Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

How Ethical Are You ?

A Christian friend is studying to be a “reader” or somesuch lecture-in-church thing, and as part of her coursework was set a questionnaire to poll a selection of 6+ friends who are/are not church attendees, young, old, etc – and she asked me to participate, so I popped around this evening for a mug of tea and 10 minutes with a biro:

Ethics 1Ethics 2

click images to link through to larger versions

Seeing the photos I think I missed the “derivation of moral principles question”, which I am astounded has no space for “worked it out for myself from my environment” – including novels, scifi, school both secular and nominally catholic, and general cogitation whilst looking at the stars.

Also the questions are a bit simplistic; there is a lot of space for action / answer, but not much for context, so in a couple of questions I didn’t really bother – it was either be blunt or take a couple of hours over it.

If an aunt gives you a present and it’s hideous, what do you do? For me, the answer depends less on morals than it does on being really crap at telling white lies. Whether my being crap at that comes from morality, is a different question.

Same with the returning money to the bank question, they’re probably looking for the moral choice of theivery… but if it was a 50p on the street and not 100 quid in a cash machine with cash machine, a camera, and audit trail, then what would you do?

If (and occasionally when) I find a windfall like a tenner in the street, I try to do something useful for other people with it. I like making people happy, so I buy cookies for the office, or drop it in a preferred charity box (British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research) – I just believe it’s nice to spread the good karma.

It’s a bit hard to fit that into a square inch, though. 🙂

⊞

Comments

8 responses to “How Ethical Are You ?”

  1. Walter Bays

    It’s true not all moral choices are in stark black and white, but your moral questionnaire is all in shades of dark grey on lighter grey. I suggest you adjust the gamma on your scanner if that does not violate your convictions. 🙂

    Reply
  2. alecm

    Put that down to my atrocious (in)ability with GIMP. 🙂

    [and click “All Sizes” above the Flickr photo, if you want to see it bigger]

    Reply
  3. Clive

    I hope that was only a survey, not an attempt to get a character reference. I mean, heaven forfend that she get vouched for by someone who speeds. (-8

    I had an interesting conversation about that with a Baptist minister a few years ago, incidentally. He claimed that it was outright immoral to break the law; I claimed that this was bunk. When pushed hard over the course of half an hour he eventually admitted he will regularly speed on the motorway, but he wasn’t at all happy with my argument that it’s more moral to speed if you think doing so is moral than if you think it isn’t.

    I hope you won’t mind my noting that, as I myself do, you write like someone who has spent several decades preferring to type. :-p

    Reply
  4. alecm

    >I mean, heaven forfend that she get vouched for by someone who speeds.

    Ah, yes, that reminds me of the unstated credo of the institute of Advanced Motorcyclists:

    Obey all posted speed limits. In national speed limit areas, make what progress you can.

    …which sounds totally innocuous to everyone of a mind-control mindset; however “what you can” frequently exceeds 100mph. The important bit being that the people who are doing that at least have had some training in being responsible about it.

    So: who needs an “important meeting” to go fast, as opposed to doing it for the joy of being alive and not yet quite dead?

    Oh, “the law”? Yes, sometimes it’s a good idea. Not stealing, not killing people. But I would believe that with or without the 10 commandments.

    And yes, my writing has always been rubbish and has only got worse… a fountain pen helps…

    Reply
  5. diamond

    I’m surprised you didn’t say anything about the need for the existence of TV Repairmen.

    Reply
  6. Peter Jenkins

    I’ve spent several minutes laughing at “I’m notoriously tactless” – thanks for brightening up my afternoon mate.

    Reply
  7. rac

    As she who has the Ethics tutorial tonight with this questionnaire and it’s friends I share a few personal and general thoughts in case any one is faintly interested.

    Alec also found New York Times – http://tinyurl.com/2jqgoc
    which I found immensely useful especially the first few pages. I decided that the questionnaire looked at moral rationalisation rather than reasoning and wondered particularly if lifestyle is replacing faith ref: “people tend to align their moralization to their lifestyles”.

    I then discovered Church Times article this week by Lord Harries (ex Bish of Oxford) that you won’t be able to access but looked at the question of If God is the source of morality for Christians, how, then, do they reach a common mind with the secular world?

    More generally I was asked whether I can draw general conclusions from the different answers I got to the questionnaire. Very few is the answer. however 4/6 cited parents as their gratest moral influence, including the Chrsitians. Alec was obviously one of the exceptions given what he added in review, but as an ‘interested observer’ of his life for the last 20 years (scary thought) I would suggest that his Father (much missed as he is) was the greatest influence on generating his independant spirit and viewpoints etc., because that was Dr M’s way of doing things. He wanted people to think for themselves and ask awkward questions before making up their own minds, or at least that’s how he came over to me.

    The only people that really gave me an ‘essay’ about the relevance of the Church to non-attenders were the non-attenders – which doesn’t say much for the evangelical attitudes of my Christian friends. They tended to be more concerned with things like sex before marriage – and saw that (surprisingly?) as a grey area that was situation dependent (for example sex should be supported for older people in widowhood relationships or between couples where at least one party is going to war).

    I wonder however how much my interest in the results is based on voyerism – being interested in how my friends think, rather than in the usefulness of a rather badly designed questionnaire.

    Btw – don’t worry Clive, I’d still ask him for a character ref… he knows I speed too. In fact possibly more than he does, although usually because I’ve not clue as to the limit because I’m thinking of something else, or trying to keep something in my head until I can write it down!

    Thanks Alec for taking part!

    Reply
  8. dropsafe : Ethics 2.0

    […] (for it is she) posted a long comment / summary regards the Ethics questionnaire she gave me: As she who has the Ethics tutorial tonight with this questionnaire and it’s friends I share a […]

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More posts