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  • Thinking Ethics was a project launched in Geneva to foster the debate about ethics. A few friends, fed up with only reading about abuses in the media, decided to hold a forward-looking seminar on five subjects: ethics and performance, ethics and knowledge, ethics and consciousness, ethics and disobedience and ethics in real time. If moral has to do with right and wrong, then ethics is its application in society. We believe that people need to talk about the subject to determine the level of ethics they want. The book Thinking Ethics, a result of the seminar, is to start the discussion. This blog is a contribution to the conversation.
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  • Andrea Spencer-Cooke
  • Pascal Marmier
  • Kelly Richdale
  • Stephen Whittle
  • Steve Bowbrick
  • Beth Krasna

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July 28, 2006

Impact of culture on ethics

Have been travelling in Japan, and am reminded daily of the cultural differences regarding truth, which is by no means a black and white issue here. Ken Joseph in The Japan Times talks about a "situational ethics" approach to life in Japan, and I find the expression very apt. When asked a direct question,  a Japanese acquaintance might either answer in an ambiguous way, or will shy away from a direct answer as he might not want to offend you.  The Japanese language is not ambiguous, and two Japanese will understand each other. It is only the poor foreigners who can't pick up on the meanings. Here social conventions would dictate that restraint and sensitivity to the feelings of others trump blaring out the naked truth.

Posted by on July 28, 2006 at 03:35 PM in Society |

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