7 Threats to Ethics

(Reflection Paper)

Like many other things there are always threats to something, everything can be
damaged by other things but there are always a safe haven for those things. For
example there are many threats to a successful career like lack of focus, you cannot be
successful if you don’t focus enough on your goals. The anger we feel, It hits us in
moments when we least expect it, starting with stress, leading to frustration, then to a
potential explosion. In a flash, anger can destroy relationships and ruin careers. The
Status Quo, most people go with the flow, don’t like to rock the boat, and want to keep
things as-is. And that’s a problem. Life isn’t about laying low, it’s about being bold and
having an impact. As civil people we always tend to follow the social structure even
when that same structure makes us collapse. Apathy, this strikes us in stealth ways
and stops us from doing big things. Instead, the key is to take action. We always act as
we don’t care because of the lack of enthusiasm which holds us back from success.
Technology Addiction. Many people are so hooked to their devices they’re losing out
on key moments of life. Nothing can replace face-to-face listening, sharing, and
collaboration. As the members of generation z we are always facing our gadgets not
being aware that be are becoming addicted this can be a setback to achieving what we
want. Selfishness. This one creeps into our lives and before long, we’re in it just for
ourselves. And lastly Arrogance. Being the smartest guy in the room isn’t what it used
to be. While it once impressed, now it annoys. If we are arrogant other people might
stray away from us and we can’t ask for their help. These are the threats to a
successful career.
But as the saying goes there is another side to every story. Lack of focus can
sometimes help you relax, be a stress relief, and think of other ideas. Your anger can
be channeled to do other things and also make you focus on achieving your goals.
Staying with the status quo can make you feel safe and not susceptible to major
changes. Apathy can make you ignore irrelevant things and make you understand what
matters to you. Then technology can make a big difference around the world it may be
addicting but it can maximize the opportunities for your successful career. Selfishness
can make you think about yourself, what you lack, what you need and other things you
can change about yourself. And lastly the arrogance the fear of failure can propel you
to your successful career, fear of failure can drive you to your maximum potential and
can even make you do something you think is impossible. Not everything you think is a
threat will always be a threat. Just look for the right perspective and you can see the
other side that can help you.
In Ethics there are also threats that can damage the ethical spectrum. First is
the death of God, the death of God make us ask questions like “Is there a God?” Or “is
God dead, as Nietzsche declared?” “Would people be ethical either way?” “Why are
people ever ethical at all?” The phrase to sum up the consequences that the Age of
Enlightenment had on the centrality of the concept of God. The Enlightenment had
brought about the triumph of scientific rationality over sacred revelation; the rise of
philosophical materialism and Naturalism that to all intents and purposes had
dispensed with the belief in or role of God in human affairs and the destiny of the
world. According to Nietzsche. "When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the
right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-
evident ... By breaking one main concept out of Christianity, the faith in God, one
breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands." This death of God will
lead not only to the rejection of a belief of cosmic or physical order but also to a
rejection of absolute values themselves – to the rejection of belief in an objective and
universal moral law, binding upon all individuals. In this manner, the loss of an
absolute basis for morality leads to nihilism. This nihilism is that for which Nietzsche
worked to find a solution by re-evaluating the foundations of human values. But it is
believed that there could be positive new possibilities for humans without God.
Relinquishing the belief in God opens the way for human creative abilities to fully
develop. The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way, so human
beings might stop turning their eyes toward a supernatural realm and begin to
acknowledge the value of this world. That “Death of God” can also be a salvation to
humanity. The Death of God then is not a threat but a necessity, a "clearing of the
ground" if you will, to revealing ethics, Plato says that: “Perhaps there cannot be laws
without a lawgiver” ”But ethical laws cannot be arbitrary whims of personalized gods”
”Maybe instead we can make our own laws”
Second is relativism which says that “One person’s sin is another’s salvation.”
and makes us ask questions like, is it ok to kill one person in order to save five? Is
there anything that’s always right or always wrong in every scenario, no matter what?
The rules may be made in different ways at different times by different groups of
people. There is no one/only way. So if we are looking for a universal ethics then could
be seen "imposing" parochial Western standards in the name of universal human
rights. And this is intolerant of other groups of people. The other way to look at this is
it’s not a question of "imposing" anything. It is a question of cooperating with the
oppressed and supporting their emancipation. The people on top (shamans, Brahmin,
priests, elders) are making the rules and the people on the bottom don’t get a say in
anything. Relativism taken as far as possible becomes subjectivism: or every individual
has their own opinion. The issue with this line of discussion is that may bring about "it's
your assessment" this redundancy is a discussion plug. Instead of halting the
discussion with a repetition the following piece of the discussion ought to be "this is my
assessment, these are my purposes behind it, and on the off chance that you have
reasons against it, and at that point we need to take a gander at them." If the
assessment is to be dismissed then the following move would be "No you shouldn't feel
that and this is the motivation behind why….”
Third is Egoism, the philosophy concerned with the role of the self, or ego, as
the motivation and goal of one's own action. Asking the question do people act
ethically because it’s the right thing to do, or do they do it because it feels good?
Enlightened self-interest, a philosophy in ethics which states that persons who act to
further the interests of others (or the interests of the group or groups to which they
belong), ultimately serve their own self-interest. This means that egoism makes a
person selfish. Ethical egoism claims that I morally ought to perform some action if and
only if, and because, performing that action maximizes my self-interest. One might, for
example, claim that one ought to achieve a certain level of welfare, but that there is no
requirement to achieve more. Ethical egoism might also apply to things other than acts,
such as rules or character traits. Since these variants are uncommon, and the
arguments for and against them are largely the same as those concerning the standard
version, I set them aside. One issue concerns how much ethical egoism differs in
content from standard moral theories. It might appear that it differs a great deal. After
all, moral theories such as Kantianism, utilitarianism, and common-sense morality
require that an agent give weight to the interests of others. They sometimes require
uncompensated sacrifices, particularly when the loss to the agent is small and the gain
to others is large. The issue of what makes for a moral theory is contentious. An ethical
egoist could challenge whatever constraint is deployed against her. But a neater reply
is to move to rational egoism, which makes claims about what one has reason to do,
ignoring the topic of what is morally right. This gets at what ethical egoists intend, while
skirting the issue of constraints on moral theories. After all, few if any ethical egoists
think of egoism as giving the correct content of morality, while also thinking that what
they have most reason to do is determined by some non-egoist consideration. One
could then, if one wished, argue for ethical egoism from rational egoism and the
plausible claim that the best moral theory must tell me what I have most reason to do.
Fourth is Evolution which states that all species are related and gradually
change over time, which begs the question What if being good has nothing to do with
goodness, rightness or wrongness, and everything to do with our biology? Evolutionary
ethics is a field of inquiry that explores how evolutionary theory might bear on our
understanding of ethics or morality. The most widely accepted form of evolutionary
ethics is descriptive evolutionary ethics. Descriptive evolutionary ethics seeks to
explain various kinds of moral phenomena wholly or partly in genetic terms. Ethical
topics addressed include altruistic behaviors, conservation ethics, an innate sense of
fairness, a capacity for normative guidance, feelings of kindness or love, self-sacrifice,
incest-avoidance, parental care, in-group loyalty, monogamy, feelings related to
competitiveness and retribution, moral "cheating," and hypocrisy. More sophisticated
forms of normative evolutionary ethics need not commit either the naturalistic fallacy or
the is-ought fallacy. But all varieties of normative evolutionary ethics face the difficult
challenge of explaining how evolutionary facts can have normative authority for rational
agents. "Regardless of why one has a given trait, the question for a rational agent is
always: is it right for me to exercise it, or should I instead renounce and resist it as far
as I am able?" So we should reject realism and instead embrace some antirealist view
that allows for rationally justified moral beliefs.
Fifth is Determinism & Futility, determinism means that all events are completely
determined by previously existing causes and futility means useless or pointless. And
begs the question what if everyone everywhere decided to be a drug addict, and just
blamed it on society? Some recent studies have suggested that belief in determinism
tends to undermine moral motivation: subjects who are given determinist texts to read
become more likely to cheat or engage in vindictive behavior. One possible explanation
is that people are natural incompatibilists, so that convincing them of determinism
undermines their belief that they are morally responsible. I suggest a different
explanation, and in doing so try to shed some light on the phenomenology of free will. I
contend that one aspect of the phenomenology is our impression that maintaining a
resolution requires effort—an impression well supported by a range of psychological
data. Determinism can easily be interpreted as showing that such effort will be futile: in
effect determinism is conflated with fatalism, in a way that is reminiscent of the Lazy
argument used against the Stoics. If this interpretation is right, it explains how belief in
determinism undermines moral motivation without needing to attribute sophisticated
incompatibilist beliefs to subjects; it works by undermining subjects' self-efficacy. It
also provides indirect support for the contention that this is one of the sources of the
phenomenology of free will.

