Do You Practice Ethical Standards?

If you want to find someone who is good at what they do, start by asking if they are a good worker. Of course, everyone is, but not everyone is good at what they do. You will need much better tools for that job, too. The first car was in pretty good shape. There are still some good restaurants in that neighborhood. So, I’m sure that your job isn’t as good as it could be.

Still, if you don’t try to be a better person, then the problem won’t go away. You see, one of the things about being a good person is that if you are good at something, then others will want to be around you and do the same. They don’t have to work hard to want to be around you; they just need to see a standard of goodness and be drawn to you based on that.

In this case, however, the standard you draw to yourself is: the right action. Everyone has an innate, internal virtue or attribute. If you want to be a good person, then you should identify one and practice it. This action, however, must be an appropriate and ultimately correct, action in the given situation.

There is no rule that says, “Do this, and this will be right.” Rather, there’s a principle of ethics: the right action will result in the right consequences. Now, you can easily translate that into a morality: “Do what is moral and never do what is wrong.” The key is to follow the same ethic in all your actions, and to view them as moral, rather than merely mechanical. Of course, this principle does not apply in all situations; it applies only to those where the outcome will be good, and never for those where it will lead to some kind of loss.

But if you look at things from a slightly more abstract point of view, then you might say that the goal is simply to achieve the ultimate end. This is a slightly harder concept to translate into an ethics of any kind, because in most cases, what you’re trying to do is end up with a supreme good, and the term ‘ultimate good’ has a somewhat subjective meaning. However, the ultimate end in most cases is something that has been universally agreed upon; something that we, as humans, can agree is good, and something that we, as imperfect beings, can strive towards to attain as best we can. For instance, it might be that you want to be a perfect lover, and that your ideal partner is someone who makes that impossible, by practicing constantly and pursuing a passion for his sexual acts.

Your understanding of morality thus boils down to your fundamental understanding of concepts like truth, beauty, goodness and beauty. These are universal, non-conceptual, and even physical properties of the universe around us. When you find yourself committed to these concepts, and you accept that there are things that can go wrong and are beyond our control, then you are committed to ethical principles. The rest follows easily, as you choose to live by them. It doesn’t matter whether or not you choose to practice them on a daily basis, as long as you follow them and respect them, you will be doing right.