Beliefs

Nope, not Santa, not Jesus or Mohammedan. The things that one believes in on a day to day basis. Maybe one or two of those three I just named helped inform some people's belief systems, but do they really carry one through the day?

I have been studying a calendar of possible university courses and ethics pops up as the title or part of the title for many of the courses. I joined a group on one of the social media services to discuss 'ethics'. Personally, I'm finding that too many people are trying too hard to have one exact definition.

How many ask themselves in any given situation, what is the right thing to do? The best thing to do, not only for myself, but possibly my family, my organisation, my community? Ad infinitum. Better still, if there is conflict between outcomes for say organisation or community, which way will I turn?

Someone posed the question "is it possible for a person to develop their own creed of what is right and wrong totally separate from that of the person's society?" My answer is no because if that person is part of a group, any group, that person's decisions are going to be informed by what was learned through group contact. It's inevitable. Nevertheless, that person can form a creed or set of personal ethics by which he or she lives life. Just the reality is, it will be influenced by others. I have no doubt that the biggest influence on my own ethical behaviour to this day is still my parents and I am certain that love me as much as they might, if they were aware of some of the things I have done 'unethically' in my life, they would be sorely disappointed in me. I do not profess nor pretend to be the harbinger or ideal of what ethical, principled or moral behaviour should be. I will say however, in my defense, that I do not gossip, I do not "backstab" friends and I submit to the consequences of my own action. I live as much as I possibly can by my own creed and have withstood the sometimes less than favorable responses for having done so. If my personal beliefs wander away from the law of the land, I will stick with my beliefs and if it causes me legal troubles, I accept that. Does that do me any good? It doesn't keep me awake nights.

When I consider how our legal system has developed and where our laws come from, I'm quite satisfied with myself for taking this stance. Canada's system is supposed to try to do everything it can to address the wants, demands, and desires of as many of it's population as possible. Democracy is based on the idea that the majority is always right. Spare me. The majority are roped in to voting in to power the best campaigner and/or somebody who supposedly stands for the same principles the person marking the x does. As often as not, in our elections, a vote for one candidate or party is simply a vote against another. This is not a group of people I want to have doing my thinking for me about right and wrong.

So, since I clearly have little interest in what legal behaviour has to do with ethical behavioiur, what is ethical behaviour? What should a person or group of people believe? Well, once upon a time, an organisation I worked for hired a man who, on his way into the interview, found ten dollars on the street. He went out of his way, before his interview, to get the money back to the rightful owner. We didn't know about it when we interviewed him, but that would have locked the job for him as far as i was concerned. It was no surprise to me that his integrity never once wavered, to my knowledge at least, the entire time he worked there. By the same token, another man who worked for that same organisation found his personal life being  unfairly --and possibly illegally--scrutinized by his employers. He went to bat for his rights and stood up to the person responsible. I was stuck in a position where I could do nothing to help him and watched as that person and several supporters did everything they could think of to try to get rid of him. He stood by what he believed was right until the day he resigned on his own terms and I have always admired him for that. In truth as much as I tried to help him from 'behind the scenes' my pleadings fell on deaf ears and I always wished I could do more for him. So those are just a couple of examples, I have others some bigger some smaller. I once worked through my lunch break and was quite hungry by midafternoon. I was in the staff kitchen area and noticed a sandwich in the refrigerator. Another employee was there getting herself coffee and I asked her if she knew who the sandwich belonged to. She said "well no, but if you're hungry why don't you just take it. Who'd know?" I responded, "I would" To me that is the essence of following one's ethics. Someone once said, 'the law is what you obey when someone is watching, your ethics are what you obey when no one is watching" I think it was Kant and I'm paraphrasing  but moving along.  I guess my question to anybody who thinks ethics/principles/morals...because I don't want to even bother with the conversation of where one ends and one begins...is this....do you do what you do because it's the right thing? or do you do what you do because you're sure you won't be found out? In honesty, I've done both in my life, I regret the latter, but being a pragmatist at heart  I simply try to mitigate and minimize the damage I might have done.

In hopes of bringing my case to some kind of rational closing, I find myself returning to the legal standpoing again. Someone once said, "The more corrupt a society, the more numerous it's laws" A lot of people don't want to believe that but I do. I believe it because people will either break laws or find new ways to debase themselves, thus creating a need for more laws, because of greed and fear. If it was not so, I suggest that we'd only need one law and all of our ethics could stem from it. You've probably seen or heard it before. "Do unto  others only as you would have them do unto you." All that is required is that everyone obeys it, good luck with that.