> I know how much you all hate discussing the
> basics, but what exactly makes something unethical
> and why should I care?
Your own decisions about what is ethical or not is what makes it so. How well
you do in life, whether it be a small part of your life or the whole schpiel, is
a measure of the effectiveness of the ethics you do develop. This isn't to say
that someone living in poverty their whole life has poor ethics, on the
contrary, though their own ethics may preclude them from measuring success from
a materialist perspective. However, one can note that the average life
expectancy, lifetime and annual earning potential, average stress level and
average happiness level of people which most would regard as having poor ethics,
i.e. criminals, is far far lower than those as a whole than those people who
most would regard as having good ethics.
Of course, there are always exceptions to the rule, as with any bell curve, as
well as fields of endeavor where ethics that most people would regard as good
would be a hindrance to success, like in the fields of politics, law, car sales,
etc. If one enjoys one of these occupations, you do of course need to form your
own ethics which may be considered bad to most people, but which are effective
for your own occupation or lifestyle...
Ethics are nothing more than a set of rules you create for yourself for getting
through life. If they work for you, great. If you have no ethics, and you aren't
quite happy with the results of living opportunistically, try creating a few
purposely.
BTW: Nobody can be said to have no ethics, save for a newborn babe....
-- TANSTAAFL!!! Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ mailto:retroman@together.net Inventor of the Lorrey Drive MikeySoft: Graphic Design/Animation/Publishing/Engineering ------------------------------------------------------------ How many fnords did you see before breakfast today?