Morality

Both rationale and emotions relate to the decision-making process of human beings. This automatically implies that both ratio and feelings impact our actions or behaviour. Psychological aspects, including mental traps, can impact a professional’s performance, as well as his attitude.

Evil could be described as the abuse of free will. There are various types of evil. Amongst others, natural evil, social evil and moral evil can be distinguished. Natural evil concerns events in nature, or natural disasters, such as a volcano eruption, an earthquake or a tsunami. Social evil concerns undesirable situations which appear in society, murder being an example, whereas moral evil concerns the (negative) consequences of human decisions. At work, focus is on the prevention and detection of moral evil.

Morality relates to ethics. Ethics is related to commandments and prohibitions. It concerns activities which are allowed or not allowed. Integrity involves conduct and misconduct. It concerns behaviour and misbehaviour. Ethical or unethical decisions relate to the debate about desirable and undesirable behaviour. It involves the discussion about right or wrong. Ethics deals with moral dilemmas. Values are crucially important when judging practical cases.

The post-modern approach views evil as the result of the fall of man. In this light, human suffering is the punishment of God. Later, evil has got disconnected from theology and started to get analysed as a social phenomenon. In that period, evil was seen as a deviation from reason. After the Second World War, and the disclosure of the concentration camps, evil got disconnected from reason. Since then, the analysis of evil started to focus on the context in which decisions are taken. People’s choices seem to be driven by their circumstances, sometimes even more than by content. This automatically implies that misconduct can be the consequence of adverse circumstances. This also means that everyone can show abusive behaviour. Evil can be seen as imperfection, but an alternative view would consider it as part of live.