The thin line between ethics and legality

There is this statement that often makes its way on social media discourse. ‘Do everything to make money, as long as it is legal.’

I myself am a big proponent of that. But recently, I began contemplating this, and because I have a cybersecurity background, I most often judge things first by ethics, then by legality.

And in this contemplation, I have come to realize, just as I believe some of you may already do by now, that a thing can be legal but not ethical. More importantly, both of these depend on various factors, chief among them geography. But before we dive into that, let’s see in their simplest forms what both concepts entail.

Legality or being legal is the status conferred upon a thing or action by the laws of any land.

Ethics, on the other hand, is not objective; rather, it deals with the self-imposed limits one has on the things they can — and cannot — do.

Ethics is much more complex because it can be influenced not just by our thoughts; in fact, it often builds upon passed-down morals from parents, culture, and religion.

The law gives no damn about those. It is based solely on what the law recognizes as upright and that alone. 

Let’s take the issue of abortion, for instance. A caveat worth knowing here is that I myself have no personal views on this concept. I see it as extremely complex, beyond a yes/no analogy, which is what makes it a perfect fit for this.

In certain jurisdictions, abortion is a crime, and attracts legal punishment for all who engage in it. The reason, per them, at least from a generalistic point of view, is that abortion is the killing of a human child, a premeditated murder at that. And this is backed by the concept of fertilization in biology, which denotes that life begins at conception; hence, a child that is already conceived can and should not be ‘killed’

Some other jurisdictions do not share in that. They believe that until a fetus is delivered as a baby, it can be taken off by abortion, and as such, empower residents of that jurisdiction to have an abortion.

In both cases, depending on where the cosmic laws of the universe place you, and depending on what passport you hold, you don’t typically debate these kinds of things. It is fixed, and until it is unfixed, there is no arguments. Do or Don’t, that’s what it is.

From the ethics side of life. It is more complex. As noted above, ethics can be influenced by various factors, and depending on how those factors aggregate, one’s view on the issue of divorce can take any side.

A conservative catholic may, for instance, shun the concept of abortion, viewing it as a sin. Non-Christians can have the same idea too, particularly if the society they live in shuns it, maybe not from the point of it being a sin, but from something like ‘a woman who has an abortion may never give birth or insults her guiding spirit.’ Whether these are true or false, we don’t know and can’t objectively say. Yet it influences how people in that society behave, and in many cases, even after they leave that society, crumbs of such indoctrination may remain. (I have a thesis that laws are made and mended by people based on subtle cultural biases from their culture. i.e., a lawmaker proposing a bill to ban abortion may be doing so because of cultural ethics, even if they may look for objective elements to defend it, and if such a law is to be passed, it becomes objectively true and enforceable, while behind it is a culture.)

Another society may view abortion as reasonable, and cite their own logic. i.e., a doctor coming from the point of saving a mother’s life. (This has been heavily debated in regions where abortion is a no-no, by the way.)

Now you see the quagmire between both.

I believe that ethics leaves itself vulnerable to laws. Using the abortion concept again. A woman who’s had an abortion in a region where it is illegal may defend her position from the point of her health, but because ethics is not viewed as objective and leaves itself to the whims of laws, it can go sideways.

I will attach a video of Michael Sandel — “The Moral Side of Murder.” It is an old video from 2009 that I stumbled upon on YouTube some time ago, found fascinating, and is now relevant to this. 

Please click this link to watch.

Thank you.