Elbows, ears, and rules of thumb

“Never put anything in your ear smaller than your elbow.” It’s not exactly a solid ethical principle — and probably not an ethical principle at all — but it’s a good rule of thumb.

Rules of thumb, handy calculations we have to guide us through life in various ways, save us from having to sit down every five minutes to figure things out from scratch. But no matter how handy, they often don’t bear a lot of weight when we’re considering something critical.

In making ethical decisions, we also have some rules of thumb, and perhaps the best known is the so-called Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” seems to make a lot of sense and gives us a quick way to decide on which course of action to take in a given situation. After all, it just doesn’t seem ethical for me to do something to someone else that I wouldn’t like done to me.

I don’t like people who sit behind me in theaters and chat their way through a movie. So, I don’t do it either, but is there an ethical obligation not to speak in theaters? And if we’re not totally forbidden to speak, exactly how much can we say and at what volume? While my likes and dislikes give me some reason for acting in a certain way, it’s not entirely clear that the Golden Rule gives us all the ethical information we need.

One reason for engaging in ethical inquiry is to determine how we should act. Another — and just as important — is to develop some yardstick for gauging the actions of others so we can tell whether they’re acting ethically, too. Is the guy talking behind me in the theater simply annoying — or is he doing something unethical, too?

Some people have a lot of trouble with this idea. They resist the notion that we can pass judgment on how other people act. Of course, we make those kinds of judgments all the time. If nothing else, we commend people for doing good things. We reward heroes. We honor patriots. We applaud the generous. And if we can do that, then we have to look to the other side of the coin and say something about those who don’t measure up. Whether it’s the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks or the burgeoning Enron scandal, we do say that people did things that were patently wrong.

If we’re going to pass those sorts of judgments, then we need some standard against which to measure people — and that seems to require more than simply deciding what I would like people to do to me. For me to make ethical judgments completely self-referential introduces a dangerous subjectivity and leads to one of the worst forms of ethical relativism. My personal likes and dislikes don’t carry a lot ethical force.

I don’t like people to smoke around me and so, on those rare occasions when I indulge myself in a good cigar, I make sure I do it in a place where I won’t offend others who similarly object. But to then go on to say that smoking in a public place is unethical doesn’t necessarily follow. I would need to make a much stronger argument than the fact that I don’t care for it.

After all, someone else may not mind whether someone smokes around him or her. Most smokers, in fact, don’t mind at all. So, following the Golden Rule, a smoker should feel no compunction about indulging around other people. It’s important to note here that I’m not saying that smoking in public is ethical; only that if you want to say it’s unethical, you need to use something stronger than your own preferences and the Golden Rule to support your argument. But unless there is some demonstrable ethical prohibition against smoking in public, my decision not to do it exceeds the demands of ethics.

We are all free to go beyond the requirements of ethics at any time. But that excess of “goodness” doesn’t create ethical obligations for other people. If I decide — for whatever reason — to give 20 percent of my income to the poor, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you are unethical because you do not. Before we can say anything about you, we need to determine whether there is an obligation to give money to the poor and how much that should be.

So should we ignore the Golden Rule? Absolutely not! The real ethical force behind this particular rule of thumb is that to do to someone else something that you wouldn’t like done to you is hypocritical. And, at least in my view, it’s the hypocrisy that’s unethical — not necessarily the act in and of itself. At least, I think that most people agree that hypocrisy is unethical, but I could be wrong. For a quick and easy answer on how to personally respond to a situation, the Golden Rule often fills the bill. When we need to do more important ethical work, we need something a little more sturdy. After all, “Red sky at night — sailor’s delight” is a good rule of thumb when planning a picnic for the next day. When Mission Control is deciding whether or not to launch astronauts into space, I would hope they’d use something a little more sophisticated.

You can launch some answers my way at ethics_matters@infoworld.com or can join in our Ethics Matters forum at www.infoworld.com/forums/ethics .