These days, ethics may not play an important role in our world but you can't blame people randomly for being unethical. Ethics, according to me, is a relative term, as every person has a different perspective and almost all of them are confused!
Before you judge a person over something ( please leave out extreme cases like murder, etc. ), try placing yourself in his/her shoes, however smelly they may be ( the word 'smelly' used in the figurative sense ).
There is the 'right' and there is the 'wrong' and then there is the very sticky fence between those two. As an example lets visit the world of hacking. Leave alone "ethical hacking" ( which I think, personally, is a castle-in-the-air term ). When a hacker comes in possession of someone's personal stuff and gives it to someone else who is requesting them, he is just doing his job, for which he is getting paid. A layman might start pointing fingers, but once you put him in the hacker's shoes, he will do the same thing, as is the case with this world. The left of this fence ( the 'right' ) would be to take on projects that don't involve a third party, just the hacker and the payer. The right of this fence ( and, ironically, the 'wrong' ) would be to sell this stuff on a popular site for big bucks.
For situations like these, there is a coy term known as applied ethics ( also known as business ethics or situational ethics ). It applies the general ethical theory ( on which people cross their hearts ) to real-life situations. It predicts the way an average individual would react to a situation concerning even a bit of ethics, and then set them as standard ethical behaviour. Here's a cartoon showing a kid who has completely understood the concept behind applied ethics:
The best and the most realistic post till now. Well, at least to me.
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