Why do ethical issues matter?

Question

Why do ethical issues matter? COLLAPSE In your workaday life, when ethical issues come up do you find yourself taking a strong stance and voice your opinion, or do you tend to disengage yourself from such conversations? If the former, what do you think is at stake? That is, why is it so important for you to voice or form an opinion on the matter, especially if it is a matter about other people who have little to nothing to do with you? For example, if we learn that a 11th grade schoolteacher in Maine had sex with her consenting student, why is it so important for you to throw your opinion in on the matter? If the latter, do you find such conversations a waste of time, distasteful, too difficult to work on, or entirely out of your hands? For example, do you feel that you have the authority to say if someone else’s actions are right or wrong? Do you feel you can draw upon some authority to do so? Or is authority not your aversion at all, but something else? Explain

Answer 1

Let us define ethical matters as what does matter. If you should have an opinion but don't that means you have an unformed conscience and the only cure is to actively become more moral and thus more sensitive. Sex with a consenting student is falsely stated, why does consent change things at all? If it is wrong, it is wrong, consent or no consent. And why does it matter? Because clever and deceptively-worded excuses for passions get quoted and followed. People read about that and some act on it.

I have the authority and the responsibility to rule on whether my actions are right or wrong.

The main point to me is that being good is not just not being evil. There are good things you should promote in the world and bad things you should oppose. Look at the UN Declaration on Human Rights and ask yourself for each right how many people in the world are treated badly and abused because 1) people don't care enough to even know about rights and 2) ask yourself, IF I don't support this aren't I one of those allowing bad things to continue?