No amount of logic and cynical rationalization can justify the irrationality of our not trying. I am not a terminal pessimist. I am not trying to provoke, but to awaken. Most of us have never known the lack of freedom. We do not seem to understand that the freedom of the strong is usually lost from within, not from without.
Ethics is the lifeblood of a free society and it can tolerate only so much adulteration.
Philosophers have been approaching this question for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. Many arcane and elaborate linguistic arguments have been made. Philosophers seem to enjoy these involutionary intellectual exercises, but their seminars on ethics do not have much direct relationship to what we hear about ethics on TV news programs, or see in the newspaper headlines. The news editors obviously feel that the public already knows what ethics means. To see if they were right, the Ethics Resource Center conducted a survey.