So you see, you have two things in your favor. One is you know that morality (or ethics) does exist. And two is that you honestly want to be moral (ethical), even if you aren’t always sure exactly how to do it. Even if you and your colleagues can’t agree on what is moral or ethical, you all agree that you honestly want to be moral and ethical, and that morals and ethics exist, which are two big points in your favor. I wouldn’t bother asking for advice about moral issues from someone who doesn’t care about anything except for gratifying their own physical desires and is willing to do so at the expense of other beings.

Or, let me explain it another way. Many years ago I had a professor who sat all of the students down in a circle instead of in rows. She was very open and honest during the class. She was a gentle, good person. There was something special about her. She knew how to create a nurturing and warm environment. She made us all feel like we were part of a very positive, productive group, and she created an environment in which we were all able to respect and listen to all of our classmates. Toward the end of the class she passed out paper and asked each one of us to write our names on top of the paper. Remember, we were all sitting in a circle, not in rows. So each one of us passed our paper, with our name on top of it, to the person on our left, and they wrote down something they liked about us. Then we all passed the papers to the left again, and wrote down something positive about the person whose paper we were holding. We passed the papers around until everyone had written down something positive about every single person in the class, so we were all thinking about the wonderful attributes of all of our classmates, and then we got our own paper’s back and were able to see all of the wonderful things that our classmates said about us, so we were able to feel good about ourselves, and about everyone else in the class.

At the time of the excise one of the people (I believe it was the teacher herself, though I will never know for sure because it was anonymous) wrote on my paper, as the positive attribute that they liked about me, that I cared about people and things. At the time I didn’t think too much of the comment, but now I understand why they wrote it. They wrote down that I cared about people and things because caring about people and things is not necessarily a quality that everyone possesses, but it is a very good and important quality, and when considering ethical or moral issues, I’m going to seek advice from someone who honestly cares about people and things.

I believe that the same exercise was found in a story in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book, perhaps the original one.