This essay shows the author's opinion on the issue of the relationship between man and society. It is assumed that any person is fundamentally ethical, despite the fact that in real life he is in some kind of an intermediate point between the absolute goodness and absolute evil. This work may help the person who wants to improve his relations with the society.
Ethics and Morality
Ethics and morality are close subjects. Definitions of ethics and morality given by many dictionaries are similar or cross. Ethics includes the study and the use of standards of acceptable behavior. Social relations between people should be such that people can coexist happily. These relations should contribute to an evolving society but not degrading one.
In general, ethics and morality are synonymous. Ethics and morality are about internal ideas, convictions and manners with respect to other people. There are the virtues and common good that include honesty, kindness, justice and courage. Every person has similar qualities. It is a question of whether the person shows these qualities to other people or not. What is important is that one possess the qualities. Deep inside the individual guess that the virtues are the most valuable things in life. They are like a God's gift. Person can degrade himself and lose access to them. One can use these qualities in practice and make life better.
There is a slight difference in the use of the two subjects. Ethics usually is associated with principles and codes. Morality often is connected with the concepts of right and wrong. Ethics is closer to rationality and consciousness. Morality is nearer to the sensuality and subconsciousness. For instance, person does moral things according his own opinion or belief, he consciously adheres to an ethical principle. Ethics is more dynamic than morality. Ethics awakens and describes the morality. Antonyms to the word 'ethics' are corruption and immorality.
The word ethics comes from the Greek word ethos, originally meaning custom, habit. Morality derives from the Latin mores, plural form of singular mos, meaning manner, custom.
Universal Ethical Principle
There are a number of specialized ethical codes for various professions, including lawyers, doctors and businessmen, and corporations. They describe in details, in specific fields, what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, what can be done and what cannot be done, what should be encouraged and what should be discouraged. It could be enormous if detailed ethical codes for everyone would be made for all situations.
On the other hand, there are simple and universal ethical principles such as the Golden Rule: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself," or "One should not treat others in ways that one would not like to be treated."
The Golden Rule is very important and useful. It solves the problems of human values, good and harm. It can be applied conveniently to relations among people with a similar level of responsibility. But how can the Golden Rule be used directly by a parent who deals with a child or by a teacher who works with a student, by a legislator who tries to find a solution to reduce the inflation or by an individual who wants to find the optimal solution for an important social problem. He knows the values related to the problem. He has few ideas. But how can he make the choice?
Let us try to find a slightly detailed and, at the same time, a universal ethical principle in that sense that it covers everything and it is used by every human being. We will see later whether we can use this principle in real life where not every person follows ethics.
What is ethically right or wrong? When honest human beings start gathering into a creative group, how to rule the situation, how to make people integrate into it? One should do what is good for oneself and for others. One should do what is useful, advantageous or beneficial for oneself and others. It is wrong to steal from others or to work only for personal benefit. A case when a person sacrifices his own needs for others is clashing with the idea that the principle is common for all people.
In other words, one-way flow of values neither from society to man, nor from man to society is common connective principle. The only human actions that create a good both for self and for others provide a harmonious stable society.
At this time humanity has a lot of problems with how to stop depletion of the planet's resources. Therefore, ethics should consider not only relations between people, but also relations between people and the environment, including living and non-living things.
If two situations essentially differ only in the duration of resulting benefits we choose the longest one. It is very important to achieve long-term health, prosperity and pleasure, even if you need to make a lot of efforts. The right man will do hard exercise but not taking drags.
Formulation
One should do what is good for oneself and for all aspects of life, for all components of the world such as other people, groups, living and nonliving, spiritual and material as wide as possible and as long as possible.
...
Sorry, but this page is not finished yet. However, there is a full Russian version of the article. Google translator gives you a pretty realistic view of the article. Just copy the link https://sites.google.com/site/ethicalprinciple/home and paste it to https://translate.google.com/
Valerii Boldychev