Ethics or "Me First"?

Great Debates
1

I am having trouble in an ethical discussion with a friend of mine. Sadly my sense of ethics is pretty well developed but my ability to explain it and its importance is sadly lacking.

Here is the quick and dirty of my conversation:

I pretty much follow the Golden Rule as my guiding ethical light. It may not be profound and may have situations where it falters but I find it gets me by in most cases in my life.

My friend soundly rejects the Golden Rule. She believes everyone is out for themselves and this is the correct way to operate. Her stance is if you don’t reach out and take what you want someone else will simply do it in your place. The specific example we were talking about was cheating on your spouse. To her, if you want to go diddle someone else then you should do it…married ro not. What the other person does not know will not hurt them. If they find out then so be it. If she is the one who is cheated on she figures that is just the way it goes (although she may well dump the cheater). If she wants to have sex with a married man she might as well since if it is not her it’ll just be someone else he’ll find to do it so she may as well get the enjoyment from it. (FTR she is not married but she has slept with a married man in the past)

My problem is that all just feels wrong. Applying the Golden Rule I would never cheat on a spouse because I would not want to be cheated on. Likewise I would not knowingly have sex with a married woman because I would not want someone else having sex with my wife (FTR I am divorced).

Am I a fool to hold these values? Am I missing out? Are others running past me in this “me first” society because I am stepping aside? Perhaps I am but I just cannot shake the feeling deeply embedded in me that such a stance is flawed and wrong. Yet I cannot defeat my friend’s “Fuck it…do what you want and live with the consequences” attitude. Is there a decent, easy to grasp argument against her position or does it require a lifetime of indoctrination to the importance of ethics plus a few college courses?

2

Have you tried introducing her to game theory, and the Prisoner’s dilemma? Even if she rejects ethics, her strategy for maximizing her own happiness is sadly lacking.

Daniel

3

You will be wanting to explain the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma to your friend. It goes like this:

Say that you and a friend are in a business relationship. If you are both honest, you will make a moderate amount of money each. If one of you is honest and the other cheats, the cheater will make huge amounts of money, and the other gets nothing. If you both cheat, you get only a very little.

Now, it looks on the surface that the best thing to do is cheat. On average, it gives you the best choices, and ensures that you will never be cheated on without cheating yourself. However, this thought experiment leaves out one very important factor: the possibilty of dealing with your friend again.

If your friend cheats on you, you will cheat on him in all future relationships, giving the two of you very little. However, if you both work honestly, you will get a moderate amount of money, and continue to do so. After many iterations, it becomes clear that whatever you can get away with by cheating a trusting partner will be less than the moderate amount you get many, many times.

4

Possibly a little unsafe for me to say this - not actually knowing the person in question - but if I had to bet on something, it would be that she doesn’t really reject all codes of ethics; she’s just looking for a rational justification of what is probably quite a small set of actions she has already carried out (including sleeping with the married man) and quite possibly feels guilty about, at some level.

5

The other thing she seems to be ignoring is possible adverse reactions in the future; sure, she might decide that if she wants to sleep with a married man, she should just do it, but what happens if the cheated-upon wife decides that if she wants to get her own back by brutally murdering her husband’s mistress, she should just do it ?
Clearly not everyone can just do what they want with disregard to the consequences.

6

I would have to somewhat agree with this, but I think it might go a little deeper. People (from my experience as a woman especially) can feel like their lives are without meaning if they haven’t been betrothed. I went through a period where I was angry with men and how I had been treated that I took on a similar stance. I figured if men just looked at me as a number, that’s how I would look at them.

The problem with that line of thinking is it’s a lonely road, and a dishonest one. I can’t imagine someone not wanting to be loved completely by another. Maybe she’s angry and jealous that she has emotionally distanced herself from relationships. It takes a while for that to go away, some people never shed it.

If this conversation is only about sleeping with whomever she chooses, married or not, then I would surmise that Mangetout’s theory is dead on. If the conversation is also about other parts of life, then there’s a little more to it.

Yes, this world, especially America is a “dog eat dog” society. Money is very important; it is power, it makes you more attractive to others, it is a staple of accomplishment to Americans (myself included). I’ve tried to adapt a balance between the Golden Rule (which I try to utilize in all my interactions with people) and my monetary goals in life, unfortunately to live a comfortable life you need a certain amount of cash coming in.

