liberalism, the concept of democracy and secularism gained newfound attention, becoming ingrained and in tune with modern constitutional frameworks. Establishing the relationship between state and religion is a thorny issue for constitution-makers. Opponents of constitutional recognition of religion view religion as a private matter, relating to personal beliefs and conscience. This paper studies the comparative constitutional frameworks of India and Indonesia in relation to the right to religious freedom. As vibrant democracies comprised of ethnically diverse populations, both India and Indonesia grapple with issues concerning religious majorities and minorities. In India, Hindus are the majority, then Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and Buddhists; whereas in Indonesia, Muslims are the majority, then Christians, Hindus and Buddhists. Both India and Indonesia have ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The judgments of the constitutional courts in these countries have prompted constitutional law scholars to analyze the status of constitutionally recognized freedom of religion and its enforceability. This article first studies the relationship between state and religion in the contemporary sphere, thereby engaging in a comparative study of the formation of constitutional provisions in relation to religious freedom in India and Indonesia. Second, it aims to establish the importance of religious freedom within a constitutional framework. Third, it will discuss the issues surrounding recognition and enforcement of religious freedom in India and Indonesia, as well as providing an analysis from the perspective of majoritarianism and religious intolerance. Fourth, it will analyze landmark judgments of the constitutional courts of India and Indonesia in formulating and establishing the basic tenets of religious freedoms in the two nations. The role of the judiciary and governmental institutions in dealing with issues of religious freedom remains a central question in democratic countries such as India and Indonesia. Keeping in mind the need for a more holistic study and contributing to the literature in this area, the authors will present a comparative analysis of religious freedom in both these nations for nuanced understanding of religious rights and their interplay with the respective constitutions.

The Bildung Rose

The world is becoming more complex and local decisions may have global impact. To grasp these complexities, education must provide the ability to see the full picture, to approach decision making and professional as well as individual choices from several perspectives, and it must promote the development of the moral courage to think and act according to personal conscience. Bildung can be defined as the combination of knowledge about the world and the emotional and moral to engage and take responsibility. The Bildung Rose is a heuristic model that depicts society as consisting of seven domains: Production, Technology, Aesthetics, Power, Science, Narrative, and Ethics. The purpose of this article is to introduce the Bildung Rose as a tool for addressing, grasping, and taking responsibility for society. Bildung is the combination of education and moral and emotional development; the cultivation and development of personal character, autonomy, and sense of responsibility. In order to thrive in one’s society, to be an active and engaged citizen, and to see society from a system’s perspective, one needs to understand some of all seven domains; deep knowledge in one domain is professionally crucial, but the complexity of the world and of most jobs demands that individuals can contextualize decision making into a wider societal context. This article presents the Bildung Rose, explores the universality of the model, and suggests how it can be practically applied both at the macro-level when designing educational systems and organizations, at the meso level when developing programs, and at the micro-level when educating or making decisions. The model as of yet is a sketch and a heuristic model that requires further examinations and exploration.