When you recognize that someone telling you not to do something to them doesn’t necessarily mean you did something wrong, but simply that they are whole a person with preferences about how they are interacted with, your communication skills and emotional literacy skills are improving.
Just so you know.
Love, light, and butterflies,
Kitty.
Hi friends,
Not caring about how your actions impact others is an ethical issue.
That does not mean that you do not get to live the life that you want to live. It doesn’t even mean you are a bad person honestly.
That simply means that if you are adamantly putting out that you don’t care how other people are affected as long as you get to do what you want to do, then you’re not being ethical.
If you live your best life while causing harm to others and you don’t care, you have an ethical issue happening.
You can or can not choose to sit with yourself and figure out how to manage that ethical issue. That is up to you.
When people have conversations about ethics, they are having discussions about conscious decision making, understanding your relationships with others, and comprehending how we interact as social beings.
Note:
I’d also like to note that while typing this out, the Grammarly editor tried to change this to a synonymous term of moral.
The problem is that ethics and morals are not simply synonyms just because they deal with the same concept.
This is where a lot of people get mixed with these terms. And what I’m about to give you is a very crude explanation of the differences. I invite you to actually take some time to do a little self-study about the differences so that when people are talking about them, you aren’t trying to apply them in the incorrect way that might actually cause harm to yourself.
While these terms address the same concept, they also address the way in which that concept is interacted with.
Ethics is social and society based. Moral is individual and based on your personal perspectives.
Moral can also be applied to large groups such as religious groups, but those groups are only groups because of the concepts in which they apply. They rely on multiple people’s personal perspectives centering around a similar theology/ideology that isn’t necessarily relevant for all people.
Morals don’t even actually address harm reduction in a social group. That is what ethics do.
Also, address the fact that laws are part of the same conceptual ideology as ethics and morals, and they also do not necessarily address harm reduction. Justice activists and people who work with the law (enforcement and advocates) can give you first-hand experience of how their job is not about harm reduction rather than upholding a decision made into law even if it has negative impacts.
Ethics is the only term in this grouping of similar words that actually addresses the individual and social impact of harm reduction.
We should not be promoting the message for people to care less about anything. We should be telling each other to love more and care more. We also need to be willing to develop the skills to have boundaries, uphold those boundaries, and be able to communicate those boundaries.
Not caring doesn’t help anyone, much less yourself.
It teaches you to bottle up the negatives until it becomes too much.
We are stunting our interpersonal development.
Taking space is a boundary.
Ignoring a situation long-term is an unhealthy coping mechanism.
Decide how much space you need.
I hate the term High functioning.
Like every fucking thing that I have is apparently high functioning.
And you know what?
All that means is that I am masking enough to make sure everybody else is comfortable while I’m sitting and wallowing in my misery about how fucked up my brain is and…
… hoping that the next panic attack is my mild enough that my meds work correctly and no one notices I am scared shitless.
… for my next manic episode to be really tiny and short.
… the next PTSD episode that I have does not involve humans who I have contact with.
… that when I have an autistic meltdown everyone doesn’t assume that I was throwing an adult-sized temper tantrum instead of listening to all of the things that I was staying prior to being overwhelmed.
… that my OCD does not run another person out of my life when they realize that like being active in my life involves a lot of ritual and planning because I have shit and everything scares me.
Being high functioning means you don’t see me.
We always see moments of people’s lives in general, but even if you are my person…
you can’t see me.
Oh, buddy, I hate this topic with a passion. I recently had a breakup, that despite limited communication due to the tension the discussion invoked, I believe that part of the issue was their heavy belief that ethics are subjective, which is true, but not in the way that was central to the discussion we were having. They were discussing morality. I was discussing ethics. However, due to the interchangeable and colloquial use of ethics and morals, people often don’t understand that they are using the wrong term.
I am sorry, not sorry to inform you all that ethics and morals are not the same, and you must be careful in how you use the term in communication. This is a significant issue in why so many arguments break out. Foundationally ethics are cultural and communal. This also includes subcultures. Morals are individual and are deeply connected to our experiences, nurture, and personal growth. When discussing how actions affect others, both matter; however, the impact is the basis of the term you use.
One of the many communities these conversations occur in is the polyamorous community. The terms consensual nonmonogamy and ethical nonmonogamy are different but also colloquially used interchangeably. Polyamory is distinctly about the ethics of nonmonogamous loving relationships; Not defining love for others; Not telling people how to present that love; Not the priority of certain types of intimacy. It is about the cultural ethics of this specific subset of nonmonogamy. A dictionary definition does not explain the intricacies of cultural expressions and agreement throughout the community. No, quick definition does. The base definitions that float about are introductions not, the full picture of what polyamory is.
I will share some cursory links to help people understand ethics and morals as different terms that cover different relationships to similar central ideas.
What is the difference between Ethics, Morality and the Law?
What’s The Difference Between “Morals” vs. “Ethics”?
What’s the Difference Between Morality and Ethics?
You say morals, I say ethics – what’s the difference?
Ethics, morality, law – what’s the difference?
Compare and contrast “morality” and “ethics.”
Ethics And Morality
An Analysis on Law Vs. Ethics and Morals in a Changing Society
The Battle Between Morality Vs. Ethics: Which One Wins?
Ethics and Morality
Revolution Kitty 