Our exploration of ethical intelligence thus far has probably raised a few questions for you. Here are answers to the ten questions that people who have attended my presentations ask me most frequently.
1. Is there a difference between morality and ethics?
Not historically. In fact, the word “morality” comes from moralis, a Latin word that Cicero coined as a translation of the Greek word ethikos, which is the origin of the term “ethics.” Thus “morality” is to “ethics” what chapeau is to “hat” or caliente is to “hot.”
It’s true that many, perhaps most, people make a distinction between morality and ethics, but the problem is that no two people seem to agree about what that distinction is. Test this claim by asking five people you know, “Do you believe there is a difference between ethics and morality? If so, what is that difference?” You’ll get responses like these:
• Ethics has to do with social standards; morality is about personal beliefs.
• Ethics comes from secular institutions, whereas morality is a religious phenomenon.
• Ethical judgments are absolute and objective; moral judgments are relative and subjective.
Not only do folks differ about what the distinction between the concepts is; they also differ about how to define each one. Even those who believe there is no difference between ethics and morality may differ over how to define them.
Yow! This sure is confusing. But it doesn’t have to be, because just about everyone understands that both ethics and morality have to do with identifying right conduct and good character. To keep everyone on the same page, and to honor the linguistic history of these two concepts, it’s much better to treat ethical and moral as synonymous.
In this book (and in all of my writing and public speaking), I avoid using the word moral, because it makes some people see red when I interchange that word with ethical. I’d rather focus on what’s really important — discovering the best ways to respond to difficult situations and understanding why those approaches are right. This is, I suspect, why you’re reading this book in the first place.
2. Why don’t more people do the right thing? What gets in the way?
Explaining the reasons why it’s hard to consistently do the right thing would require a book of its own (and probably more than one). Nevertheless, there are three major explanations for ethically unintelligent behavior, and they’re easy to remember because they all start — and appropriately so — with f: fear, focus on short-term benefits, and foul mood. Let’s look at each one more closely.
1. Fear. At the root of peer pressure is fear: the fear of not being cool. Young people are especially susceptible to this type of fear since kids and adolescents value approval so much. It still bothers me that I stole a pocket-sized can of breath spray from a pharmacy when I was ten simply because a friend urged me to do it. I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway.
But fear gives rise to a lot of unethical behavior among adults, too. When you know your boss has a drinking problem, you may fear reprisals if you intervene in some way (by contacting your organization’s employee assistance program, for example). Even if your company has a policy that prohibits retaliation, you might decide to do nothing about the problem because you don’t want your boss to be angry with you in the event that the boss finds out it was you who intervened. We all want to be on good terms with our supervisors, but the lengths to which we go to achieve this can be at odds with ethical intelligence.
2.Focus on short-term benefits. As someone who struggles constantly with weight, I know all too well how tempting those vanilla cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting from Magnolia Bakery can be. I also know that if I eat one and I’m not willing to work out for an extra hour to burn it off, then I’ll pay a price. But, heck, it looks so good — why not indulge now and worry about the results later? Placing a greater priority on immediate benefits (in this case, intense gustatory pleasure) than on long-term benefits (such as maintaining a healthy weight) is a problem that can crop up in many contexts — not just when it comes to deciding whether to wolf down a tasty morsel but also when it comes to matters of far greater importance, such as how to do business.
For example, some businesses outsource their customer service positions because overseas jobs cost less, which means profits will be greater. However, companies that engage in this practice can generate so much ill will among their customers, who are frustrated with being unable to communicate effectively with their “customer care associates,” that in the long run, these businesses may lose the very people they claim to be serving. (I’ll look at this issue in more detail in chapter 8.) Yes, the marketplace is increasingly crowded, and the pressure to be profitable is greater than ever. But businesses that keep customer service jobs at home are both ethically intelligent and more likely to remain profitable far beyond the next several quarters.
3. Foul mood. It’s hard to treat others with loving-kindness when you haven’t had enough sleep, you’ve just gotten some bad news, or you’re having problems with a relationship. When you’re feeling bad, it’s more difficult to restrain the impulse to be nasty or even hurtful. You know that person in your life who knows exactly what it takes to push your buttons and does so at every opportunity? It’s their own emotional issues, rather than anything you’ve said or done, that’s most likely at the heart of this antisocial behavior.
Make no mistake: I’m merely trying to explain, not justify, why it’s sometimes challenging to live according to the five principles of ethical intelligence. But if you’re aware of the things that are likely to trip you up, you can be on guard against them and improve the odds of making ethically intelligent choices. Understanding a problem is the first step toward fixing it and preventing it from recurring.
