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Got Ethics? I'll Take a Dozen Please*

Out Beyond the Ideas of Rightdoing and Wrongdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet You there
-         - Rumi

There may be a reason why Rumi said that, there may even a context why. I know that because there is a context in life for me where this applies. Simple observations of the world tell me that the rule of the land is an antecedent to a human’s definition of right and wrong. Sometimes the rule is against what I want and desire, sometimes it is against what I want for others to have or not have. At these times I apply, ever so comfortably, Rumi. However that’s not what Rumi meant or intended.

It cant be that simple now, can it! The subjective nature of ethics and morality makes it very easy to get clever with it. The evaluative scale for measuring the amount of ethical inclination for a person is within and it is always ON. In the office premises of TATA Consultancy Services Ltd., Bangalore, on a glass wall, there is a huge quote from Henry Ford that says “quality is doing the best when no one is looking”. Whenever I see that I wonder how many people have the life situation good enough to even understand what Ford meant, notwithstanding the ability the perform it. Ironically the quote was put up on the walls of a bay where the HR sit and they were not my most favorite people in the organization. They were not bad, they were just working by different rules; rules which I believe are tough to place within my ethical framework. The HR has simple goals on paper, fit the right person in the right role. Even in Utopia, that manifestation would be a cartoon series that the occupants would enjoy as the ideal entertainment. I thought, though it’s hard to achieve it, the process could be better and the one thing I believed was missing in this whole well-oiled process of moving people so quickly was the human interaction. There are hundreds of tools today to gather the psychological inclination of an employee, apart from those that involve getting into a meeting room with the person. These would create a psycho-profile of the person which can then be mapped to the right role, location or team, reducing the hassle the managers have to undergo to fit the randomly chosen individual into the team. Just finishing the job by mere numbers (or letter as Professor LSG Terms it) and not in spirit is where the Ford quote flying over the desks of these sincere employees comes to mind. Is it right?  


Situations are the reason and can be justifications in hindsight for being ethical. However, there has to be a baseline for measuring it and it has to be in character, in habit. Pain is my baseline. Two questions I ask myself, am I relieving pain for the world around me by taking this decision, or am I causing it? This is funny because of the polar opposites of these questions, but the reason is to bring out the true implications of my decision making without fear. This removal of self-doubt helps me ground my decision on the ethical compass, and gives the necessary courage and strength to carry on with it, which otherwise would be very hard to find. 

 *I had missed the class on ethics but have had a second hand experience of what had happened. 

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