Ethics in Social Networking and Business 2

8Ethics, Temporality and Spirituality

As discussed earlier in the book, the concepts of good and evil in ethics leads us to make an observation: it quite often happens that those with whom we are conversing suspect the underlying naivety behind what we say. They feel some embarrassment because ethics makes one think of a vague, somewhat spiritual concept, and one which is of an idealistic nature. It is in response to this allegation that we propose to study the possible links existing between ethics, the real (or temporal) world and the spiritual world.

8.1. Introduction: problematics

In this book, it has often been noted that our actions can be regulated or guided by morality or ethics. Their characteristics and differences were also measured. Between the two, it can be said that there is a fundamental difference: morality is a formal concept that can be standardized, while ethics depends on consciousness.

To simplify things, we could characterize ethics as follows: ethics is an intrinsic notion. It derives mainly from the convictions, culture and opinions of a person, accumulated and established over a lifetime through experiences. These elements cannot be modeled because the information technologies do not yet make it possible to process an in-depth knowledge of conciousness of a cognitive or emotional type.

Morality is first of extrinsic type: it comes from principles elaborated by groups of people such as a society, nation or religion, or professional organisms, etc. ...