Thursday, April 05, 2007

ethics is a hydra!

I tell ya Ethics is best taken in small doses. Been reading up arguments and counter-arguments about workplace discrimination, corruption and corporate social responsibility for ages. I feel like my head's gonna go kaboom.

Tomorrow my bed will become my exam venue. This is the first and hopefully last time it's gonna happen! The Ethics exam is semi-take home (question gonna be posted on Vista, allocated time's 9 am - 4 pm), which is a rather strange hybrid because it's more like a prolonged open-book exam to me. I just hope I won't oversleep and wake up at 2 pm. That'd be a disaster fo' shure.

When I first started learning the subject I thought it was going to be yet another pointless took-it-cos-we-had-to module. But actually after reading the articles I discovered quite a few interesting points. I was especially captivated with Milton Friedman's eloquent essay. If you want to mince words, the essence of the essay is that the business of business is to do business, argued on the basis of capitalism as opposed to collectivism. I found it hard to digest at first and had to re-read it but goodness can the guy write! Despite the fact that some of his statements were rather extreme, I couldn't help but feel the commanding force of his words.

Why Ethics is a hydra
Because when you think you've killed off all existing arguments new counter-arguments are already growing and sprouting and doubling up in place of the dead ones.

It's irritating and you can't win, but still quite interesting anyways.