Ethics - What is Good?

Themes of ethics are ones that I particularly enjoy exploring, because good and bad morals have changed completely throughout the centuries. Even nowadays it's difficult to determine whether certain things are ethically good or bad, and that's the most fascinating thing about. We often turn to the law or religious books to decide where we stand on our ethics, since they are decided by large groups to define. However, these contradict what true ethics are. There are plenty of theories that contradict each other, but I for one follow the Subjective Relativism theory, in which there are no universally decided morals, just what we decide for ourselves. I also think Cultural Relativism is defined from this, in which ethics are derived from our cultural understanding of them. Meaning some things are ethically wrong in one country but not in another country. This is, however, due to what I stated about law and religion deciding our ethics.

While I do see the importance of law and order, they don't entirely define our ethics, because some laws are ethically wrong overall, such as the law that gay people can't get married. It's an unfair law but still a law nonetheless. These are also ethics decided for us by the government, and following ethics enforced by others is a detriment to society.

There is also an issue of self-righteousness due to the connotations of ethics. If a person does something that they think is right and tells people how right it was then that's the type of mentality that can lead to fascism. Hitler, for example, did what he did because he believed it was the right thing to do and refused to accept that it wasn't, and he got that much power because he led people on to believe it was right as well. The mentality still exists as well, as there are plenty of political groups out there, KKK, UKIP, BNP, and EDL, that strongly believe what they are doing is ethically right to point where logic and reason is not a factor anymore. Their goals are set in stone so there is nothing anyone can do to prevent it. That's not how ethics work in a perfect world, because one man's ethics should not be enforced onto other people, otherwise large groups of fascists will continue to be a problem. Although there is also an essence of ego-gratification in this, which is an uncontrollable aspect of human nature. It works in the way that a person will have similar ethics to a group and said group will use that to manipulate this person to join them, and once that person feels accepted in the group, they get the urge to enforce the ethics onto others, and as the numbers increase, so does the satisfaction of the group members.

I always love exploring themes like this, because they inspire a lot of ideas regarding character traits and motivations. I also think there are issues that can be addressed within a narrative about this that can lead to some very memorable storytelling. In fact, they are commonly used as themes in The Legend of Korra, since the villains in that series are all portrayed as villains with a tonne of layers that define their motivations through what they deem as right.