Duty

The concept of duty is a trivial idea which from person to person is conflicting, which suggests that
there is no solid definition of what duty truly is. Whether duty is to protect an individual’s family or
to secure a healthy future can be a few definitions in a complicated junction of beliefs. It may seem
pointless even to try to extract a true definition of such an abstract concept since whatever may be
derived will always be irregular from what a second derision would create. However, I do believe
that it is entirely possible that duty should not be considered by what it is but the importance we
hold it to and as such how far we are willing to go in order to protect what we consider to be our
duty, and this is where I start.

In its essence duty is the assertion of certain ideals over others which therefore would be prioritised
by the individual throughout their daily life. These ideals can simply be to always say hello to a
friendly face or be as grand to never give in to foul play. Equally a duty could be created by the
individual as a response to a stimulus in their day to day lives or could be inherited from previous
generations. A well-established duty which has been inherited throughout humanity is the duty to
morality: to maintain to civil actions and to not cause harm whether physical or mental. This is
usually simplified by considering the duty as doing the right thing, or to avoid the wrong move, and
as such is often forgotten as a duty which is not necessary for our survival and yet exists by our
generative inheritance. Although, if this is the case then it brings into question whether a sense of
duty is a construct of our imaginations or whether it is a part of our mentality and so must exist in
order to prevent thoughts which may cause harm to ones person. Both of these options hold truth
as we live our lives as individuals and so have no need to care for our race members, which indicates
that we could do what we wanted without our being damaged, but at the same time our
development into the dominant species upon our planet was based on our ability to understand and
work together and so this duty may have been our only reason for succeeding to thrive. By taking
this as an example, we can use it to understand that duty could be either a product of protecting the
individual or as a belief which grew in popularity.

Even through this subjective consideration may already make it difficult to extrapolate an answer to
what is duty, we must also note that ones own duty can also be conflicting to others duty, which
begs the question of whether possessing a set of duties is a way of preventing individualism in favour
of grouping such individuals into a specific set. This is true in religion. Many with religious belief
would consider a duty of theirs to be faithful to their religion and follow the teaching which
assimilate that religion. By doing this the person would be among others of that religion who share a
common duty and so be linked by its unity. However, with multiple religious practices in play this can
cause confusion, which can lead to violence and mistreatment of individuals if they are believed to
be of that group. A good example of this is in the American West during the development of
America. The groups who would face confrontations were the Native Americans who had populated
America first and the Americans to the East who were the settlers to the new land. The Native
Americans’ beliefs were that mother nature protected them and so that in reciprocation they should
protect her. In modern understanding of the effects of industrial living on the planet this seems true,
as if our planet deteriorates then we will deteriorate with it. However, the predominantly white
Americans who had settled in the East saw America as an opportunity to develop a nation, using the
earth for their purposes. The American Government went so far as to promote “Manifest Destiny”
which stated that it was the American settler’s God-given right to settle across the west of America
as they had done in the East. Among other disagreements such as the polygamy of the Native
Americans and the reservations posed by the American settlers, eventually battles occurred between
the two sides and ended with the crushing of the Indian way of life.
This treatment of the Native Americans was immoral and would be frowned upon by us who look
upon it now from an unbiased stance. However, for the American settlers it was their belief that this
was what had to occur and therefore they had full right to do what they did in order to fulfil their
duty to their own beliefs, which is also true for the Native Americans’ response. What this says about
duty is that although both these groups were defined by a common set of duties which became their
religion, it was these duties which caused the fighting and the destruction of one set of duties in
favour of another. It may seem that this is the truth of the question posed but there is a temporality
to duty. At the time, the Native American beliefs had been crushed and there was one dominant
belief, but not the only one. As of today in our international world America is now diverse in it’s
beliefs, with some being religions and others just being a sense of style: all of which create groups
but are individual in a world of groups, all interconnected and fluid to develop and dissipate. Groups
do exist but they are made of individuals who are shaping their duties to certain definable
characteristics.

A sense of duty is present in every conscious being, effecting their character which in turn will affect
their future. But there is much difference in what we would consider general duties and what past
eras would see them to be. Duties are often seen to be a form of retaliation against a stimulus in
their environment which can have dramatic effects to a society. Taking this into account, it does beg
the question that if duty can change across time by startling amounts whether it is really duty
changing or if there is another concept which at some point was replaced with what we know as
Duty. This would mean that the development of society was not so much as growth but as a
replacement of the old with the new. This can be seen by considering the epic poem by Homer, the
Iliad. The Iliad is set in ancient Greece and would have been created for a similar audience. The epic
itself is a mild satyr of war and related glory, but it also has a strict definition of what a hero was. A
Homeric hero (as seen in Homer’s epics) is defined by their duty to follow the rulings of the Homeric
code. This code is extensive, with examples such as how heroes should be courageous which we
would recognise today. But at the same time heroes must fight for their own glory and that of their
communities and families. The effect of this is that in the epic heroes do not appear to consider
morality in their actions but instead looks for kleos, an immortality through fame for their actions. As
well as this they would consider time (respect in the eyes of others) as a priority, which in the poem
is the cause of the Greeks troubles through the quarrel between Agamemnon and Achilles which is
all over how the crowd viewed them. This what we would consider to be selfish thinking was prized
by ancient Greek society and so appears extremely different to the society we know today. This
might suggest that there definition of duty is so different to what we know that they are not the
same. However, Homer was challenging this belief in the Homeric code which glorified war. This
notion of challenging the beliefs for a change is still present today, and so we can say that change is
only natural and so our duties are also always changing, but always sharing in the most basic ideals
that we must aim for the best, by changing where we must.

Consideration to all these thoughts of what duty truly is makes it more evident than ever that what
duty is will never be easy to describe, or even possible to explain. But it is the presence of duty
which must be admired and considered as our duties are both what defines us and what destroys us,
a contradiction of what we believe and what we are told to believe. But what we know is that duty is
essential to the human race and whatever extent it goes to we must never neglect our duty as it
makes up our past, our present and our future, for better and for worse. My duty is for the best.