In
my last post on selling cold drinks without a shopkeeper, I mentioned
“morality” and “ethics” without understanding if they are
different or interchangeable. Looking up on the web later, I found
out that people used them as if interchangeable when in fact they are
different according to some people. Morality—as I was told—relates
mostly to norms usually based on religion and culture on how humans
must behave concerning the right in contrast to the wrong. Ethics
(also known as moral philosophy) is “the branch of philosophy which
addresses questions of morality.” So on and on it went and you
could stumble over "manner, character, proper behavior",
"goodness" or "rightness”, “deontological ethical
systems”, “the Golden Rule”, “morality vs. amorality”,
“duty, obligation, and principles of conduct”, “descriptive and
normative ethics”, “realism and anti-realism”, “tribal and
territorial”, “evolution, Neuroscience, Psychology”, “Morality
and politics”, “Morality and religion”, … by just skimming
over the Morality
page of Wikipedia.
Frustrated,
you may be tempted to try something like drawing graphs to get
insights into a mass of numbers. With text, you could make what is
called a word
cloud,
like the one shown below.
There,
different words from a collection of text are counted and those with
higher counts are drawn in larger font sizes. The colors of words are
added just to make the picture pretty. How did I make it?
I
made Google search of “morality” and “ethics” and took the
first five pages of each of the results, getting a total of ten
pages. Then pure text is extracted from these pages, and unnecessary
symbols, numerals, white spaces etc. were stripped. Different words
were then counted and the word cloud is drawn. All these steps were
done by using the relevant programs of the R
Statistical Environment.
Not
bad. Hopefully we get something out of that. Well, if you think
that's enough for now, it's fine. For me, I still want to know what's
really wrong with corruption in civil services and I wouldn't like to
be bogged down in the study of the intricacies of morality and
ethics. Luckily, I found this web-page on the Ethical
Alarms
website: Unethical
Rationalizations and Misconceptions which
could be your express delivery service for insights into people's
common excuses for doing bad things.
I
felt that giving just a list of all the ethics dodges from that
article would go a long way. Quite likely that this list could be
good enough to give you a feeling of how people cheat with ethics
because you would at once recognize most of these from what you've
known or heard before in real life.
Below
I've listed all of fifty-eight of them and also extracted a few
clarifications or comments to go with them. The selection of
clarifications or comments is necessarily subjective and may reflect
my poor judgment, but I'm sure it is not
an unethical dodge itself.
If you find any of them interesting look for details in the full
text of the original article here.
1.
The
Golden Rationalization, or “Everybody does it”
1A.
Ethics Surrender, or “We can’t stop it.”
“It’s
done all the time.”
“It’s
always been done this way.”
“It’s
tradition.”
“Everybody
is used to it.”
“Everybody
accepts it.”
“Nobody’s
complained before.”
“It’s
too late to change now.”
Ethics
is hard.
Rationalization 1A, Ethics
Surrender, or “We can’t stop it,” wrongly
concludes that it is impossible.
2.
Ethics Estoppel, or “They’re Just as Bad”
… This
argues that wrongdoing toward a party isn’t really wrong when the
aggrieved party has aggrieved the avenger. The victim of the
unethical conduct no longer deserves ethical treatment because of the
victim’s own misconduct.
But
the misconduct of a victim never
justifies
unethical conduct directed against that victim.
3.
Consequentialism, or “It Worked Out for the Best”
Consequentialism
is
an open invitation to extreme “the ends justify the means”
conduct, where even cruel and illegal conduct becomes “ethical”
because good consequences happen to arise out of it, even when the
good was completely unintended or unpredictable.
4.
Marion Barry’s Misdirection, or “If it isn’t illegal, it’s
ethical.”
The
late D.C. Mayor and lovable rogue Marion Barry earned himself a place
in the Ethics Distortion Hall of Fame with his defense of his giving
his blatantly unqualified girlfriend a high-paying job with the DC
government. Barry declared that since there was no law against using
the public payroll as his own private gift service, there was nothing
unethical about it.
… Barry’s
statement simply reinforces a misunderstanding of right and wrong.
5.
The Compliance Dodge.
Simply
put, compliance with rules, including laws, isn’t the same as
ethics. Compliance depends on an individual’s desire to avoid
punishment. Ethical conduct arises from an individual’s genuine
desire to do the right thing.
The
most unethical person in the world will comply if the punishment is
stiff enough. But if he can do something unethical without breaking
the rules, watch out!
… When
the inevitable loophole opens up in the rules, when the opportunity
to gain at someone else’s expense is there and nobody will ever
know, it is the ethical, not the compliant, who will do the right
thing.
6.
The Biblical Rationalizations
“Judge
not, lest ye not be judged,”
and “Let
him who is without sin cast the first stone,” have
been quoted by scoundrels and their allies and supporters for
centuries. Neither quotation means what those guilty of ethical
misconduct would have us believe, but the number of people who accept
the misreading is substantial. ...
