On Moral and Ethical People

I do not trust moral people. Moral people are only moral because of what other people think. They are only “moral” as long as the Authority which dictates their morality is in place and watching.  Take away Authority, or worse, have Authority release them from their morality for a “just cause”, you get a Gitmo, an Abu Ghraib, a My Lai, a Kahrizak, an Evin, a 1988 prison massacre, institutionalized prison rape by guards, a Porajmos, a Holocaust, a Holodmor, a Medz Yeghern, Manifest Destiny, national exceptionalism, ethnocracy, neoliberalism, trickle-down economics, austerity for the masses, a war on poverty replaced by a war on the poor, religious fundamentalism, complexionism, the worst atrocities committed by humanity.

Ethical people, on the other hand, realize that the only person to whom they can really be true is their own self.  But I don’t trust absolutely ethical people either.  A truly ethical person knows that sometimes the only ethical thing to do is to set aside their ethics temporarily, the distinction here being that they come to that decision on their own.  They are flexible.  An absolutely ethical person is so committed to their own ethics that nothing, no change of circumstances, no amount of compassion, no amount of empathy, will cause them to change.  The result of the latter is the same as Authority releasing its charges from their restrictions.