Morals and Ethics

[SearchingforPeace]

That's YOU. Not them. Because morals are abstract, subjective, personal. Ethics are practical, shared principals of fairness. They're not interchangeable, they never have been, except for you.

Morals are not abstract. Did you not read the dictionary definition that I posted????? The concepts, per the dictionary, are synonyms and are interchangeable.

A code of "morals", a code of "conduct", and a code of "ethics" are the exact same thing. I fully understand that many, many people hate the word "morals" and hate the concept of morality.

A business adopting a code of ethics or code of conduct is adopting a code of morality. Such represents a restriction on behavior so that violations of said codes could be grounds for punishment.

In some areas, these codes have the force of law, such as the Rules of Professional Responsibility for lawyers. Such represents a legal restriction on behavior. But lawyers have their personal ethical code and quite often these do not match up. As such many lawyers see dishonesty as par for the course, even as it is a violation of the ethical rules.

So this is not about me or how I see things. It is exactly what it is. One either has a personal moral code or not. Not everyone does. And one can either act on the ethics they have or not. A person's ethics may or may align with those of groups with whom they associate.

Criminals often have their own moral codes. In many ways, they can be more moral than the typical business man.

Ethics are not about "fairness". Ethics are personal. Ethics are applying one's own morals.

An unethical business person might lie and cheat as they interact with others, going for the quick buck, but they would be unethical according to the standards that I personally judge. To themselves, they might see their behavior as completely ethical, according to their own code of morals.

Now, ethics and morals are shared only when they are backed by force of law or imposed by a group or employer. And even then, it is violating some law, commandment, or code.

I see fraud as morally wrong and unethical. But it is illegal because society has determined to make fraud a violation of the law.

Likewise, certain groups have decided to call people that oppose them morally wrong and try to shame them. Unless they get the force of law behind them, such efforts are just attempts to manipulate others, especially if those others do not share the same morals.

So, militant environmentalists can scream "Recycle!!!!!!!" but some people may take the used water bottle and thrown it in the garbage rather than the recycle bin. To the environmentalist, that may be a moral and ethical violation. To someone else, it is not a violation of their own ethics or morals.

Again, ethics comes from personal morality. And so, if someone feels like their employer is unethical and immoral, that person has a choice to either stay and work there or leave.

There is nothing fundamentally abstract about morals or ethics. Some people just have not taken the time to develop their own moral code. Most parents try to teach their children to understand morals and ethics. Once upon a time, most children where they were taught morals at church and school were taught in schools, but that has largely disappeared and society has suffered for it.

Traditionally, most people saw dishonesty as a moral and ethical failing. It seems this is less so today. Many seem to hold that lies are OK as long as they are for a good cause. And still others just don't believe that honesty matters at all.

Back to those federal government employees: they all have a choice. If they really feel Trump is an evil person that they can not work for, even if they are a park ranger for the Army Corps of Engineers at a lake, then the moral and ethical thing for them to do so quit.

If they really feel Trump is evil, but that they are really serving the federal government as a whole and not just the current president, then they can continue on until they are faced with a requirement that violates their morals and ethics and then quit.

Or they can just continue at their job knowing that for most federal employees, nothing much will change and they will never be required to do anything that violates their morality and ethics.

Again, I find this desire to divorce personal morality from personal ethics remarkable, but not really unexpected.

 

[Jaguar]

Ethics and morals relate to “right” and “wrong” conduct. While they are sometimes used interchangeably, they are different: ethics refer to rules provided by an external source, e.g., codes of conduct in workplaces or principles in religions. Morals refer to an individual's own principles regarding right and wrong.


Ethics vs Morals - Difference and Comparison | Diffen

If you can't understand something this simple, give it up.

 

[tkae.]

Morality is a social construct designed to establish norms for right and wrong that allow the society to function.

For that reason, it's a delicate balance. Outdated moral codes cause unnecessary prejudice. Moral codes that are too liberal risk destabilizing society.

Since I'm gay, I'll throw gay rights out there. It made sense for heterosexuality to be a moral standard when societies needed their populations, nobel/royal houses, or peasantry and working families to grow, with which homosexuality interferes. But now that we're at no possible risk of underpopulation and have outgrown royalty and nobility, there's no reason to continue to discriminate against homosexual behaviors. If anything, there's reason to discriminate against having too many children.

But this is a clear cut case, because we respect that we've let prejudice against LGBTQ+ persons to have gone on for too long. At the point that it's black and white enough for the scale to definitively shift, discrimination has already occurred.

A more gray example is age of consent. The argument for marriage and sexuality at 12 is that it used to be moral when life spans were shorter, and that we're biologically designed to reproduce in our teens. Society has moral prohibitions against those behaviors, since we've shifted to a cognitive age of consent rather than a biological age of consent. We updated the moral code, but there's a reasoning to the biological argument, since sex is a biological function and the urges are biological in nature. Plus, we culturally infantilize sexuality through airbrushing and cosmetics to make women seem younger, tapping into that biological side of sexuality, even though morality prohibits sex with people who are as young as we drive sexual representations towards. Then we don't understand where pedophiles get it wrong, and get repulsed the idea of fucking a 13 year old girl instead of a woman who looks 13.

There's also a paternalism towards telling people in their teens that we know what's best for them. Even if we do, and have good reasons for a cognitive age of consent, where is the basis for authority in discriminating against their ability to choose sexual partners until an arbitrary age of cognitive development?

To complicate that last part, 18 is the end of adolescence, right?

Wrong.

It's 25-26 for women, and 30 for men. That's when your brain stops growing. We just consider 18 to be a minimum age of cognitive consent since that's roughly the age where the prefrontal cortex has developed enough for there to be any kind of consistent ability to make decisions that are congruent with personal well-being. It's why the drinking age is higher than the age of consent, since drinking before 21 damages brain development.

All of this is getting complex, yes? Because it's a gray area.

Which gets back to the issue of a basic definition for morality. It's a standard that allows a society to function. If a royal family was okay with their only son not reproducing because he was gay, society would have a massive compromise to its ability to function (since a war would result for the throne). Now? Doesn't matter. On the other hand, marketing firms aren't willing to pass up sexuality as a selling point, so the moral age of consent is unclear. If it were more important to how society functioned, it would be very swiftly dealt with morally.

 

[ilikeitlikethat]

I wonder, do people say 'Walk a mile in my shoes' in countries that use kilometres?