A new buzzword is in the air. Many are grasping for it as if it was an oxygen mask in the middle of a fire or the miracle cure for future tropical diseases. And the word is not Revolution (too passé) nor Democracy (so cliché)…It’s Ethics, a rather exotic ingredient in this Puerto Rican stew of hope and political opportunism, yet totally appropriate to the current circumstances.
Historically, public debates on ethics tend to arise from the acknowledgement of past abuse, and/or conflicts between different ethical codes. An example of the first instance is the Nuremberg Code for research ethics on human subjects, which originated in the outrage concerning "scientific" experimentation under Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime.
Scandals in journalism, one of several professions with elaborate ethical codes, offer a paradigmatic example of the second case as the journalist’s mandate — "telling the truth" — is increasingly at odds with the logic of the newspaper or broadcast business — making a profit and upholding complicit power structures. Given this tension, deliberately misrepresenting facts, slanting, and literally "making up a story" have become common strategies to build successful careers. A recent (and ironic) example is Geraldo Rivera’s report of fighting in Afghanistan. Rivera delivered the story as if he had personally been present — which he was not — to boost ratings and upgrade his rather tarnished image.
In Puerto Rico, a combination of factors during the last fifty years such as shifts of power between men and women, mass migration, weak participation in the formal economy, and the end of the single party system, has created a less centrally controlled — some would say more "immoral"– society. Yet, to propose that contemporary Puerto Ricans are lacking in morals or ethical behavior, obscures the more relevant fact that what we have is not less but more: A wide range of competing ethics.
An enlightening case is the so-called lack of a "work ethic" amongst Puerto Ricans, which some sociologists have aimed to re-cast as not a lack but an ethic of "entitlement." Where entrepreneurs and social workers see an "attitude," for example, others perceive a set of different answers to the questions of what is valuable work, how much work is necessary to live, and under what circumstances — and at what price — should one work for others. Hence, when someone labels another "lazy" or "greedy," this actually corresponds to a moral judgement about a different ethics, a divergent way of conceiving how to live a (or the) "good" life.
It is then useful to distinguish between ethics and morality — to the extent possible. Morality — which is often coded as secular or religious Law — generally corresponds to the dominant values of a culture, crudely catalogued under right and wrong. Ethics, however, does not proclaim as much as try to answer by action what is the responsibility of people towards themselves and others within a specific context. To take two Biblical examples, morality condemns Mary Magdalene; ethics asks whether any sinner can really cast the first stone. Morality is constantly shifting although it proclaims to be absolute. Ethics is an open-ended probe into how to engage with others.
That is why ethics cannot be taught at school as one can teach math. For every community — however "immoral" or "saintly" — lives by a code of ethics borne out of the group’s need to survive, reproduce, and redeem itself even in shameful contexts. Drug dealers, for instance, find disloyalty, inability to deliver, and collaboration with the enemy to be cardinal sins, and this behavior will frequently result in the culprit’s death. Inmates find the rape and killing of children impossible to forgive and when prison officials want to literally eliminate someone convicted for these crimes, all they have to (knowingly) do is release this person into the general population. (Remember Jeffrey Dammer?) Priests, who at least until recently had been perceived by the faithful as upholding the highest moral standards of a given community, cannot share the fruits of confession even if it would prevent the death or degradation of another person.
Importantly, communities — not individuals — produce and elaborate ethical codes. Political corruption in Puerto Rico, for instance, is hence not so much an anomaly or weakness of individuals, as a way of life; one of a few accessible — and even acceptable — options for many to accumulate wealth and secure upward mobility. In fact, modern political corruption is but a variation of other forms of building wealth beyond the rule of law that have been an integral part of the Puerto Rican economy since Columbus, including piracy, contraband, and illicit commerce, and are linked to the Island’s subordinated political location and economic marginality.
In this sense, part of the hypocrisy of persecuting corrupt officials under a rhetoric of morality is that, to a large extent, Puerto Rico is corrupt to the core: Democracy is a sham undermined by colonial subjection. The electoral process is a carnival fueled by patronage. Economic autonomy is an illusion made possible by federal subsidies.
Yet, the current juncture can turn into an opportunity if we bypass the moral posturing and cut to the chase: How we treat each other is but a symptom of how we live, work, consume, govern, love and hate.
So the ethical question becomes: Is changing the way we live the kind of "work" we’re willing to undertake? Challenge is: There’s no royal "we."
