More on deontological ethics

I really like And DanGo was his name-o's blog post on deontology and the workplace. But I wanted to continue with subject we discussed at the end of our last class. In the last discussion, the subject was based on Star Wars and justification of killing the emperor and his followers. A number of great ideas were presented and I contributed an utilitarian response to say that we can justify killing for the greater good a community. However, there are some killings that are simply for the good of a few and not an entire community. One of the best examples is gangs who kill because they believe they are acting ethically by following their own code and ethics, which really touches on the subject of deontology. According to Wikipedia (and all those to contributed to that subject), Deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek δέον, deon, "obligation, duty"; and -λογία, -logia) is an approach to ethics that judges the morality of an action based on the action's adherence to a rule or rules. But what happens when the rule or rules of a certain group as others? There is no real set of ethics to be followed by everyone yet we still attempt to define a rule that says we must all be good. Butt he purpose of this blog isn't to define good or bad but to illustrate it.

The ethics of gangs is much like the rest of the world in the sense they they are used to govern the actions of members, but only of that group. The ethics of other groups will always affect and impact others who do not belong to that group and we must derive a way to cope with the fact. Although the ethics of gangs impact us negatively in their murders, there is one fact that we can apply to ourselves. The movie Menace II Society is a great example because of one particular scene. The main character, Kane, and his cousin have just been car jacked and both were shot, but Kane's cousin did not survive. Thus, he seeks revenge and justifies his killing by the rule of the Bible, an eye for an eye. But before he takes his revenge, his grandfather counters his future actions with other quotes from the Bible. Hen then asks, "Kane do you care whether you live or die?" His only response at the moment is "I don't know."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWnoaJVomac (starting from 4:20 to 8:10)

It is this particular question to that want I draw upon. Kane is going to act upon his ethics to seek revenge, but does not consider his own being. It is this ethical question that should be applied to all because our own ethics can also determine if we live or die literally and not literally. First, the actions we carry out is based on our own ethics and can leave to survival or death, such as killing the emperor. However, we can also affect our imagine in reality by choosing to act upon our own ethics and we do not literally kill ourselves but our image. When we act based on ethics, do we consider the question of whether we will live or die? Do we care? Does our ethics define whether we survive or die? I believe that ethics need to be questioned based upon those facts.