Ethics vs. Emotions

Human beings are emotional. We are also rational. I remember a farmer saying to me once, that that is a dividing like between animals and people--animals have no ability to rationalize, no capacity for thought. That obviously stuck with me.

Sometimes I think of the world as a very sad place. Sometimes that feels overwhelming. From those feelings, I am driven to fight against injustice, against hatred, suffering and pain. There is absolutely beauty in this world, and there is much that is ugly. There is good and there is bad. When you open yourself up to the ugly, it can become you, even overwhelm you, much easier than the beauty and the good.

We have a choice when it comes to good and evil, beauty and ugliness. We can close our hearts and our minds and make ourselves a reflection of it, or we can open our hearts and minds and let it become us and change us, perhaps even changing it. As Albert Einstein said, "The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." Closed hearts and closed minds are captive bystanders in this world. All in all, what we do with pain and ugliness, and how we let it affect us, is up to us. Somehow, without the supposed ability to rationalize, animals have maintained a higher moral ground than humans ever have. What we do to animals as a whole has never been done to us, except by each other...

Ethics are meant to integral driving forces that guide your rationale and determine your actions. They are meant to affect everything you come in contact with, regardless of the emotions involved. Ethics are not meant to be subjective or biased or emotional, they are your driving force, your rationale. Regardless of the lives or personalities involved, your ethics should determine who you are, without being influenced by others, and that should not waver. Ultimately, this consistency of character will portray itself as integrity and respect.

Are we so removed from our natural emotions, our biological needs, the instinctual right and wrong, that we must rationalize our actions according to ethics? We must define what is right and wrong because it is no longer obvious? What is it that changed us, and why are we so lost?



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