We sometimes find ourselves surprised by how other people think about moral issues—how they distinguish right from wrong and choose to do what they think is right.
Surprise can take various forms, from confusion to outrage. At its core is the discrepancy—greater or lesser—between our own moral vision and that of others, when we would expect them to think the way we do.
When two different visions “clash” in a community, problems arise that can escalate into real conflict. How and why do moral controversies arise among us, and how can we rationalise them?
Demoralising morality
A few years ago, the whole world was scandalised by the revelation of the manipulation carried out by the Anglo-American company Cambridge Analytica, which interfered with the personal data of more than 50 million users on Facebook. Its purpose: to profit from political consulting offered for high-profile electoral campaigns such as President Trump’s or the Brexit referendum.[1]
Why were so many users outraged that their “virtual selves” were being probed and then persuaded to vote a certain way through personalised messages tailored to their preferences? Simply because they did not expect it, they did not believe that a large consulting firm, in collaboration with a famous social network, would act in such an undemocratic way in a traditionally democratic society; such methods are worthy of the secret police of dictatorial regimes, regimes that have been firmly condemned for decades. These methods included not only lies and deception (under the guise of using the data for academic purposes), but also bribery, the use of prostitution or blackmail.
The revelation not only triggered controversies and investigations, but also new regulations to bring back to the old moral principles the work of such companies that process personal data of individuals, be they employees, customers, users, and so on.[2] The fundamental right of citizens to have their privacy respected was been reaffirmed. This right has been reinforced by severe sanctions against controllers or processors of personal data who show further indiscretion or negligence; audits of the way in which data flows are handled and additional data security measures have also been imposed.
The characteristics of morality
The morality of a society is the set of habits, values, ideals, and rules that it develops over time, with the tacit agreement of the majority of its members. These rules regulate their behaviour (as groups or individuals) with the aim of achieving good coexistence. Good coexistence is about the common good, the natural desires for self-preservation and self-development, and the balance between them. When a community disrupts its good coexistence, it can recover through the protest and civic vigilance of its members, or it can fall apart through the overthrow of its order, or it can be abandoned by those members who no longer find themselves within its rules and thus aggravate its disruption through their lack of civic reaction.
Moral rules are not written down in the same way as legal laws. For example, an unwritten moral rule might teach us to protect the elderly, children or the disabled in crowds or on public transport; a moral admonition might be to donate blood for hospital patients, to recycle rubbish, or to raise funds and undertake charitable activities.
Laws are based on the rules, customs, and moral norms first articulated in people’s interactions in different settings (couple, family, group, community, society). From time immemorial, people have agreed on rules of life precisely in order to pursue and preserve together certain common ideals and values that they could not pursue in isolation or at the expense of others: security of life, freedom, justice, self-realisation, education, family, prosperity, solidarity, friendship, communion, spirituality, happiness, and so on. For example, the laws of the family have arisen from the appreciation of the family and the duties of caring for children and parents; the ancient custom of caring for animals, which has taken various forms over time, has given rise to laws that regulate the treatment of animals today. Some moral norms are more recent, but they too are at the root of legal norms: for example, awareness of the fragile nature of the environment and of the earth’s limited natural resources has led to the formulation of laws to protect nature and to manage resources more wisely.
Ethics is the theoretical study of morality and is part of philosophy. At the same time, ethical thinking is a part of human reasoning, a part of the conscience of every mature, rational, and lucid human being. The problems of ethics revolve around the good as a fundamental value, the distinction between right and wrong, and the answers to the question: “How should we live?”
Vices and corruption
The main problem that can spoil a community with good and widely accepted moral rules is when a significant proportion of its members violate them, even though they think they are good, relying on others, the conformists, to bring the community back into balance. It is an attitude that stems from selfishness, whether it is not doing what should be done or doing what should not be done; just as in a choir someone would lip sync or sing out of tune.
Selfishness prevents individuals from appreciating what others and the community as a whole do for them, and respect and love for others is replaced by love for self (or, at most, for those closest to them).
Another reason why some individuals may challenge moral norms considered good by a community is a rebellious spirit, which manifests itself in the desire to break out of patterns and standardisation. In these cases, the “paradox” of morality that some philosophers speak of is not perceived or accepted: “that there are prohibitions that liberate, that there are commandments in this world that give meaning, that it is possible to have imperatives that ennoble people, and, last but not least, that it is possible to create norms and rules that…by this very limitation, liberate human subjectivity.”[3]
Another context of violation of rules and moral values is revealed by the child psychology studies initiated by the Swiss scientist Jean Piaget. After studying thousands of examples of children, Piaget developed a stage-by-stage description of the formation of their moral judgement.[4] The first stage is between the ages of 3 and 5, when children can’t distinguish between right and wrong and have a particular way of relating to the world: they are hedonistic and imaginative, believing that everything around them is or can be animated, that everything that happens is the result of someone’s action, and that right and wrong are judged according to their pleasant or unpleasant consequences. The second stage lasts until around the age of 7, when children imitate and judge what is bad according to the visibility of the consequences or the discrepancy between ordinary reality and the unusual context of the bad act. It is only in the third stage, around the age of 10, that children realise or recognise the intention behind the wrongdoing and become more aware of guilt.
