What is being ethical means? And why be ethical?
Ethics is generally juxtaposed as a conflict between self and others.
As part of our biological nature we humans, like any other creatures in this universe, are self-interested beings. To a greater extent our most immediate and primary concern remains to be our own self: feeding ourselves, taking care of our other physical, material, and psychological needs etc.
We are also a sort social being and historical evidences from across time and culture show that humans create their social environment and supporting institution to live together with their fellow beings. Essentially, humans do not live in isolation rather prefer and create condition for inclusive living with fellow beings. So, a sense of sharing with others and welfare of other co-beings is as fundamental to our existence as the concern for our own self.
The interest of the self does not necessarily come at the expense/cost /harm of the interest of others. Self interest can also be fulfilled without imposing any cost to others. The first step of being ethical or living ethically means being considerate to others as you are considerate to yourself. Again, being considerate to others is not necessarily ignoring your own self. However, there are situations when being considerate to others may be demanding to you.
Being ethical or living ethically simply means broadening our sense of self from me-you-all. This sort of broadening is best possible when individuals realise their interconnectedness to the entire universe of their existence. The apparent conflict between the self and others fade away with such broader understanding of our existence.
However, this consciousness of oneness with the universe is not a universal consciousness. Because there would always exit people who do not care for anyone else sometimes not even for themselves. There will be others who are more calculating and earn a living by taking advantage of others including the poor and the powerless. There are also people who are very far from acting on the basis of reasoning of any kind, even crudely self interested reasoning. So, no amount of reasoning and rational argument can persuade every (even rational) person to act ethically.
Much of the social and ecological disasters are result of dominance of materialistic self interest of humans.
Many of us, who really care about the world order, who care to reduce about the pain and suffering much inflicted or facilitated by human action, can become part of the participation to attempt to make the world a better place to live in.
Broaden yourself.....do not worry about the initial width......give it a chance
Fight for a cause if you believe it is worth: civil rights, human rights, child rights, animal rights, plant rights
Fights for the reduction of; injustice, corruption, inequality, absolute global poverty ...take a step (small or big)