But in contrast, my career is very important to me, regardless of how little I make. I love what I do, I’ve invested money in my education, and ever since I was little being successful in my career has always been paramount. My mother raised me as a slight feminist but also taught me to appreciate being a woman and the fun stuff that goes along with it, sometimes that involves “feminine wiles” and taking advantage of what you were born with ( or could pay a good surgeon for, not that I have . . . yet. ). But I can say without doubt, I have never, ever stepped on someone else’s dreams (or marriage, mine and theirs) to further myself or to address a need. I think that sets a bad precident and if you think no one notices, you’re sorely mistaken.

The Golden Rule however runs up once the other person violates it towards me. I do have issues with treating people with respect and once I am belittled or publicly embarrassed I pounce with teeth and claws. My friends call it “dropping bombs”, but I refuse to be disrespected. Has that made me a little cold? Absolutely, but when it comes to those who treat me the way people should be treated, I give undying support and love. Life is too short to waste time on unhealthy situations and relationships, and also too short to not appreciate the beauty in people you care about.

I would sit down with this friend and see what the root of this is. Has she been mistreated? Is she watching too much news and getting depressed by what she sees? Has she lost something or someone because someone stepped on her? It seems there is something else going on here.

7

What makes you think she isn’t following the golden rule, as well? This might very well be a strong anecdotal case for my problems with it in the first place.

8

I take it you’re suggesting that she wouldn’t mind other people treating her this way, so she’s obeying the golden rule?

If so, I think that’s a shallow understanding of the GR.

I really like garlic, but that doesn’t mean the Golden Rule instructs me to feed garlic to people that hate it. Rather, it instructs me to feed other people food that I know they like.

Maybe she doesn’t mind being cheated on. The golden rule does not give her permission to cheat on others; it gives her permission to do things that she knows they would not mind.

Daniel

9

Well, I’ve never seen anyone suggest that the GR compells anyone to action; rather, like all rules, it is served to guide action. Largely the GR suggests what is permissible, not what is compulsory. In this case, she has a certain view of the world and human interaction, and is, apparently, perfectly at peace with it. She does unto others as she expects they would do unto her. It seems like a plain reading. There is only so much you can get out of a rule.

I don’t think this is a particularly useful reading of the GR. Don’t do stuff to others that they wwould’t like lest they do stuff to you that you wouldn’t like? --Eh. I don’t see that guiding action in any meaningful way. Maybe it would make a good Hallmark card. Most applications of the GR assume that the action taken and the reciprocated action are one in the same, e.g., “I don’t invade others’ privacy because I don’t want my privacy invaded.” I’ve never heard, “I don’t invade others’ privacy because I don’t want to be sexually assaulted.”

10

How is that not meaningful in guiding action? It gives a very clear guideline: if you think someone wouldn’t want you to do it to them, don’t do it to them. Then, hopefully, they won’t do to you things they think you don’t want them to do to you.

Another name for the rule stated thus is rational egoism. It’s not exactly a maverick idea on my part.

Daniel

11

I have challenged her on this. She, like anyone else, does not like getting taken advantage of or have her feelings hurt (and so on) and will get mad about it when it happens to her. What she has done is distanced herself from that hurt. She plugs any pain she feels into, “Screw it…I don’t care”. I think she is being dishonest with herself and burying her feelings as a defense mechanism and while it may assuage her pain in the short term I think it has festered down deep and made her a particularly cynical person. This attitude ultimately shows through in her personality so “friends” are hard to keep for her as well as any meaningful relationships with a significant other. In the end it becomes a self reinforcing attitude. She makes friends, treats friends badly (or at least not well or at the very least far too casually) and loses friends. It is weird to watch…like a revolving door into her life. In her mind these friends have proved unworthy anyway so screw them. She’ll take her pleasure when and where she can and move on to the next person ad nauseum. She is a (usually) fun woman to be around and she is attractive so there is no shortage of new faces stepping up to the plate for their turn.

I have tried to point this out to her but she does not see it. In her worldview everyone does this and the alternative is for idiots to get walked on. She sees no benefit in expending the energy for the long term.

12

So you would find it perfectly acceptable to entice her SO to cheat? After all…

13

Sorry, that was meant for Left Hand of Dorkness.

Ah. Not the proper place for an anti-GR tirade, then. My apologies.

But it sounds like she doesn’t need help improving her ethics, but in selecting people to associate with. Good ethical behavior is where you find it, IMO.

14

Left Hand of Dorkness Is right, he is just stating the golden rule of most of eastern religion.

‘Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you’

That is a passage from Confucianism, but almost all religions share a passage about the ethics of reciprocity. Christianity is one of the only ones that bases your ethics on the actions of others.

using this golden rule, your actions are not based on how others actions have effected you in the past. Instead, your actions are reflective of how you feel about yourself, and how you would like to be treated.