In the case of adults who break the moral rules that they are aware of and consider good, or have considered good, we can observe that their judgement is immature. Either they relate to the world around them hedonistically and commit immoral acts in order to satisfy pleasures, desires or cravings, or they consider that these undiscovered, unperceived or frequently practised and therefore habitual acts are not so terrible.
It is precisely this kind of immature moral thinking that bases the legitimacy of power solely on legality and not on morality. For example, if a ruler is accused of corruption, and convincing evidence of corruption is presented in a journalistic style, but he has not yet been convicted by a court of law, then those with immature moral thinking make use of the presumption of innocence. However, this is a principle that applies only in the legal system and should not be adopted at the level of the party or at the level of society, in the spirit of the Romanian saying: “The thief that has not been caught is an honest merchant.” The spirit of the saying is ironic, but irony is no longer perceived as such and no longer has a moralising role.
If there is reasonable suspicion that a dignitary is corrupt, sound morality says that he should resign or be removed from office until his situation is clarified in the courts. This is an implicit norm in civilised and democratic communities where reputation is important and must be valued.
So, what can be done?
Our society is thus plagued by a tacit perception of corruption, especially in the political sphere, which suggests that the fight against corruption is, or should be, exclusively legal. This perception can also be extended to other “vices” associated with corruption, such as the undermining of the national economy, the betrayal of national interests, the violation of the rights of some social categories and the favouring of others, and so on. This vice of corruption and its perception have been analysed by the ethicist Valentin Muresan,[5] who also proposes some measures to combat it.
As such, corruption, which involves the use of public office for personal gain, is a phenomenon that is first and foremost a matter of morality and only secondarily a matter of justice; it has been codified in law precisely because it is a matter of morality. Consequently, there must also be forms of combating corruption that go beyond the typical legal sanctions.
The problem of inconsistency in the fight against corruption on an ethical, moral level throughout the world is also noted by other authors: “Are nations around the globe embracing ethics management strategies? Yes, but primarily from the perspective of combating corruption through laws, rules, and regulations. The limitations of this approach are straightforward. It reduces ethical behaviour to a minimalist conception (‘Don’t break the law or regulations’) and encourages a narrow, legalistic approach to defining acceptable behaviour.”[6]
The explanation for this narrow, legalistic approach is that the regulations in this area are created by lawyers. It is necessary for an organisation or institution to have a well-articulated organisational culture, including its ethical aspects, that is conducive to the work, goals and mission of that organisation; to select its members according to its standards; and to correct attitudes or behaviours that are in conflict with its precepts.
There are some useful elements and instruments that can make employees, civil service officials, managers, and so on, responsible and aware of the negative phenomenon of corruption: the introduction of ethical criteria in the strategic plan of organisations; training and coaching with ethical content; the introduction of ethical management in the administration; the creation of ethics committees and supervisors; regular audits; informing the public about these ethical aspects; the creation of publications and awareness-raising activities in the public arena and in the media; the practical, preventive implementation of organisations’ codes of ethics and the involvement of all their members in being vigilant, not tolerating criminal associations and denouncing those of which they are aware.
According to ethicist V. Mureșan, typical ethical methods for combating and/or preventing criminal behaviour include the creation of an anti-corruption institutional culture and character education. In this regard, he mentions the advantages of introducing ethical management into our organisational culture.
As a new discipline, ethical management is a branch of management that involves the creation and promotion of an ethical culture in the workplace and aims to improve organisational structures and decision-making processes. It is concerned with the creation of management methods and tools that contribute to the ethical development of an organisation and the choice of development direction. Ethical management involves ethical auditing, i.e. describing and analysing the current ethical situation of organisations, then determining the desired situation and deciding on measures to achieve it, in full accordance with the other forms of management. This is called ethical development of the organisation.
Ethical management is the result of the increasingly visible presence of responsibility/morality in organisations; this responsibility is not seen as a merely decorative element, but as an indispensable condition for their existence. An organisation demonstrates moral responsibility when it subordinates its own interests to the interests of society.[7]
In essence, it would be beneficial in our society to make the development of critical moral thinking and the assimilation of ethical decision-making methods explicit objectives in pre-university and university educational institutions, and then in institutions and organisations through specialised training of employees; it should also be possible and desirable to organise public moral debates on issues of broad or general interest, with the help of fair and neutral media; finally, to re-evaluate and improve moral criteria in institutions, from universities to parliament, from ministries to courts, with the help of properly constituted ethics and audit committees.
Ultimately, all this is placed under the banner of the ideal, but humanity has never abandoned the higher prospect of the ideal, even the unattainable, in order to have a reference point for changing the disappointing reality. The ideal is the moral equivalent of the North Star—the unfailing landmark of navigators on the world’s oceans.