If morals are an obligation than what exactly is obligating society and who is to say what is right or wrong? From the day we are born we have the option to move left or right, forward or backwards, look up or down. In most cases individuals make choices based upon logic and consequence, but not always. Members of a society are thought to have certain moral obligations to maintain harmony within the social order. Our government can only wish that citizens followed these “obligated” morals. Under the natural law theory morals and laws are linked together with an unbreakable bond, which means that all laws have to be moral. That does not mean that those who are immoral are breaking the law or that laws are formed only on morality. There is no one way to obligate morals when there are no absolute standards of right and wrong. According to ethical relativism these moral standards are changeable from circumstance to circumstance.

Many feel that incest is immoral and this act is illegal. However, a large number of people feel that homosexuality is immoral but homosexuality is not illegal. Choosing not to murder another is what some may think a moral obligation may be, but there are many people who murder. For instance, people may kill based upon the belief that the victim deserved death and they feel that the act of killing them keeps their own personal morals in tact. They would then be removing themselves from the so called “obligated morals” many speak of. Also, we must consider that in every culture morals differ significantly. There would be no way to set moral obligations in our society because of this variation of beliefs and differences and what we choose to see as right and wrong. Most Americans consider eating dogs to be immoral, but in the Middle East this is a common practice. Some areas of the Middle East believe that eating cows is immoral, but is consumed in massive amounts in the United States.

The social contract theory is just that, a theory. Utopia does not exist and there will probably never be a place where each person shares the exact beliefs and will hold true to them throughout their whole lives. There will always be those who do not obligate themselves to implied morals, and therefore we are not all obligated to follow morals chosen by a third party.

We all have the ability to form our own morals. Choosing between what we feel is right and wrong is not obligated because there can be no set standard to what is right and wrong. There are many ways governments can try to implement a foundation of what they feel to be right and wrong; however a utopia has yet to emerge.