Dive 79: How poor ethics are breaking society
Hey, it’s Alvin!
“Safety regulations are written in BLOOD.”
That was a phrase I learned during my engineering studies. But I realized this idea tells us about the duties we have to the world and the people around us. Not just as engineers. But as human beings. And when we neglect these duties, society decays and eventually falls apart. So, how do we build a healthy, sustainable society?
“Safety regulations are written in blood” means that most (if not all) the safety rules that exist are there because someone got hurt once. Or even died. So, we made new rules to prevent similar incidents. But “safety regulations are written in blood” implies that rules were created after blood was spilled. So, how do we prevent accidents to begin with?
When I studied engineering in Ontario, Canada, I learned to design technology with a “first, do no harm” mindset. Engineering students are taught to think of all the ways their creations could be used and abused. And to prevent the latter. Below the surface of all we were taught was the fundamental idea that we are responsible to the public we serve. To be clear: this isn’t some wishy-washy idea that can just be brushed aside.
That a professional engineer owes a duty of care to the public is enshrined in our provincial laws. When a person becomes a professional engineer in Ontario, they’re given a seal. No, not the animal. It’s a stamp of approval. And it’s not just any ordinary stamp. Using the seal has legal consequences…
If you’re a professional engineer in Ontario and you seal a blueprint of a bridge, you are saying that you reviewed the design thoroughly. You are validating that the bridge is safe for the public. If that bridge collapses, you could go to jail.
Now, you might think, “I’m not a professional engineer, so why does this matter?”
Our duties to others
You and I might not work as engineers, but we still serve people around us. Most of us make products or provide services to customers. So, we still have a duty to others, even when there may not be formal laws that govern our actions. When we neglect our duties, we don’t just hurt others; we destroy society and hurt ourselves. I’ll explain why in a bit.
But I want to show you what I mean by “neglecting our duties” with a post I saw on Twitter/X. I blurred the names because it’s not about the people. It’s about a destructive mentality:
“build a product that raises ethical issues… but don’t care and let the market decide” is an appalling idea. The last sentence of the post shows that this person couldn’t even decide whether it’s “right or wrong,” which showcases ignorance (of history) and irresponsibility.
Why is this idea so contemptible?
Because history has plenty of examples of products sold by selfish people who did not care about ethics or morality. And we are still living with the consequences to this day.
Tobacco companies knew as early as the 1940s that cigarettes cause cancer. That didn’t stop them from marketing to kids. They didn’t care either. They also “let the market decide.” Sure, “the market” suggested that people wanted cigarettes. But it was because people were addicted. How many lives were lost because tobacco “entrepreneurs” didn’t care about their fellow human beings? How many families were ruined when a loved one died of lung cancer?
That’s just one example.
How about fast-food companies that sell “food products” knowing they’re causing widespread obesity?
How about pharmaceutical companies knowingly prescribing opioids “for uses that were unsafe, ineffective, and medically unnecessary”, leading to the ongoing opioid crisis in the United States?
I could go on.
Some people might say I’m overreacting. The person on Twitter/X is just quoting someone else who made a simple little software. At worst, it spams LinkedIn. But I’m not talking about the consequences of one specific case.
I’m not even talking about people who don’t know they’re being unethical. My beef is with people who:
Are making a product, and
Know there are ethical issues with it, and
Don’t care to address them
This mindset is not isolated to a specific product. These entrepreneurs carry this paradigm with them. Yes, today, they might apply it to a benign little LinkedIn spammer. Tomorrow, they might apply it to the production of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. Remember: 346 people died when two of these planes went down within months of each other.
The Boeing 737 MAX 8 is another example of a product that raised ethical issues and “triggered a lot of people.” But it was released anyway. The market bought it. Lives were lost.
When a person gets away doing something unethical or immoral, they’re tempted to do it more and more. It’s a cycle of impunity. Because they got away with it once, they convince themselves they can get away with it again. Again and again until someone loses their life.
This is exactly how and why safety regulations are written in blood.
Ethical and moral codes are like safety regulations. They are safeguards. When we ignore them, we’re neglecting our duties to others. We cause others harm. We cause societal harm. But we also cause ourselves harm…
Our duties to ourselves
We are surrounded by a modern technological environment that separates us from nature. Actually, it’s more accurate to say that our separation from nature is an illusion. Some would say we aren’t even just part of nature. We ARE nature. Think about it…
We are made of the same atoms and molecules found in nature. Just arranged differently and in different quantities. Our bodies are hosts to 10 times more microbial cells than human cells. So, it’s more like our bodies are made of nature.
Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh described nature as an ocean. We are the waves in the ocean. Each wave has its own shape and lifespan but is made of the ocean. And like the waves, the human species emerged from the soils of the Earth fated to return to it.
Psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm reminds us that in Christianity,
Equality had meant, in a religious context, that we are all God’s children, that we all share in the same human-divine substance, that we are all one.
- Erich Fromm in The Art of Loving
So, if we are all nature or we are all one, then it makes sense that when we harm others, we harm ourselves. And when we treat others well, we’re treating ourselves well. It’s self-care.
Don’t like the religious angle? Treating others well is a virtue in Aristotle’s philosophy of virtue ethics. According to Aristotle, a virtuous life leads to eudaimonia; loosely translating to happiness, contentment, and fulfilment. And one could say treating others well is a “golden mean” virtue that sits between the vices of deficiency (selfishness) and excess (prodigality). So, even according to Aristotle, we benefit from treating others well.
But it’s not enough to want others to be well. We need to act accordingly. Ethics and morals align our actions with our values. This is partly why…
Moral and ethical questions can’t be avoided. Only outsourced. Often to lawmakers. That’s why those who lack a personal ethical and moral standard like to suggest creating new laws to control human behaviour. They focus less on what they can do, themselves, relying more on others to guide their own behaviour.
Everyone has a duty to themselves. To outsource that duty is to avoid personal responsibility. Why is that a problem?
Because when we neglect the ethics of our actions or the products we release to the world, we risk hurting our neighbours. Laws and regulations may not yet exist to prevent blood from spilling. But we don’t need to wait for someone to die before we do the right thing. And it makes no sense to wait. Because when we hurt our neighbours, we hurt ourselves. I wanted to suggest helping our fellow human beings. And we should. But we can take it a step further…
Our duties to the world
I believe it’s an adult’s responsibility to create a healthy, sustainable world for future generations to thrive in.
That’s why I can’t stand adults who knowingly do unethical things for purely selfish gains. It’s not just childish. It’s destructive to our successors. We know this because we’ve seen this happen in history again and again. We still see consequences of past unethical acts to this day. Including all the safety regulations written in blood. But the stupidity doesn’t end there. Destroying the world for future generations limits potential gains. Harming others is self-harm.
But the good news is that the opposite is true as well.
When we invest in our brothers and sisters, we invest in ourselves. And there’s a bonus: our loved ones, present and future, also thrive. That’s the key to building a healthy, sustainable society. Always remember:
We each have a duty of care to the world and the people in it.
“Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
~ Greek proverb
Reply to belowthesurfacetop@gmail.com or click “Message Alvin” below if you have questions or comments. I’d love the hear from you.
Thank you for reading. Guard your duties. And I’ll see you in the next one.