Morals and ethics are fighting cousins; they are often mistaken for each other, but deep inside they are not all that compatible. Morals, generally, depend for their existence on agreement, and what is moral for a Yank may be abysmally immoral for a Hindu. Ethics depend for their existence on clarity of perception and individual thought about what makes right action, what constitutes good consequences, and what goals bring about the best long term broad survival for individuals, groups, species and life at large.

I recognize that this semantic distinction is not necessarily widely accepted, but I think the two things really need to be separated out from each other. Of the two the individual sense of ethics is by far the most important. Moral codes are a dime a dozen. You can get a new one just by packing up and moving to the Kalahari or Kandahar or Kalamazoo. But the sense of ethics is a precious channel of perception, which once sold out is very hard to restore and cannot be easily replaced.


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