Ethics and Such

The concept of morality and ethics is surprisingly variable depending on their cultural settings. They seem to be relatively simple concepts on the surface. Treat people the way you want to be treated and aim to help one another. Simple, right? Well I guess researchers have studied morality and ethics and broken them down in various ways throughout the past few decades. Moral ethics is a concept I'd like to weigh in on tonight.

Moral ethics is broken down into 3 sub-ethics. Ethic of Autonomy, which aims to protect justice and individual rights, Ethic of Community, which focuses on an individual's interpersonal obligation within the social order and where things like group betrayal or failure to fulfill their social obligations are taken very seriously, and Ethic of Divinity, which is sort of a religious take on ethics, concerned with the so-called natural order of things and one's obligation to live according to the standards mandated by a higher power, usually God. Personally, my orientation is rooted most deeply in the Ethic of Autonomy, which is to be expected considering I'm from a WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic) society, which are characterized by high individualism. But unlike some of my previous posts may be implied, while I may be quite sympathetic and even theoretically preferential to the collectivist model most of the time, in this case I adamantly believe that the most effective of these three models is the Ethic of Autonomy. I am quite aware that all three are present universally in pretty much every culture there is, but the Ethic of Autonomy does appear to have the strongest influence of the three in the West and it has affected to me to a great deal. The way I look it at it is to ensure that you have a functioning, cohesive whole, you need to take care of and ensure the safety of all of its constituent components or individuals. I also believe that individual rights and freedoms are among the most basic and important parts of living as a human in a society. Ethic of Community is very important as well, but I think an Ethic of Autonomy is more important and required to being to properly focus on the group and the Ethic of Community. To me, the Ethic of Divinity makes very little sense. You act good because God commands it as such. Why not act good for the sake of being good, not because God tells you to or that you're afraid of his wrath? I guess that I'm against it because my views of ethics and morality are based on biology and evolution. I think that, as a species, we owe it to one another to behave civilly and help one another out for the end purpose of propagation of the species. Humans are social animals and we live in groups for support and protection. We need each other. So therefore, doesn't it only seem logical that we protect and support one another because it's the natural thing to do? Nature determined we need each other, so it only makes sense to act in line with what we evolved to do. Be good for the sake of being good, not because God said we should or that we'll go to Hell if we don't. I find that this view is related to the Ethic of Autonomy more strongly than the other two and that the Ethic of Autonomy will logically flow into the Ethic of Community.

And that's it for tonight!