Situational-ly Speaking

I love facebook. Have lots of cool conversations with friends and folks on there. One of my friends posed a question. Are there any rules you are willing to break? The very question assumes that ethics are situational. My response was that yeah – of course I break rules all the time. I just have a personal rule that I only break rules if there is a good reason and no harm will come from me breaking that rule. So, yes, I do my best to follow all the traffic laws.

Another person agreed with me but came up with this mini rule list because let’s face it – 10 commandments are just too many. For this individual you can sum up how to be a good person in 4 easy steps.

1) Harm None
2) Pursue Happiness
3) Be excellent to each other and....
4) Party on dude!

He then had to explain that while harm none seems really easy it does have gray areas that in practice need to be thought about. Like, if harming one saves the lives of thousands - is it then ok to harm one? Don’t you just love situational ethics? They force you think. But that isn’t a bad thing.