3. In chapter 1, you say that the five principles of ethical intelligence are “the bedrock of Eastern and Western religious traditions alike.” Yet not only do different religions often have different views about what is right and wrong, but there is also a lot of argument within each faith about what constitutes right and wrong. Furthermore, there doesn’t appear to be a consensus across cultures about ethics. How do you account for these differences?
There are certainly plenty of examples of differences across religions and cultures when it comes to issues directly or tangentially related to ethics. Jews and Muslims believe that it is wrong to eat pork, but this isn’t true for many Christians; Jains are required to abstain from eating animals altogether. For Christians and Hindus, human beings have souls, but Buddhists reject this idea (at least in the way the term soul is commonly understood). These differences aren’t trivial, and they can and do give rise to heated discussions across the traditions, as well as within each one. Is it right for Jewish women to become rabbis (scholars qualified to rule on Jewish law)? In Orthodox Judaism, the answer is no; in Reform Judaism, it is yes. Catholics believe it is permissible and even obligatory to receive a blood transfusion if this will save a human life; Jehovah’s Witnesses hold that it is wrong to do so. There has never been, and there probably will never be, universal agreement among religious traditions about precisely how human beings ought to live.
But the above examples merely show that followers of religious traditions, and the texts upon which their religions are based, have different interpretations of how ethical principles apply in particular instances. The same is true with respect to cultures. Every faith or social group that has ever existed, or is likely to exist, calls upon its members to follow the five principles of ethical intelligence: Do No Harm, Make Things Better, Respect Others, Be Fair, and Be Loving. Not all groups codify these principles into law, nor do they all agree on what it means to be respectful or fair, or even on what constitutes harm. It’s also true that history is filled with atrocities committed in the name of God. But the problem is not the religions themselves or their commitment to ethical behavior but the misguided faithful who twist the peaceful messages to meet their own objectives. If you and your friend play Scrabble online and your friend cheats by consulting a Scrabble website, where does the fault lie — with the rules of Scrabble or with your friend?
At their most fundamental and meaningful level — the level of principle — religions and cultures alike are committed to the same ethical ideas and ideals. Misguided members of religious communities, and even those who are conscientious, may make ethical blunders, but this doesn’t detract from the integrity of the sacred texts themselves and the ethical principles upon which they are founded.
4. Slavery used to be a widespread, and even legally sanctioned, practice in the United States, and now it isn’t. Even today, some cultures allow practices that strike others as horrific and deeply unethical. What does it matter that there is agreement at the level of ethical principles if there are discrepancies where it counts the most — how people actually treat one another?
Just because a practice is widely accepted doesn’t mean that it is acceptable. Slavery in the United States before the Civil War is a good example of this; the fact that many white people had slaves didn’t mean that it was right, even if there were no legal proscriptions against doing so. What changed after the war wasn’t the rightness or wrongness of the practice of slavery but the views of those who, for a variety of reasons, came to recognize that slavery is wrong.
It’s also worth considering how it is that a practice such as slavery (or foot binding, or female genital mutilation, or any other severe violation of human dignity) comes to be accepted in the first place. This “acceptance” is often the result of one group of people abusing their power over another group rather than the result of a rational discussion among equals. If the people on the receiving end of the injustice are denied a voice, how can such a practice ever be considered legitimate?
5. What’s the difference between ethics and the law?
When we ask, “What is the right thing to do?” we’re asking an ethical question. Sometimes laws are relevant to answering this question, and sometimes they are not. For example, if you want to know whether it’s right to withhold or withdraw life-sustaining medical treatment from an elderly aunt who is irreversibly ill, it’s worth knowing that the medical power of attorney that she signed authorizing this is legally binding. But if you want to know whether you should tell a close friend that his wife is cheating on him, there are no applicable laws to speak of, and it’s a good thing that this is the case. Few people would want the state to have authority over such personal matters.
However, it still makes sense to ask about any law, “Is it right?” Regarding the first example above, laws that require advance directives to be respected are based on the ethical principle of respect for patient autonomy. Even before the law compelled family members and health-care providers to respect the wishes of patients who wanted to stop end-of-life care, patients were entitled to have their wishes respected, and thus others had an obligation to do so. Of course, it was the law that gave this obligation teeth. There is nothing like the force of law to encourage people to do the right thing.
There have been, and continue to be, bad laws, and from an ethical perspective, such laws do not command respect. In some parts of the country, African Americans were legally required to use separate water fountains, go to the balcony of movie theaters (if they were allowed in at all), and sit at the rear of public buses. These laws were unjust; so in 1955 when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, she broke the law, but she did the right thing. But she also paid a price for her civil disobedience, namely, going to jail and receiving death threats. Those who choose to disregard laws they consider unjust must also be willing to accept the consequences of doing so.
Laws are an essential component of civilized society. But laws are sometimes wrong. So when you ask yourself, “What should I do?” your reflection should — where appropriate — include a consideration of the law but shouldn’t end there.
