Actions and Ethics

[unspeakablehorror]

One thing I try to avoid is justifying all of my actions with respect to my ethics.  That is, trying to come up with a reason for why a particular action I've done is not just understandable, but good.  Thing is, I don't always act in pure accordance with my ethics.  In fact, I often don't.  This could be because I'm unaware of the breach of ethics, because I'm having a bad day, because I've prioritized practicality or selfishness over my ethics, or because it's just literally not possible in that particular situation (such as if there is  a conflict between two of my ethical imperatives where satisfying one would require violating another in that context), to name a few possibilities.

I think an acceptance that I don't always live up to my own ethics is better than trying to mold my ethics into something that will justify my every act.  I think the latter just ends up molding one's ethics more and more into a series of arguments that what is should be, and that's no way to actually improve the world.  We should do our best to make our actions in line with our ethics, but I believe it's the wrong way around to do that by trying to change our ethics merely to justify our actions.