Whether it’s on a test, during a sports game or on a significant other, everyone knows cheating is wrong. Yet plenty of people continue to do it. Why? Because the definition of cheating has become a personal one.

Recently, New York Times writer David Brooks reacted to a new book called “Lost in Transition: The Dark Side of Emerging Adulthood,” which claims that young adults in our society have difficulties responding to questions of morality. These young adults explained that moral choices are based on the individual, a claim with which I agree. Mr. Brooks doesn’t approve of this change, as seen in his article “If It Feels Right.”

Brooks suggests that young people today aren’t educated enough to form actual opinions about moral issues. He disapproves with those interviewed who state that questions of morality need to be answered based on the individual situation. Brooks believes people need to have clear-cut answers regardless of the situation, whereas young people prefer to go with what “feels right” at the time.  I will admit to falling into the latter category.

In our society people are too quick to judge. They are unwilling to learn the details of a particular situation. This quickness to judge happens a lot with the older generations: once they hear of something considered morally wrong by society’s standards, they tend to make judgments without the details.

Brooks does not even believe young people can properly understand and respond to questions of morality. In our defense, I don’t believe that we young people lack the proper vocabulary to express our thoughts on certain moral issues; I feel we’re more open-minded. We prefer to look at individual circumstances rather than make broad overall assumptions because we don’t want to judge too quickly. We don’t want to make judgments because we want to be more accepting.

Maybe the desire to be more accepting seems too lenient, but today’s world is changing. Individuals are becoming more vocal, especially through digital media. The ideas of our elders may have worked before, but now we are just trying to keep up with the changes that are happening around us. Our use of technology is one of the major differences between our generation and the older generation. The Internet allows us to access a lot more information, which in turn might be the reason we feel the need to individualize a situation. There is no moral scenario that will be exactly similar to another.

We do, however, know the difference between what is bad and what is downright evil. We don’t sympathize with murderers or rapists. But when it comes to the moral slip-ups that other people make, we prefer to hear the details before we label a situation as right or wrong. We’re not uneducated; we tend to be more emotional rather than critical and we shouldn’t be patronized for that.

The world is changing in the sense that there is a lot more acceptance and equality than there was in the past. Something like gay rights could’ve been considered morally wrong in the past, but a lot of people believe gay rights is wrong because they’ve been told it’s wrong, without any reasoning behind it. This is where personal opinion needs to come in. We can’t base our beliefs on what other people say is right, we need to have our own voice, and that’s what the young people interviewed for this book were trying to say. It is not our place to say what someone else did was wrong if we are not involved in that situation.

What if we choose to make a decision off what feels right? If it is our own personal dilemma, the choice we make shouldn’t matter to the people outside of our situation. It’s not like young people are running around doing anything threatening or harmful; we’re just taking a different approach.

Maybe Brooks is right to say that as we get older this “method” of individualizing moral decision-making will fade out and we’ll see the bigger overall picture. But for now, it can be more of a trial and error approach. I see no problem with going with what “feels right,” because that is what helps us learn what we believe is right and wrong. It’s a part of the process of growing up. Every generation is going to be different, and ours has chosen to change the definition of morality.

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