Sixth are Unreasonable demands, A request could be unreasonable because it

violates your, or generally held, ethics or values. When someone makes what you feel
is an unreasonable request, it's tempting to agree to it, without even thinking, because
you feel pressured. Or, you might say "no" to something that is actually a completely
reasonable request. This is why it's important to know how to think about requests, and
decide if they are, actually, unreasonable. First, identify why it feels unreasonable. Is it
because you don't have time, or because it's outside your area of responsibility, or
because you won't be compensated for the extra work, or because you don't have the
resources or expertise? Your emotions provide an important clue here. When someone
makes a request that leaves you feeling resentful or uncomfortable, then you need to
look at the request and ask yourself why it seems unreasonable. Ask yourself if it is
genuinely unreasonable, or do you simply not have the resources – material, financial
or time-related – to deliver on an otherwise reasonable request? These request might
let you break your ethical code but maybe it’s for the better.
And lastly False Consciousness it is a term used by sociologists to describe
ways in which material, ideological, and institutional processes are said to mislead
members of the proletariat and other class actors within capitalist societies, concealing
the exploitation intrinsic to the social relations between classes. False consciousness
denotes people’s inability to recognize inequality, oppression, and exploitation in a
capitalist society because of the prevalence within it of views that naturalize and
legitimize the existence of social classes. Like the threats to your successful career,
sometimes what you think holds you back can be what lifts you up. As well as in ethics,
threats they may seem but they can maximize our ethical ways.

Ferreras, Lawrence Emmanuel A.

BSME 3-4