I was getting ready to leave my office when my colleague asked me to join a discussion with one of our students. The student came from my class on Legal & Ethical issues in health care. In the class, one of the elements that we had discussed was the issue of ethics and morality. The student, who was learning english as a second language, was not clear about the difference between ethics and morality.
Ethics and morality are words which at times are used interchangeably. We checked with a few dictionaries and none of them clarified to our satisfaction whether there was a difference between ethics and morality.
I wish to share a few of my thoughts about ethics and morality that we talked about in our discussion. I see ethics and morality as distinct in meaning and in implications.
Morality is usually defined as good or wrong behavior. Right and wrong behavior has several implications, most of which have tribal or religious underpinnings. Interestingly enough describing right or wrong seems to be a way to eliminate the religious overtones and focus on tribal propriety. Whether we examine right and wrong behavior from a religious perspective or a tribal perspective, the main point is that the group has set up rules to encourage good behavior or discourage bad behavior as they define it. The right and wrong behavior then is defined as a means of group regulation. This interpretation has elements of Freud’s Ego-ideal, rules which we internalized from our parents and from our society. The tribal component and the rules can lead to widely varying interpretations of what is moral and what is not. For me another disturbing element of morality is that it seems to use external rules to regulate ourself as if there is no faith in a person’s innate ability to regulate their behavior. It implies the correct way, not necessarily the good way, is set by the community’s standards. Leaving morality to be judged by the community leaves open the door to control issues rather than truly good or bad behavior.
Ethics on the other hand is not based on a community’s standard or on a particular religions’ standard. Ethics is based on love and doing good for self while not doing harm to another. Because Ethics is based on love, it is not judgmental. Another important distinction is that ethics does not originate from eternal sources such as the tribe, the religion or from what Freud viewed as the Ego-ideal. Ethics originates from within the self. It is from within the self that one connects with one’s own internal voice which in turn is connected to Source Emotional Energy (God, Allah, etc.). Once a person connects on this deep level with themselves and with Source Energy, the significance of acting from love, acting from concern for oneself and for others becomes clear. If a person acts in an ethical manner, i.e. from a position of love, then an internal peace ~ happiness flows within that person whether or not the tribe or the religion sanctions their behavior. The love dimension of ethics connects the person not only with their own true nature but with others within and without the tribe or religion. In connecting with source, the love component of ethics connects the person with the larger picture, with everything in the universe. It connects with our spirit, with our essence. If a person acts in an unethical manner, i.e. deliberately seeks to harm another, then that person begins to pinch themselves off from their own well being and from Source Emotional Energy. To the extent that a person pinches themselves off from themselves and from Source Emotional Energy, they deny themselves the very happiness, the very joy that they seek. When one pinches oneself off from self and from source emotional energy, they punish themselves in a more hurtful way than any punishment a tribe or a religion can deliver.
As I explained the above to my colleague and to the student, the student suddenly said with excitement, then “Ethics is higher than morals.” My colleague and I smiled and said to her “You got it!” It was a great source of pleasure to see the joy in the students face that she now understood the important difference between two words that the rest of society tends to use interchangeably.
