• JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    15 hours ago

    Ethics: refer to a set of principles and guidelines that are established by a community, organization, or society to promote responsible and respectful behavior.

    Law reflects the ethics of the populace, not the other way around.

    “Ethical” is a social construct that’s time-bound based upon the beliefs and actions of the people.

    Slavery was ethical, for the population of slavers. The holocaust was ethical, based upon the beliefs of Nazis.

    “Ethics” isn’t a guideline, it’s a benchmark.

    History is written by the winners and we are all a product of our environment, including our time. If we were born 200 years ago in the US South, we’d be perfectly fine with slavery.

    That doesn’t make it right, we have a different perspective here in the present, where we understand (or at least understood) basic human rights, and that black people are, indeed, human.

    • AbsoluteChicagoDog@lemm.ee
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      9 hours ago

      If we were born 200 years ago in the US South, we’d be perfectly fine with slavery.

      This is blatantly false. Lincoln didn’t wake up one day and suddenly think “hey maybe slavery is bad”. Abolitionists had been fighting for centuries.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        4 hours ago

        Abolitionists were a growing minority. Lincoln didn’t just wake up one day and free the slaves…but we are still 18 years away from the 200 year anniversary of the emancipation proclamation.

        But society (US society) as a whole accepted slavery as a fact of life.

        Just like we accept suicide nets, sweat factories, “inmate labor”, ,Uighur camps, and North Korean “mercenaries” as facts of life today. We don’t want them, we just choose to forget they exist. Through our collective inaction, we passively condone them.

        Plenty of individuals oppose them enough to actively avoid supporting them in any way, but they are such an inconsiderable minority of consumers, in the eyes of the corporate lords.

    • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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      15 hours ago

      Well, you and the meme creator need to look up how the definitions of “ethics” and “morality” differ. Although the definition of “ethics” that you quoted is already a good start.

      • daisykutter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        14 hours ago

        Can we please write comments that add something to the discussion?

        Morality is that group of norms defined by a group or society at a given moment. Ethics is the study of morality.

        The OP didn’t mix up the terms; it was your parent comment. It costs us nothing to not just criticize

        • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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          13 hours ago

          That is exactly the type of confidently expressed non-sense that people who (intentionally or not) ignore how the concepts of ethics and morality differ.