code of ethics

 

After I wrote about woke, I felt I'd write about how it relates to writing books. Naturally, I can't go into it for all authors, just myself. I began thinking about the whole subject of ethics, which is to what I think this comes, which is why we decide a certain code of behavior is correct for us. 

That's when I came up with a different question. How do ethics influence my life and from where do my personal ethics come? That's no easier to write about than how it influences creative work. From where do any of us get our own code of ethics? Is it family, tribe, peer group, schools, culture, books, entertainment, or is some sort of code born in us? 

Today, I am relatively sure schools are having a huge role in teaching ethics, and some of that relates to both parents needing to work or single parent families. Both parents are gone more than I think was true in the past. 

Most likely, for today's kids, another big influence is social media, which didn't exist back in bygone eras. Game playing may be doing more of it than those of us who don't play games understand.

When I went to school, subjects were like English, literature, math, science, foreign languages, along with shop for boys and home economics for girls. No classes that I remember were about ethics. That was taught by our teachers' deportment, how well they taught, and the order that was expected in the classroom. They didn't tell us how we should vote, and I have no idea, even years later, to what political party any of them belonged-- if any.

So, I began to think from where did my own code of ethics come. Certainly my family, not just my parents but grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. As for a tribe, my parents mostly socialized with family-- both sides. We didn't go to church; so that wasn't much of an influence for things like Sunday school classes. I did though get my first Bible at a pretty early age. I didn't read it all the way through, until years later. I understood the basics--  you know, the words in red 

As for my tribe, it was likely mostly family, Growing up at the end of a gravel road in the country, there were no immediate neighbors. As a child, I was outside a lot; so nature was an influence and our animals, which involved pets but also cows at one time and then sheep. When you grow up around animals, taking care of them is a big part of how you learn what's okay to do. 

Guns were in my life always with rifles on the wall in the utility room. I got my first rifle when I asked for it as a Christmas gift. I was twelve. I was taught how to care for it and use it responsibly-- definitely an ethical value as responsibility has been a big deal all of my life. I wanted that rifle to protect our sheep from our nearest neighbor's dogs, who tore them apart too many times. I learned about death early, that way also, as farm life tends to do.

Books were another major influence in how I saw what was right to do. From the time I could read, I was in a library at my parents' encouragement. My parents both read also. I graduated from the little kid room, to the teen's room and then the adult room where I read all kinds of books from John Steinbeck, Janice Holt Giles, Zane Grey, Pearl Buck, Ernest Hemingway, and more. Probably books were the influence that today the internet can be. 

There were some romances too, but this was before sex entered into such books. They were more about how you treat a loved one-- presented generally in a positive sense. I don't know if books like Lolita would have been in my small town library. It was pretty controversial when it came out in 1955, but I preferred historical books anyway. I read a lot of those like Frank G. Slaughter's, and they did have ethical standards. If a major protagonist went against the right kind of behavior, they had to change by book's end, or punishment was their lot.

I doubt that peer group was much influence on me given my limitations in getting to town, until I drove. School buses might have been more so with strict bus drivers running the show. I was on them for a significant time, considering our stop was the first and then end of the line.

However it totally came together, I ended up with a code of ethics, which has been with me all of my life. This involved a sense of responsibility as well as consequences of actions. If ethics don't have an action component, they aren't really ethics. What I believe about that has influenced what I write and how I make my choices for themes. A bit more on that next Saturday when I also write about how the woke culture may change a lot-- or not.