Using this train of thought, your friends actions could not be based on whether everyone is out for themselves or not. But if she is the only out for herself. Either way she will end up with the same results, she will reap what she sows.

15

I wish that were the case but it is not. Like anyone she has chosen decent and not so decent friends. Regardless she treats them all badly. For instance, say she makes a date with you to go out to dinner Saturday. On Saturday afternoon someone she likes better (or would rather go out with) calls and asks her to go out that night. She will happily call you an hour before the date and tell you she is tired or feeling sick or whatever to cancel the date. Later on the same night she will run into the person she cancelled with and be completely unapologetic. “I changed my mind but already cancelled with you so I went out with X instead.” (I have seen this happen on several occasions)

To her there is no obligation (she despises the word “obligation”). There is not sense that the other person blocked off their Saturday night to do something with her and at the last minute will find it hard to find someone else to do something with when she cancels. Tough luck for them…she’ll do as she likes and other people should just understand that (so she will tell you and has told me…in almost those exact words).

I cannot seem to get her to see that this is just poor behavior. Heck…dump the Golden Rule if you like. What about common courtesy?

16

Although it is horrible cliche, she treats other as she treats herself. Neglecting others feelings because she neglects her own. How in the world can someone be thoughtful of another person’s feelings when they have repressed their own.

I don’t mean to psychoanalyze a person I don’t even know, but there was probably some early trauma in her life where repressing her feelings was not only necesary, but a matter of survival. Just as she puts it, ‘if you don’t reach out and take what you want someone else will simply do it in your place’. That is the action plan of a person living in a survival mentality. New friends or a new set of ethics is not going even going to dent the surface of this woman’s emotional boundary. Some day she is going to have to deal with her past.

17

Her behavior sounds really… er… grabby. I guess that’s the best word for it. Like a child who is greedily clutching new things while losing grip on the old.

If someone lacks empathy, I don’t think there’s any way for any ethical system to work. All ethics are eventually based on empathy, aren’t they?

You know, I’m pretty sure I’m wrong, but I can’t think of a good example.

18

Sure. “what” = “that which,” which suggests a direct reciprocation. Again, I’ve not seen the GR stated or justified in any other way. To read it so generally just means, “Be nice.” Well, hey, no kidding. :smiley:

This is really a shame, no question. I like the iterated prisoner’s dilemma suggested above. Some simplistic game theoretical thought experiments might make a difference. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they will suggest any kind of moral system, but they may provide a crystalization site, so to speak, for one by breaking down this–let’s face it–selfishness. One of the more extreme forms of hedonism I’ve ever seen. It really sounds like there was some kind of event, the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. In any case,

No, I don’t think you can. The important part is living with the consequences. I’d humbly suggest that the GR is meant to suggest a little foresight into the equation by anticipating the consequences of actions in terms of direct, or eventual, reciprocity in order to make the consequences worth living with. But the trick here is that this individual already knows what the consequences will be: bad (generally). If you don’t feel this is the case, and I don’t either, why? What evidence do you see for your side? What evidence do you see for hers? --It is important to understand why she thinks this way. If you can’t see any merit in her opinion, it is likely that you don’t understand it, not merely that you disagree.

But I do tend to agree with you, and think she is wrong. There are some places where her attitude might serve her well. For example, were she a drug dealer aggressively seeking or defending territory, or a warlord trying to retain control, or a leader in a battle or war. Here are the kinds of contexts where cynicism and selfishness pay off. I’m not calling her a psychopath, but these are the situations where psychopaths excel. They are custom-made for people who find no practical limitation on behavior: everything is permissible, if only you can find a way to do it, and the sooner the better; rules are made to be broken, and the more ingeniously you break them the more you gain; other people are a means to an end. If she does not agree that “any behavior is acceptable at any time without exception,” and I am 99% sure she doesn’t, then you have a way to find out what she’s thinking, and perhaps, a way to show her that her behavior is out of context.

Under what conditions, specifically, does it “pay” to be nice?

19

You could try just smacking the girl. Sure, that probably sounds like an awful thing to do from your perspective but she supposedly is OK with it. Explain to her that you according to her you have no need to consider her opinion on the matter if you feel like hitting her. Repeat as often as necessary.

It is a bit extreme though. I know I wouldn’t have the balls to try that stunt.

20

The thought has occurred to me more than once but of course I would not do that as it violates my ethics (and I doubt I have the balls for it either but claiming ethical reasons is easier on my ego).