I have been teaching ethics for 25 years to individuals and groups of all ages, and offering personal guidance in ethics around the world. My academic study has included ethical systems from the world faiths and philosophies. Ethical dialogue and counseling is available in person, over the phone and by email.
Ethics is our personal system of discerning right or good thinking and action; and also the minor shades of gray that appear in choosing the right course over the wrong course. Ultimately, it is our compass of conscience. It is often taught in metaphysics as the first level of the soul. Is what I am doing right for myself and all those it impacts? This, in the larger collective, includes the environment and all species on Earth.
We really rely on our own resources in pursuing an ethical life. Like the philosophical life, the ethical life is lively with inquiry. It is a dialogue of self-honesty, and honesty itself is an ethic. A child who has the opportunity to steal a dollar has to ask, even subconsciously and fleetingly, "Is this right?" A college student offered a means of cheating on a test really has to weigh the rightness of the act, and all of its consequences. A mother needs to ethically monitor the balance she maintains between nurturing her children, her job and her other life pursuits.
Ethics applies to everybody. It is really not an academic process, as has been the focus over the past five years. It is a learning and communicating process. It is taught by studying other exemplars of ethics and how they faced themselves, their dilemmas and everyday decisions. It is absorbed personally largely by engaging in a dialogue with someone who knows ethics historically, philosophically, psychologically and spiritually.
It is a fairly common observation on the evolution of society over the past 25 years that our sense of ethics has been eroding, or not cultivated enough in our educational systems and families to begin with. Witness the Wall Street and Savings and Loan greed of the 1980's on through the big tabacco trials of the 1990's to the Enron meltdown of this century. Presently, corporate America is cutting ominously back on their employees' pensions, leaving tens of millions' retirement in jeapordy. The legal profession and medical profession often run into the shoals of no-ethics-here-yet. Biomedical and agronomic research is facing enormous tests of ethics as our science capabilities delve deeper and deeper into genetic manipulation.
It is assumed often that ethics is taught from our families in childhood, or from our spiritual institutions and guides. Morals are largely defined from belief systems and relate closely to ethics. Often, they are interchangable, though academically they are distinct. Yet, there is little or no formal teaching of ethics in primary through high schools, and very few curriculums in university include ethics. Some disciplines, such as judiciary, teach an applied vacuum of morals. There are journals on ethics within professions, yet they are little read in the rush of life.
