I noticed today that I have a large collection of hats that I wear quite frequently. I have a student hat, boyfriend hat, roommate hat, coworker hat, customer hat, manager hat, church hat, and even a grouchy brother hat. Some people even know when to approach/avoid me depending on what hat I’m wearing.

I have other hats too, and I’m probably not aware of most of them. I can subtly slip a hat on and off without myself even noticing. Other people can force a hat on me, and my hat can be taken away by others as well.

Sometimes I try to wear two different hats. This always results in disaster, because I feel myself becoming fragmented. One hat inevitably masks the influence of the other, and I begin to feel confused as to who I really am. I cannot make wise decisions while wearing two different hats.

Yet inevitably I am faced with these sorts of two-hat decisions. To make consistently wise decisions, do I force myself to wear only one hat at a time? Or do I consolidate my hats into a more manageable number — say… one?

I realized today that most of my problems in life happen for one big reason: I’m not being true to myself.

Have you ever wondered why a teenager is such an emotional roller coaster? It’s not the hormones. It’s the lack of self-identity. When a teenager does something, he doesn’t know why he’s doing it. He doesn’t know who he is.

I occasionally find the same thing happening to me. When I get frustrated with myself, it’s because I’m not doing things the way that I know I’m supposed to do them. I’m not being the person I’m supposed to be. I’m not living up to expectations of sorts, and it’s frustrating.

To loosely quote Shakespeare: to thine own self be true, and thou canst not be confused when looking in the mirror.

This article is the first of many articles written for my “Ethics in Business” course at Brigham Young University. I share them here with the hope that they may be useful to a wider audience.

Does morality depend on religion? People have avoided this question for centuries. If you say that morality DOES depend on religion, then do nonreligious people lack morals? But if you say the opposite — that morality doesn’t depend on religion — then what’s the point of having a religion anyway? Isn’t a religion something that gives you ‘morals’ to stand for?

The Divine Command Theory

The Divine Command Theory says that morality is essentially a religious decision. In his book Do the Right Thing, James Rachels explains that Divine Command Theory states that ‘morally right’ means ‘commanded by God’ and ‘morally wrong’ means ‘forbidden by God.’

This theory sounds good at face value. Yet in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks a compelling question: is conduct right because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right?

Searching through Christian scripture makes the issue more complicated. Not only does God give a lot of commandments — there are countless situations when God commands different things to different people (for an example of this in LDS scripture, compare 1 Ne 4:10-18 and Mosiah 13:21). Can some things be right at one time, yet wrong at another? How are we supposed to know?

Universal Principles

I believe the universe is governed by universal principles. If something is right, it’s right. If something is wrong, it’s wrong. God follows these rules when commanding us to do things. In fact, he helps us know what’s right when it’s impossible for us to know ourselves.

Saying that God obeys certain universal principles doesn’t diminish his authority or status. Rather, it explains that God has a rhyme and a reason for everything he asks of us. We’re not slaves to the fickle will of an overbearing monarch. We’re willful servants of a loving Heavenly Father that helps us follow universal principles.

Not Deontological Principles

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher with a rather large forehead, talked a lot about universal principles called “categorical imperatives.” These imperatives are principles that are “intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed in all, and by all, situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law.” Kant was all about universal principles to the very end of his life. His theories make up an ethical framework called deontology.

I don’t believe in universal principles the way that Kant does. As already shown earlier, God commands different things at different times, and sometimes those commandments can be contradictory. While a principle may be correct for us at a particular time, it might not be valid for everyone else at different times. Kant didn’t believe that — for him, the categorical imperatives were very black and white, no grays allowed.

The Original Dilemma

Yet these gray areas are what bring us back to the original dilemma. Does morality depend on religion? Only to the extent that a religion follows true, universal principles. Is it possible that a single religion could contain all of these principles, in one place? Of course.

We get chastised a lot here in the business school at BYU. For some pretty bad stuff, too.

