MODERN ETHICS – MODERN PROBLEM: CRITICISM

The tales of human circumstances, tragedy, war,  love, politics and religion has been a common venue of human history. Perhaps, problems are always included in every human life; and some problems would involve ethical issues that which could only be resolved through the existing ethical standards.

But by what means this so-called ethical standards attained its reliability? It is a fact that there are instances in our law wherein some forms of killings are not considered as crime such as the justifying and exempting circumstances in our penal law books.

Also, there is an instance whereby a professional killer or whose occupation is to kill a person is not ethically sanctioned by the society, example of which is an executioner of verdict.

So, how reliable is the ethical standard? Who determines the suspension of morality towards brutality and hostility during a war? War losers are always the victim of persecution.

To remember some incidents of our history, the deaths of innocent lives during the Vietnam War was termed by the American government as “Collateral Damage”; and in the World War II, the Nazis called the death of 6 million Jews as the “Necessary Evil”.

In my honest opinion, the term “ethics” and “morals” were just a semantic interplay for “human will”. It is natural in human behavior to maintain silence when the unpleasant event does not affect our interests or to tolerate unpleasant situations when it brings us favorable benefits. There are parents, to exemplify, who kept silent on the “immoral” acts of prostitution of their daughter on the reason of benefits caused thereby.

Now, what is ethics? What is moral? Who declares what it is? And what authority shall make it binding?

Indeed, it is a funny tale, human fears – worries – concerns crafted the term “ethics”, “morality”, “sin”, and “retribution” as a mechanism of our godly attitude.

One significant feature that man behaves like god is the maxim “vox populi, vox dei”, whereby, he invented a more or less godly concepts of ethics and morality with a more or less godly authority. Defining ethics and morality is an attempt to unmask man from his godly appearance.

Besides, ethics and morality are matters within the property of reason. Without the reason, no one can assert the reliability of the standard.

To supplement this criticism, let us observe the gesture of this statement:

Inflicting injury to a person or killing him is justified or morally acceptable when it is made IN THE NAME OF PEACE, IN THE NAME OF GOD, IN THE NAME OF JUSTICE, IN THE NAME OF THE LAW, or IN THE NAME OF A JUST and DIGNIFIED CAUSE.

The statement herein mentioned is a clear and explicit proof of human manipulation on the so-called ethics and morality to fit his particular purpose… and to note, it has been proven a long way back to the ancient history of man.