The Urgency of Conviction in Ethics Robin Duffee

We live in a complex world, fraught with moral quandaries and difficult dilemmas. How we navigate these decisions shapes our lives and ultimately defines our very character. As such, it is crucial that every person have a strong ethical center, a set of values that guides our approach in whatever situation. And it is equally crucial that these values are not warped by outside forces, but that they are unwavering and resolute in their conviction.

Personal ethics are shaped in a variety of ways from many different influences. One's upbringing, experiences, religion and countless other sources all can factor in to one's ethics. The result is that there are not a limited number of ethical rubrics, but rather a vast amount of unique sets of ethics, likely equal to the population of the Earth. There are a great many people, of course, whose ethical standards are somewhat lacking (a cynic would say that they are in the majority), but, in all likelihood, they are outnumbered by people with good ethics. These are people who do not steal, injure, or cheat: people who make a concerted effort to live an ethical life.

Yet, despite this supposed majority of ethical people, we still have wars, hatred, divisiveness and strife. The sheer amount of this discord is out of proportion with the truly unethical, and so we must assume that the so-called ethical people are partially at fault. This may seem paradoxical in nature at first glance, but let us examine the issue further.

It is by definition that everyone in our group of ethical people behave in ethical ways. Let us use, as an example, the act of killing no ethical person would kill another human being. Why, then,

Duffee 2 are there so many soldiers, religious fanatics, and patriots who kill in such large numbers? The vast majority of people (and thus soldiers) know that to kill is to do wrong. But people do not become soldiers solely to kill. They do it (in a volunteer army, at any rate) in service of something that they believe is greater than themselves. Herein lies the real problem: unethical acts, such as killing, are deemed to be acceptable if they are for something: for country, for God, for duty. And so we can see how quickly something as abhorrent as killing (which would be called murder in other contexts) becomes both rationalized and rational.

The issue, framed as such, becomes not a total lack of ethics, but a perversion of existing values. As noted above, this most often occurs when the cause is believed to be righteous and large in scale. Nationalism (along with regionalism and tribalism) and religion are the primary culprits, although they are not the only ones. Whatever the cause, however, it shows that a great many people are disposed to have their own personal ethics supplanted by those of the less ethical. And so it is of the utmost importance for each and every person to hold fast, to stand firm when it comes to what is right and what is wrong.

For every day, people are told to hate, to injure, to kill other human beings. Those who disobey, who stray from the cowed flock are often shunned and shamed, if not outright punished. When this happens, it is a dreary state of affairs, but it does not nothing to diminish the urgency of not only living ethically in one's personal life, but in all (and absolutely all) arenas. For a sense of ethics does nothing, in the end, without the conviction to support it. There are myriad examples of this throughout history: people who allow their ethics to be superseded by lesser versions. Overwhelmed by their duty to their chosen cause, they are sadly forgetting their greatest duty of all: to humanity itself.