7.
The “Tit for Tat” Excuse
This
is the principle that bad or unethical behavior justifies, and
somehow makes ethical, unethical behavior in response to it. The
logical extension of this fallacy is the abandonment of all ethical
standards. Through the ages, we have been perplexed at the fact that
people who don’t play by the rules have an apparent advantage over
those who do, and “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!” has
been the rallying cry of those who see the abandonment of values as
the only way to prosper.
...
The
very concept of ethics assumes that winning isn’t the only thing,
Vince Lombardi to the contrary, and that we must hold on to ethical
standards to preserve the quality of civil existence. Although maxims
and aphorisms cause a lot of confusion in ethical arguments, this one
is still valid in its simple logic:“Two
wrongs don’t make a right.”
8.
The Trivial Trap (“No harm no foul!”)
Many
argue that if no tangible harm arises from a deception or other
unethical act, it cannot be “wrong:”“No
harm, no foul.” This is truly an insidious fallacy, because it can
lead an individual to disregard the unethical nature of an action,
and look only to the results of the action. Before too long, one has
embraced “the ends justify the means” as an ethical system,
otherwise known as “the terrorism standard.”
9.
The Reverse Slippery Slope
… defenders
of unethical conduct like to project legitimate criticism of
genuinely harmful conduct into apocalyptic over-reach and
ridiculously broad application of the principles at issue.
10. The Unethical
Tree in the Forest, or “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”
The habitually
unethical as well as the rarely unethical who don’t want to admit
they have strayed are vulnerable to this classic, which posits that
as long as the lie, swindle, cheat, or crime is never discovered, it
hardly happened at all…in fact, one might as well say
it didn’t happen, so you can’t really say anything
really was wrong…right? Wrong.
11. The King’s
Pass, The Star Syndrome, or “What Will We Do Without Him?”
One will often hear
unethical behavior excused because the person involved is so
important, so accomplished, and has done such great things for so
many people that we should look the other way, just this once. This
is a terribly dangerous mindset, because celebrities and powerful
public figures come to depend on it. Their achievements, in their own
minds and those of their supporters and fans, have earned them a more
lenient ethical standard. ...
11. (a) “I
deserve this!” or “Just this once!”
12. The
Dissonance Drag
Cognitive dissonance
is an innately human process that can muddle the ethical values of an
individual without him or her even realizing that it is happening.
The most basic of cognitive dissonance scenarios occurs when a person
whom an individual regards highly adopts a behavior that the same
individual deplores. The gulf between the individual’s admiration
of the person (a positive attitude) and the individual’s objection
to the behavior (a negative attitude) must be reconciled. The
individual can lower his or her estimation of the person, or develop
a rationalization for the conflict (the person was acting
uncharacteristically due to illness, stress, or confusion), or reduce
the disapproval of the behavior.
This is why
misbehavior by leaders and other admired role models is potentially
very harmful on a large scale: ...
13. The Saint’s
Excuse: “It’s for a good cause”
This rationalization
has probably caused more death and human suffering than any other.
...
14.
Self-validating Virtue
… the act is
judged by the perceived goodness the person doing it, rather than the
other way around. This is applied by the doer, who reasons, “I
am a good and ethical person. ...
15. The Futility
Illusion: “If I don’t do it, somebody else will.”
It is a famous and
time-honored rationalization that sidesteps doing the right thing
because the wrong thing is certain to occur anyway. …
16. The
Consistency Obsession
… It is not only
acceptable, it is necessary to use a variety of ethical approaches to
solve certain problems. In real life, situations come up that just
don’t fit neatly into the existing formulas. …
17. Ethical
Vigilantism
… addressing a
real or imagined injustice by employing remedial cheating, lying, or
other unethical means. It has its roots in many of the fallacies
above: Tit for Tat, the Golden Rationalization, The Trivial Trap, and
The Saint’s License. Its results are personal corruption, harm to
innocent parties, and the forfeiture of the moral high ground. Nobody
is “owed” the right to lie, cheat, or injure others. ...
18. Hamm’s
Excuse: “It wasn’t my fault.”
19. The
Perfection Diversion: “Nobody’s Perfect!” or “Everybody makes
mistakes!”
19A The Insidious
Confession, or “It wasn’t the best choice.”
20. The “Just
one mistake!” Fantasy
21. Ethics
Accounting (“I’ve earned this”/ “I made up for that”)
22.
The Comparative Virtue Excuse: “There are worse things.”
23.
Woody’s Excuse: “The heart wants what the heart wants”
#24.
Juror 3’s Stand (“It’s
My Right!”)
24.
A. Free Speech Confusion
25.
The Coercion Myth: “I have no choice!”
26.
“The Favorite Child” Excuse
27.
