Assignment: Does true loyalty require unconditional support? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
True loyalty does not always mean unconditional support of a group, person or a nation. Loyalty is one of the most important values that all people must have. But what does loyalty entail for a person. Does it mean that a person should do whatever a group or another person tells him just because he is compelled by his extreme sense of loyalty to that group or person? Or should the person act in the group’s best interest? There are many examples in history where people have been compelled to do things just because of their sense of loyalty.
Blind loyalty is never right. A man called Jones in the 1980’s led a group of his loyal followers to a place he called ‘Jones town’ in South America. Soon these people started wielding weapons and started killing people on Jones’s orders. None of them stood up to him; ultimately it led to their demise in one of the world’s worst genocides. As we can see that blind loyalty in not always good as this let to the macabre massacre of people just because of one man’s whims. Loyalty is not always to a country or a group. Sometimes we are loyal to the people around us, like our friends and family.
Friendship is one of the strongest bonds between two people. And loyalty plays a major part in this relationship; one must be truly loyal to a friend. What is true loyalty? My friend had a habit of always being whimsical and jocular; this sometimes gets him in trouble. One day he got into a fight with a senior and it turned violent. Ultimately both he and the senior got sent to the principal’s office. This is where I was asked about who started the fight as I was a witness to all of the violence. I knew who started it. It was my friend but should I tell this to the principal? I had to make a decision, do I be a loyal friend and tell a lie or listen to my mind telling me to tell the truth. I finally ended up getting my friend in trouble for the fight. But after this incident did I actually realize the true meaning of loyalty.
Loyalty does not always mean staying by your friend’s side whatever the case may be. Rather is means that you have to think what is in the best interest of your friend. If I had lied my friend would forever do this and never be contrite about his actions or behavior. By telling the truth I made sure that my friend would change his ways and improve upon himself. By this we learn that loyalty has multiple facets to it. Loyalty plays an integral part in life of a soldier, in which he has to be extremely loyal to his country, sometimes even putting his life on the line for the greater good. But this doesn’t meant that the soldier has to follow orders which may be against all moral fibers in his body, like taking part in a genocide or an invasion of a non hostile country. Loyalty has to be something which makes someone work selflessly for a greater good.
Loyalty will always be one of the most important values a human being can posses. But we need to always think about what we do in the name of being loyal. Are we acting as protectors of our country’s borders by being a soldier or are acting as mass murders who invaded a country. Do we always help a friend even if he is wrong? I do not think so rather we should point out his mistakes and make sure that he changes his or her ways. Loyalty may mean different thing to different people but we just have to make sure that whatever we do in the name of loyalty is for the betterment of a person or a nation.