GameBanshee Forums

@frogus: At the risk of using a cliche, it wasn't always that way. It's one reason I'm glad that the US military ultimately falls under civilian control. Public outcry in the past ensured that the armed forces could be held accountable to outside authority. A trial by Court Martial operates much like a civilian court of law does - it's not a banana court. The accused has a right to be represented by counsel (either their own or a lawyer will be assigned to defend them; civilian lawyers who specialize in the UCMJ may represent soldiers in Courts Martial). They are innocent until proven guilty...and so on.

It's for these reasons that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay are such a controversial issue. Essentially, they are being illegally detained. There's no justification for it. The Bush administration, giving in to pressure, has released a few. Yet there are still people being detained there with no hearing scheduled, no formal charges leveled against them, and no legal representation. It's a travesty, and reminiscent of the prison camps of a totalitarian regime.

[QUOTE=frogus23]@Fable -

I very much agree, but I think that in the case of governments and especially corporations, the 'generality' does apply, the 'specific' less so, unfortunately.

Ethical principles get lost in big beaurocratic institutions. If you're a cog in a machine, you can play whatever part you like (unethical as you wish) and blame the resulting lack of ethicality on the workings of the machine itself, rather than on your own workings.[/quote]

No argument, there. Levi-Strauss noted back in the 1930s that small, insular modern cultures could develop mass perceptions of the world which were totally skewed from reality, as though each member of the culture had gotten together and agreed to vote on believing in a given fallacy. It is no great extension of this to point to corporate cultures as possessing their own sets of "house rules" which may include strongly unethical behavior. I wouldn't be surprised either to find that many of the people who behave in this fashion--routinely deceiving their clients, stealing their stockholders' money, offering bribes for contracts, etc--hold and practice deeply held ethical viewpoints outside of work. The human mind is a wonderful thing for compartimentalization.

Therefore I think that individualism and moral accountability of individuals is essential in cases like this. If the individual's morality is hammered into line with the 'will of the institution', then there will be no moral accountability and no strongly compelling reason or motivation to ever do what you think is right insead of what'll get you promoted.

Again, total agreement. But in most cases, a supply of willing employees as mid-level management is always available in the unemployed pool; so that the individual feels constrained to adopt the corporate ethical culture at the risk of losing their job. This is especially true today, with many international corporate firms engaged in "downsizing."