The Victim’s Distortion
28.
The Revolutionary’s Excuse: “These are not ordinary times.”
29.
The Altruistic Switcheroo: “It’s for his own good”
29
(a). The Gruber Variation, or
“They
are too stupid to know what’s good for them”
30.
The Prospective Repeal: “It’s a bad law/stupid rule”
31.
The Troublesome Luxury: “Ethics is a luxury we can’t afford right
now”
32.
The Unethical Role Model: “He/She
would have done the same thing”
33.
The Management Shrug: “Don’t sweat the small stuff!”
34.
Success Immunity,
or
“They must be doing something right!”
35.
The Tortoise’s Pass:
“Better
late than never”
36.
Victim Blindness,
or
“They/He/She/ You should have seen it coming.”
#36
A. The Extortionist’s Absolution (“You
were warned!”)
37.
The Maladroit’s Diversion, or “Nobody said it would be easy!”
38.
The Miscreant’s Mulligan or “Give him/her/them/me a break!”
39.
The Pioneer’s Lament, or “Why should I be the first?”
40.
The Desperation Dodge or “I’ll do anything!”
41.
The Evasive Tautology, or “It is what it is.”
Rationalization
41 A. Popeye’s Excuse, or “I am what I am.”
42.
The Hillary Inoculation, or “If he/she doesn’t care, why should
anyone else?”
“If
Hillary is willing to forgive him, why shouldn’t we?”
43.
Vin’s Punchline, or “We’ve never had a problem with it!”
44.
The Unethical Precedent, or “It’s
Not The First Time”
45.
The Abuser’s License: “It’s
Complicated”
46.
Zola’s Rejection, or “Don’t point fingers!”
47.
Contrived
Consent, or “The
Rapist’s Defense.”
Contrived
Consent, or “The
Rapist’s Defense,” aims to cleanse unethical conduct by imagining
that the victim consented to it, or secretly sought the result of the
wrongful act. The most infamous example of this rationalization is,
of course, the rapist’s defense that the victim either was inviting
a sexual assault by flirtatious conduct or provocative dress, or
secretly “wanted it.”
48.
Ethics Jiu
Jitsu,
or “Haters Gonna Hate!”
In
truth, those who don’t have the ethical bearings, the courage or
the civic responsibility to criticize unethical conduct in the
culture are the real problem as we strive for an ethical culture.
They can often be identified by their mouthing of the fatuous
accusation, “Haters
gonna hate!”
49.
“Convenient Futility,” or “It
wouldn’t have mattered if I had done the right thing.”
The
rationalization confounds law and ethics. … “It wouldn’t have
mattered because the same thing would have happened even if I was
competent” is still an admission of incompetence.
50.
The Apathy Defense, or “Nobody Cares.”
… The
Apathy Defense is at the root of many other rationalizations, like
The King’s Pass, The Saint’s excuse, and even “the ends justify
the means.”
It
is, in fact, one of the most dangerous and corrupting
rationalizations of all. Politicians
are taking bribes? Who cares? What matters is whether they make the
government work. So
taking bribes becomes acceptable. Leaders
are lying to the public? Nobody cares! What matters is that he’s
our guy! It only matters when their guy lies! Now
leaders know they can lie with impunity,
without consequences or shame.
#50
A, The Underwood Maneuver, or “That’s in the past.”
This
rationalization has the honor of being named for a President, though
a fictional and sinister one: Frank Underwood, the devious,
psychopathic, lying and murdering Chief Executive, played by Kevin
Spacey, who leads the den of thieves and blackguards who populate the
fictional Washington, D.C. in the Netflix drama, “House of Cards.”
51.
The Hippie’s License, or “If it feels good, do it!” (“It’s
natural”)
52.
Tessio’s Excuse, or “It’s just business”
Near
the end of “The
Godfather,” longtime
Don Corleone loyalist Sal Tessio (played by the immortal Abe Vigoda)
is caught attempting to ally with a rival family in an attempt to
kill the new Don, Michael Corleone. As he is taken to the car for his
final ride, Tessio turns to consiglieri
Tom
Hagen and says…
“Tell
Mike it was only business. I always liked him.”
53.
The Joke Excuse, or “I
was only kidding!”
55,
“The Idealist’s Delusion,” or “We’re/
You’re Better Than This.”
56,
The Universal Trump, or “Think of the children!”
… akin
to a human shield, employed to block incoming logic.
57.
The Golden Rule Mutation, or “I’m all right with it!”
…
it translates into…
“Do
unto others as if the others felt like I do, even though they may
not.”
58:
The Ironic Rationalization, or “It’s The Right Thing To Do”
Maybe
it’s the right thing, and maybe not. Just saying it conduct is
right without doing the hard work of ethical analysis is bluffing and
deflection. ...
“It’s
the right thing to do” you say?
Prove
it.
