A Hierarchy of Good

This is part 4 in a series designed to give you, our clients and friends, a loftier and practical look at ethics. We hope to demonstrate why and how a deeper understanding of ethical concerns can be applied in your life – both personally and professionally.

 “Don’t go marching down to the courthouse all outraged and looking for Justice son.  Justice don’t live there!”

— Ezra Heller, American Homesteader

In every generation, events occur that point out the oceanic distinctions between law, justice, moral norms, contemporary culture and ethics. For those who remember the 1990s, the Simpson trial was one of those events.

We suggest that failing to notice, or worse — blurring the distinctions on which our culture turns — can lead to lofty expectations and powerful upsets when those expectations go unmet… Yes, this is about that trial – and ethics.

There’s a difference between Law (on the Books), Legal Procedure (in the Courthouse), Prevailing Moral considerations (felt intensely yet differently by cultural groups) and Justice (or Karma) which may not be so easily — or so obviously — obtained.

These things are not the same.

Yet it’s not unusual to see an individual or a group marching to the court house for Justice; going on television to indict legal procedure, writing letters to the editor to change the Law, or sitting at the dinner table railing against “the way things are…” The next day, nothing seems to have changed. On inspection, we suggest the following consideration: Ethics seems to have an internal (but often unnoticed) hierarchy.

1. What’s Legal: As in, “I haven’t broken any laws! I’ve been found ‘Not Guilty!’”

2. What’s Moral (accepted or rejected by the group): As in, “Hey, that ain’t right!”

3. What’s Just (or Karmic): As in, “I got off, but I can’t sleep — ever. And I live a solitary existence, looking over my shoulder at all times; acting-out repeatedly until I crash…”

4. What’s for the best?  As in, “It’s not just about me! How can I include the rest of the world in my ethical calculus? (And perhaps atone for my transgressions…)”

It is a hierarchy isn’t it? Yet many people never progress beyond the ground floor. Some basic advice for making clear distinctions between hierarchical levels: 

1. Law doesn’t get to first base, friends. The world is so unsatisfactory partly because Law is the merest foundation. It’s simply what most of us can agree upon. 

2. Morality is a good step, but while not entirely toothless, it is so general (and often ambiguous) that there’s just too much wiggle room. 

3. Justice (Karma): Well, it’s so omnipresent that we may not notice — and, it’s slow. Also, its poetic nature sometimes eludes us in our eye-for-an-eye moral outrage. 

4. Ethics is practical and open to reasoned debate — reaching not just for a minimum acceptance but for optimal good… It’s never perfect, but we can make it continually better. And if we are to feel satisfied, we have to try to reach for more — together. 

The long climb up the mountain toward more workable ethics, requires that we come together in peace and respect to make our concerns quietly clear — and that we honor our fellow human beings enough to stay at the table together to notice that we are just that: fellow human beings. Until we reach that threshold, progress is unlikely.

But on that future day, the discussion might start here: “What is best — the greatest good — for all concerned?”

No one was totally satisfied with the Simpson trial, but then; “Justice doesn’t live at the Court House.” 

Applications

1.  Individually

Try not to break any laws. Attempt to honor your tribe’s moral code. But search for a loftier pole star and set your course by what’s best for all concerned.

2.  At Home

It’s easy (in our individual electronic worlds) to think we’re alone in a great amusement park. “Who cares if I steal that candy bar, that coat, that car? It’s all just a great video game anyway…” Ethical transgressions have a way of coming home to roost, and watching the ethical scales find a balance on the back of your child is the greatest pain imaginable. Start now and enlarge their purview — to include viewpoints both loftier and wider.

3.  At Work — and in the larger world…

Wow. So few meaningful examples of lofty, ethical thinking. Maybe a fair start is to begin by seeing work as an arena for expression — as opposed to merely scratching out a living. What values does your daily conduct in the arena express? Maybe there’s an opportunity for change waiting for you to step back and notice it as your perspective evolves.

Where does justice reside? Not at the courthouse, obviously. But we think, in the individual human heart — and in the arena where we can see you soar. Show us!

Dessert: More about the O.J. Simpson trial...