Today is an age which the sense of value is in chaos, and being unable to tell right from wrong. Because of fast technology development, people’s relationship with society is more and more closer and complicated, so people need some reasonable code of conduct, especially a code of ethics. In China, we have old, traditional ethics which we call it the “Five Cardinal Relationships” between ruler and subject(loyalty), father and son(filial piety), husband and wife(love and toleration), between brothers, sisters(love and respect), and between friends(friendly kindness), which was focusing on the interaction relationship between people close by, instead of relationship with society. So, old Chinese somehow ignored the widely social groups, which is why some people say Chinese are lack of Public Ethical Spirit or Civism, and people don’t usually care much about cases like public good and public welfare. In western culture, some Christian advocate the ethical idea of Sixth Cardinal Relationship which is the Relationship between Group and Individual, to make up the loophole of Chinese Five Ethics.
More or less, the main and currently urgent social ethics include the Increasing differences between rich and poor, Social equality and justice, Sustainable development and environment conflict, and many hard, challenging, complicated problem. And all of them are usually related to the problem of entire social structure. It is usually way beyond national border and become an International problem. Like the environmental pollution could affect other countries by air, river and ocean, and the best example is Chernobyl and Europe. Economical or political turmoil could cause the international refugee. Look around, this kind of thing happens everyday in middle east, Africa, and ancient Russia, China. So, the social ethics must be dealt with international vision.
About rich and poor, there are many reasons to cause it from happen which mainly include the Individual specific factor, and Social factor. Individual may include the education background, laziness, and alcohol, narcotic drug taking and so on. But the most important is social factor which is the economic, political institution and social structure and so on. Today people want to avoid rich-poor difference problem, will not only need to start from person, but also from the aspect of society. For American people and Christians, there are three main ways to deal with social poor. First, to live in a simple and unadorned life. Second, generous to volunteer to contribute. Third, take good care of the poor and provide them chance.
About the second, righteousness, social equality and justice. This kind of problem appear in every society, no matter big or small, the despotic one or democratic one, capitalism or socialism. This is because of the hidden evil in human nature, humanity. In western culture about classical ethics which is Bible, prophets seriously denounce the inequality and un-justice in ancient Israel, and god also punished it to make it broken apart. But basically Bible doesn’t support the idea of using Revolution or Taking over ruler’s power to solve inequality and un-justice, because the new one who is in power after revolution will soon overuse privileges like the front ones. Lord Acton has a specific good word in his work “Freedom and Power” which is “Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupt absolutely!” So, for both western and Chinese people look on three sides. First, defend the basic human right, which is specific that as everyone is born equally theoretically, so everyone should have some natural, basic right. Second, spread the spirit of fairness and justice. Third, build the safe and complete legal institution, and this is extremely important rather than find a wise leader as leader might be punished by law because of some selfish reasons. And in my home country China, the spirit of believing law might take another 100 years to build.
没有评论:
发表评论