Earlier this year, for example, we were reprimanded for being sexist towards women in our program. Apparently some chump told a fellow student that she’s taking the seat of a breadwinning man and that she has no right to be in the business school.

Isn’t that terrible? Yeah, we were all shocked to hear that one too.

But it’s not all about sexism, either. Just this week we were told that some companies won’t hire our students because we act like “ethical mavericks” in the workplace.

Apparently BYU grads frequently go out into the real world and feel they have to 1) solve ethical problems on their own without talking to others, and 2) impose their ethical standards on other people on the job. Although we’re highly qualified for the positions, companies say we bring along an extra dose of haughtiness that’s bitter for them to swallow.

So they avoid us altogether.

The scariest part is this: everyone in my program seems really nice. Yet if the stories are true, there’s some serious sedition going on behind the smiling eyes. Lots of two-faced people doing two-faced things. Anyone have some scarlet A’s handy?

Warning: this post contains spoilers from the season 5 finale of Lost.

In the season 5 finale of Lost, Jack Shepard faces an ethical dilemma. Daniel Faraday, a scientist on the island, told Jack of a plan that could possibly rewrite history and prevent Jack’s group from ever crashing on the island (you know, effectively reversing seasons 1 through 5 of the show). This is really attractive to Jack, because he could prevent a lot of suffering that (presumably) didn’t need to happen.

But here’s the clincher. Jack’s hot friend Kate thinks that Daniel’s plan is going to blow up the entire island and kill everyone once and for all.

Who is right? Jack has to make a snap decision. Yet he struggles because he’s faced with two right choices — fixing something that wasn’t his fault or leaving everything alone and finding another way.

Right versus right decisions.

Jack’s decision is similar to many of ours. We’re not always choosing between black and white, good and evil. And when we are, these choices are usually easy.

The most difficult decisions occur when we’re placed in situations where either choice is good. It seems that not even our consciences can reason through these dilemmas, because both are correct.

Do we give money to a charity or to a church? Which of two equally qualified job candidates do we hire? Do we tell a white lie to protect someone’s feelings or be honest with them to maintain our integrity?

Fortunately, we can navigate our way through almost any decision with three short (but not so easy) questions.

1. Who am I?

The first place of inspection should be yourself. What kind of a person are you? If you were a character in a movie, what would you expect yourself to do?

To use the previous example, when deciding to give money to a church or a charity, ask yourself if you’re a church person or a charity person. When making a decision between your career and your family, ask yourself whether you’re a career person or a family person.

The answer to this question doesn’t always come easily. But this type of introspection will give you a new perspective to grasp the problem more clearly.

2. Who do I want to become?

Still, it’s not enough to merely put yourself into this box or that. Maybe you’re not only a career person or only a family person. If you find your arms in two different shirts, you might be stuck in a quandary.

That’s when you ask yourself who you are trying to become. If you want to become an honest businessperson, perhaps you should refund the money that your client was overcharged. If you want to be a family person, perhaps you shouldn’t take the accounts that keep you at work late.

3. What would someone I love think about my choice?

If you’re a parent, how would your kid feel about your decision? I know it’s trite, but what would your mother say about your choice?

If your heart hasn’t been seared with a hot iron yet, this question will definitely crank up the heat.

Finally, allow the dilemma to define you.

At the end of the episode, Jack decides to follow Daniel’s plan. He decides that he’s going to be the hero that makes everything right. He defines himself with that final decision.

In the end, we see that Jack’s plan definitely blows something up — but is it the island? Or something completely different? We don’t know yet. An entire nation has been white-knuckling their TV remotes for months now. If you don’t believe me, go search Twitter.

But no matter what the ending of the story is, the above three questions work because they get at the heart of the problem. They tell you who you are and allow you to recognize how your decision changes that.

And here’s a surprise: when making right-versus-right choices, it often doesn’t matter what you choose in the end. Knowing who you are and staying true to what you want to become is most important. As Billy Shakespeare put it, “This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”