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Handout 5
Morality and Ethics
Morality:
Morality is not the same as ethics! That's the first thing to get
through your head. Morality has to do with convention which means
that morality often is a majority rules kind of thing whereas
ethics is a set of beliefs arrived at through reflective equilibrium
and the application of various ethical principles. Hence, the moral
thing to do may not necessarily be the ethical thing to do. Morality
has to do with the acceptance of conventional wisdom whereas ethics
has to do with deciding on principles that may serve to guide morality
but are, in and of themselves, not necessarily part and parcel of
conventional morality. Here's an ethical principle: "The needs
of the majority outweigh the needs of the few" This is a classic
(if crude) utilitarian rule if you will and it holds true in many,
if not all, situations. Likewise, to say "it is our duty to treat
one another as equals" is another ethical principle based on
Kant's deontology and the Categorical Imperative he formulated e.g.,
"Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become a universal
law of nature.". It's not important you know what those words
mean or who Kant is, but it is very important to one's peace of mind
to know what counts as an ethical statement as opposed to a merely
moral pronouncement. Why is this important to us as bipolar folks?
Well, it has to do with what we believe to be the case and what we
know to be the case again. We covered this in [LINK] handout number
four. on believing and knowing. Let me see if I can make the import
of morality and ethics relevant to you as a bipolar individual who
may, at this very moment, be suffering the pangs of conscience due
to something you've said or done recently or in the past.
For example, conventional morality says that it is wrong to steal.
To believe this a truth serves us well until we are confronted with
a greater principle that conflicts with this. Suppose you're starving
and so you steal a loaf of bread and get caught; ought you to be sentenced
to prison for that theft? Which principle shall overrule the other?
The principle that comes into conflict with the fact that you stole
is the belief that human beings are entitled to basic human rights,
one of which is the right to have their basic needs met i.e., food,
shelter etc. In this situation we might say that the right to eat
trumps the moral injunction against stealing and most courts of law
would deal leniently with such an offender. That is a pretty simple
and clear cut example, but suppose you are caught being unfaithful
to your spouse during a bout of hypersexual mania? Ouch…this one is
bound to hurt and destined to dreg up tons of moral outrage on one
party's behalf or the other. So what is the moral principle that's
been broken in this example? Where does it issue from? Who verified
it and set it in stone like the 10 Commandments of which it is one.
In short, why do we accept it as unquestionable truth when it clearly
isn't so?
Most of us were likely raised with this bit of conventional wisdom
despite the fact that statistically speaking most of us will be unfaithful
to a significant other at sometime in our lives. The outcome for the
unfaithful one is a serious bout of self-derision
and guilt, but do we deserve that? If the truth is that most "normal"
people will be unfaithful at least once in their lives then why is
it we feel so deeply that we are more deserving of blame than the
statistics indicate we ought to feel? It's that old upbringing into
convention that dictates just how guilty we will feel and whether
we can get past it with a little damage or feel forced to forever
suffer terrible recriminations for what we've done. The truth is that
if you were raised in a Judeo-Christian home you've got a serious
strike against you when it comes to getting over this incident because
both of these religions revel in applying guilt, but the rest of the
world thinks little of it. To someone like me it is just a blip on
the moral screen, maybe not the best thing you could have done, but
hardly up there with kicking your dog or thinking war is justifiable
in my book.
So you were unfaithful…maybe even more than once…oh well…come clean
about it and let the significant other deal with it as they may. You've
a better chance of doing this if you don't think what you've done
is a mortal sin. Thinking it a sin stems from your background and
what morals you've taken as your own. If you haven't thought about
why you think X is a sin then now is the time to do so. A sin according
to what evidence and what tests? According to what book? Whose words
and beliefs? If they aren't your very own beliefs arrived at after
insistently thinking for yourself about such issues then think about
them now and throw out the ones that come to you through the social
milieu. What I'm trying to do here is get you to refuse to accept
any moral principle as your OWN until you've examined its truth value
very closely and held it up to the light of day against how those
who think differently than you look at it. You may be very surprised
to find that others think it a fairly minor transgression and immanently
forgivable. So when you are beating yourself up over this kind of
moral non-no, make sure you aren't accepting someone else's beliefs
as your own without deciding, yes, actually making an ethical decision
to follow that moral dictum as though you would have it applied to
everyone universally.
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