Whatever Happened to Ethics?

We can’t avoid noticing the increase in lying, cover-ups, fake apologies, and a growing distrust of leaders in general. One of the more disturbing phenomena is how public figures make a statement that is recorded on video, then several months later say the direct opposite while denying there’s any contradiction, if they even notice. When it’s pointed out to them, they insist that either they never said the earlier statement or that there’s no conflict between the two. It’s our problem if we think there’s a problem. Probably we’re biased against them, or the system is rigged. This is easy fodder for comedians, but very troubling to those who remember other times when what you said publicly meant something because you said it publicly.

We now live in the “post-truth era.” Oxford Dictionary selected “post-truth” as 2016’s international word of the year, based on contentious elections in America and the U.K.

Post-truth is defined as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”¹⁰

Instead of coining a new word, what about those good old-fashioned words like lying, deceit, manipulation?

Also troubling is the frequent experience of leaders avoiding or denying there’s an issue, refusing to take action and then issuing moralistic statements about the issue that are designed to take pressure off of them while simultaneously inspiring us. And if anyone has made progress on the issue, leaders who were critics step forward to take all the credit.

Contradictions and falsehoods don’t matter anymore. Neither does evidence. When we try to hold people accountable for their inconsistencies and lies, they just brush us off.

How has this become possible?

It has become possible in the Age of Manufactured Identities because the only thing that is important is your approval rating at this present moment. Of course it’s fine to change positions if it gets you what you want. Of course you need to stay abreast of public opinion and respond to its shifts. Of course you can deny the existence of earlier statements when you said contradictory things because that persona is no longer relevant to the current scene. Of course it doesn’t matter what you said then because the smart politician gives people what they need to hear from their leader now.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

Socrates, Phaedo

It is so easy to refute reality when society sanctions identity creation as a finely honed skill and admires its shifting nature. Make up whatever is most convenient in the moment and do it well so your ratings improve. Blast it out on social media so that people will love you. If it lands, be more of that. If it fails to win approval, make up something else.

Ethics are rules for how to live together. Moral principles mediate our interactions by establishing expectations of how to behave. All spiritual traditions have a clear code of ethics so that people can grow and prosper as a community, restrain individual impulses, and together withstand challenges great and small. This is always the role of ethics, to bind together individuals in trustworthy relationships so we can stay together through the vicissitudes of life.

Ethics are how we behave when we decide we belong together.¹¹

Ethics are designed to serve us in community; they have no relevance to individuals who live in isolation or self-absorption, where there is no concern for others. Without ethics, there is no social coherence, no community resilience. Without ethics, it becomes a dog-eat-dog world. Such as many of us are now experiencing in this popularity culture.

Worrying about how others see you is very different from worrying about how others are doing. Self-focused individualism and ethics are direct opposites. And without ethical standards, what is the meaning of personal integrity?

Communities with a strong code of ethics can make decisions, judge actions, and hold one another accountable. Violations and code breaking are easy to identify. Punishments, even when barbaric in our eyes, are accepted because they are predefined by the code. In organizations, shared values reduce ambiguity, guide people in setting direction and goals, and make it easier to hold one another accountable for decisions and actions. They keep people together and moving in the same direction.

A culture that says we can be whomever we please forfeits these capacities. We are left groundless on the shifting sands of changing identities. There is no communal ground to stand on.

So nobody stands for anything.

Because they trust themselves, they have no need to convince others by deception.

Since their confidence has never deteriorated, they need not be fearful of others.

Chögyam Trungpa, Buddhist teacher

Western philosophy roughly divides ethics into three sorts¹²

The first, drawing on the work of Aristotle, holds that the virtues (such as justice, charity, and generosity) are dispositions to act in ways that benefit both the person possessing them and that person’s society.

The second, defended particularly by Kant, makes the concept of duty central to morality: humans are bound, from a knowledge of their duty as rational beings, to obey the categorical imperative to respect other rational beings.

Third, utilitarianism asserts that the guiding principle of conduct should be the greatest happiness or benefit the greatest number.