6. What made you an authority on what everyone else should do?
Ethicists run the risk of being seen as self-righteous. After all, much of what we do involves making judgments about what’s right and wrong. But being an ethicist isn’t merely about making such evaluations; it’s also about justifying those claims — that is, constructing arguments for or against certain positions. Conversations in which people express how they feel about the issues of the day can be fun and lively, but ethics seeks to rise above merely stating one’s strongly held opinions and to establish truth, or a close approximation thereof.
It is this notion of “rising above” that opens us ethicists up to charges of feeling superior to others. Can there really be experts in ethics? The idea of ethical expertise intrigued me so much that I made it the basis of my doctoral dissertation, in which I explained what ethics experts are and what they are not.1 I can’t claim to be better than you, but I can say that the project I’ve put forth here, and the arguments I’m making about a wide range of ethical issues, are the result of extensive training in, reflection on, and teaching about these very matters.
Ethicists seek to provide a rational basis for ethical judgments, and it is the ability to do so that distinguishes our work and makes it worth taking seriously. This is because a statement is more likely to be true if it is supported by a good argument. However, ethicists are human beings and are subject to the same sort of temptations, weaknesses, and frailties that everyone else is. Thus, even if I’m able to provide good reasons for not doing x and I know that I shouldn’t do it, it’s still possible that one will end up doing it anyway.
Ethics is a democratic field, and anyone can and should challenge the claims that ethicists make. Not only can you look critically at everything I say in this book; it would be irresponsible if you did not. For example, if I’m correct in concluding that ethically intelligent businesses do not outsource customer service, it’s because I’ve provided a valid argument to support this claim, not because it’s The Ethics Guy saying so. The ethically intelligent life is a rational one, and this means carefully considering the judgments that others make and the arguments they use to support those judgments. Nowhere is this responsibility more crucial than in the field concerned with how best to live your life: ethics.
7. What do you mean by the term intelligence?
Intelligence includes both a capacity to be, and a state of being, smart. In fact, the second entails the first, since one can be smart only if one is capable of being smart in the first place.
But it is wrong to think that intelligence is concerned merely with the intellect. It’s true that intelligence and intellect have a common root, but intelligence is just as much about doing as it is about being. After all, the intelligent person does intelligent things (not always, but more often than not).
8. Isn’t it elitist to link smartness or intelligence with ethics? This suggests that only educated people can do the right thing or even know what that is.
The concept of ethical intelligence should not be seen as elitist and is in fact its polar opposite: populist. Some people become smart through formal education, and others do so through experience. But neither education nor experience guarantees that a person will develop intelligence. Even if one has the capacity to become an intelligent person, a degree from a top school may simply indicate a skill at doing what the school requires to graduate (such as attending classes, achieving passing grades, and the like). There are more than a few unintelligent people with advanced degrees.
Similarly, the fact that a person has had a wide range of experiences doesn’t mean that he or she has learned from those experiences and is now a wise person.
Ethical intelligence is a populist idea because just about everyone can live in an ethically intelligent way. As I’ll show in the forthcoming chapters, ethical intelligence, however one goes about possessing it, is an essential component to living well.
9. Can ethical intelligence be learned?
Yes, and we already have a head start. After all, we learned the five principles of ethics from our parents and teachers. But it’s easy to put these principles aside when it’s convenient or to convince ourselves that ethical principles are no longer important. Even when we’re committed to doing the right thing, it isn’t always apparent what the right thing is. For example, outsourcing customer service overseas will save your company money, but is this practice ethically intelligent? A quick review of the five principles doesn’t present an obvious answer, but a thoughtful analysis of how the principles apply to this issue does provide guidance, as I’ll show in chapter 8.
You weren’t born knowing how to act; you discovered it through reflection and experience.
10. So, in a nutshell, what is ethical intelligence?
Ethical intelligence has three components:
1. The capacity to discover the right course of action
2. Acting upon what you discover
3. The commitment to making this exploration a lifelong journey
The examination of ten frequently asked questions about ethics and ethical intelligence yields the following insights:
• There is no meaningful distinction between ethics and morality. Ethical and moral can and should be used interchangeably.
• Fear, focus on short-term benefits, and foul moods can make it difficult to do the right thing.
• Differences in social practices exist across religions, but Eastern and Western religions alike are founded on the ethical concepts represented by the five principles of ethical intelligence.
• An action can be ethical but illegal, or unethical but legally permissible (or even legally required). For any law, we can and should ask, “Is the law right?”
• Experts in ethics can’t legitimately claim to be better people, but their training and experience may make them well suited to evaluate the rightness or wrongness of what people do.
• Ethical intelligence is a populist idea, not an elitist one, and it can be developed and strengthened through both reflection and practice.