� Long Time No Post | Main | Skills Based Promotion �
October 22, 2000
Ethical Fundamentalists
i think of ethics as the practical behavior of an individual who is attempting to be consistant to a philosophy. the question of whether an act is ethical, then, depends on if its relationship to a consistently applied policy or philosophy or belief. in this way, lying to the nazi is not ethical to the nazi, but is ethical to the enemies of nazis.
what's difficult about ethics in our society is that we improperly assume a universal philosophy or an irreconcilable difference of philosophies, or even a complete lack of philosophy on the part of the other party. so as a result of the reasonable goal of avoiding conflict, we lie or tolerate things that disgust us. this is unethical behavior but it is, for the moment, socially acceptable. i tend to believe that it requires that an individual cultivate a measure of skill, courage and clarity in order to be consistently ethical.
so in direct response to the question. i believe that most americans desire to be ethical fundamentalists, yet may lack the skill, courage or clarity to be true. it is certainly no easy task, but i don't necessarily see a moral fault in people who fail to be ethical. if they fail to *try* to be ethical - if they reject their responsibility to be ethical or have no moral compass which bears any resemblance to that of civil society, then that is a different matter. i do wonder how many people, given the level of uncivility, lying and false tolerance have given up on being responsible to their own sense of ethics.
Posted by mbowen at October 22, 2000 09:04 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.visioncircle.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/3499