ISSUE235

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TOPIC: ISSUE235 - "Most people are taught that loyalty is a virtue. But loyalty-whether to one's friends, to one's school or place of employment, or to any institution-is all too often a destructive rather than a positive force."



As most of us have experienced, teachers ranging from primary school to university or college are keeping teaching us to be loyal and sincere as a kind friend, a good student, a competent employee, or a loyal scholar. Unfortunately, we may find that this used-to-be nice virtue turns out to be destructive sometimes, while today's society is becoming more and more complex. But this fact cannot weaken my belief that loyalty is more positive than destructive.



Turn to history, large quantities of failure of a whole country or race resulted from betrayal, while a great number of success was achieved by loyal peoples . To illustrate this assertion, I would like to quote the historical events that happened in ancient China, when the King dynasty wanted to set its foot onto the territory of the Song dynasty. But thanks to the steadfast general, Fei Yue's struggle, Song's royal court had the chance to last for relatively longer time under the threat of the powerful King until the falsehearted Hui Qin, another official in Song, framed Yue up and gave away the national secret to the enemy. From this, we can see how important loyalty is to the country, and how dangerous betrayal can be.



However, many people should disagree on the assertion above, since they can raise some contradictory situations when disadvantages of loyalty overwhelm the advantages. Like, if your friend is going to commit terrorism and askes for your help, would you lend him a hand out of loyalty? And as a scientist, what would you do if you discovered a new effective chemical that could cure AIDS, which would save thousands of victims in other poor countries, but your country made a objection, for the purpose of driving up the chemical's price to make profits, not considering whether the poor countries could afford to? Take the first case as example, once you choose to be a nice friend, the cost it takes can be the deaths of hundreds of innocent citizens or the most important leader of the whole county. Now, do you stick to the idea that loyalty is still a positive virtue rather than a destructive one?



My answer is still " Yes" , for I understand loyalty in those cases in another way. Loyalty is not limited in the realm of friendship, patriotism or others. Furthermore, one can also be loyal to god and act for achieving the greatest goods for the greatest number. Accordingly, we have reason to refuse our friend and present the synthesis method to the developing countries for free in the situations mentioned above, out of loyalty to the god instead of narrow loyalty to a friend or a country. In this way, we can still encourage loyalty.



As far as I can see, the most essential and fundamental loyalty is to god, which means one should do the right thing for the vast majority's sake. Specifically, there is nothing wrong for you to be a nice friend being loyal to both your friend and god, when his requirement is harmless; otherwise, you should abandon the narrow loyalty and turn to the basic loyalty, since it is beneficial for the most.