End of the semester Ethics

Well, apparently these blogs have now merged with google??? Okey-dokey... Well, since it is the end of the semester, I thought I would throw in one more blog just on ethics in general, and my thoughts... This isn't the first ethics class that I have taken. A few years back I took a philosophy of ethics course, and I have to say, it was one of my favorite classes. I suppose before that point, I had been familiarized with "morals". I have always kind of thought of morals to be the micro, and ethics to be the macro on the right/wrong scale, and so delving into the study of ethics for the first time was absolutely fascinating. With each new philosopher that we learned about, it was like learning to veiw ethical behavior with a different set of eyes. This, however, has been my first ethics class relating to business. I have been familiarized with research ethics and what not, but never actual business ethics. I was reading through one of Professor Lambiase's blogs, in which she discusses some of her veiws pertaining to ethics, and I found it interesting that she pointed something out that I had been struggling with... Money... Money being the root of evil in ethics... I suppose it is obvious, but having taken ethics classes, you learn to veiw unethical behavior in terms of just what you are and what you aren't supposed to do, and why you are not supposed to do it. I have never really examined the the motivations FOR participating in unethical behavior... At least not in abstract terms... But as I was attempting to examine Michael J. Fox's behavior under the ethical theorums that we have been discussing, the same thought kept coming to mind... He isn't doing it for money, and he isn't doing it for power, so how can it be unethical? But then I would inevitably think to myself, "it has to be more complicated than that." And while in Fox's case I do think that it is... I believe that his behavior is ethical because he is lobbying more for his cause than he is for any one particular candidate... I am beginning to think that in business, most of the time, it will boil down to money, or to power (although the two are inevitably linked!) Geez, it is really such an obvious thing! I have been in college for so long at this point (due to switching majors, I am coming up on my 6 year anniversery with UNT) that I have finally come to this conclusion: if you spend six years being taught to think outside the box, you find it difficult to get back in when you need to, lol...
Anyway, I digress. Back to Ethics... Professor L. mentioned in class the other day that the world works under a utilitarian framework, and that the communitarian framework is really what we should strive to function under. I would have to say that after attempting to apply these principles to an actual event, I have come to the same conclusion myself. The old "gotta break some eggs" euphemism really does seem to apply to everyday situations. I suppose that this is because communitarianism functions under the premise that there is one, consistent, agreed-upon-by-all set of ethics, and living in the mixed-salad society that we do, it is difficult to imagine everyone agreeing on what is best for "Us"... Because when it comes down to it, Americans like to compartmentalize themselves. We like to identify with this group or that group, I suppose because that is, what we have been raised to believe, makes up our identities. Republican/Democrat, Christian/Jewish/Muslim/Buddhist/etc., Liberal/Conservative, White/Black, Male/Female... Check a box, it makes up who you are in our society of demographics and statistics. Perhaps we should include a box for ethical preferences now... Hey, maybe making that a category into which we could compartmentalize our identities would intice people to internalize ethical concepts... Good luck, right? My overall point is that to analyze the Fox case under the communitarian perspective, I literally had to identify "communities" who held some stake in the event, and then determine their motives for having that stake, and all that I really came back around to was that each of the communities functioned, in and of itself, under a utilitarian perspective, and there fore would not have an ethical problem with Fox's actions, were they to have the need to use those tactics themselves!!! Ugh, I am giving myself a headache!