The article describes ethics as embodied in all that we do and, as such, gives rise to 'ethical dynamics - our human way of bringing about our 'human' world. As such, it serves as an introduction to a comprehensive approach to understanding and transforming ethical dynamics: Towards a More Open, Shared and Responsible World.

1. Can We Have a Conversation About ‘Ethics’?
An Introduction
By Abraham Chiasson

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Can we have a conversation about ‘ethics’?
By Abraham Chiassoni
(The following is provided as an introduction to an understanding of ethics as driven
by the energies and dynamics of our human potentialities and, giving rise to what we
describe as ethical dynamics.1)
I guess most of us would say ‘yes’ to the above question, some would focus on ethics
in the context of their religious values and their role in shaping the principles and
norms guiding their behaviours, others would focus on the values that bind them
together as citizens of a country or, of a specific community say, a university or of a
government institution. Others still, might discuss how ethics have impacted their
relationship qualities and commitments and, as result, have shaped as examples,
their marriages and the life of their families.
For the most part, ethics, traditionally understood, make for interesting and
valuable conversations among similarly minded individuals e.g., those who share a
common religious faith or, who have chosen a specific line of work, say the medical
profession or government service; nonetheless, our contemporary ‘ethical’
challenges have little to do with similarly minded individuals or institutions but
rather, how to create an ‘ethical’ conversation – synergy - among diversely
motivated individuals and institutions (and, we could also say societies).
1 The full text of the approach: ‘Towards a More Open, Shared and Responsible Ethical World – A
Framework for Understanding and Transforming Ethical Dynamics’, along with PPS presentations for
each of its chapters can be found at: ethicaldynamics.wordpress.com – the author can be reached at:
abraham.chiasson@gmail.com

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As examples, though we are often told that ‘religious’ beliefs and attendant values
or, simply the ‘golden rule’, underpin many corporate or political behaviours, we
have all come to understand that corporate and political values – for good or bad -
are driven by the need for survival in a highly competitive and cutthroat world with
often little palpable evidence for the welfare of other individuals and institutions.
More challenging for us in our contemporary western world are those whose ethics
are in contradiction with the ethics that bind (for good and bad) our societies
together.
To address some of these challenges, some have gone back to Aristotle and have
argued for the role of virtues in shaping and guiding one’s character hoping that the
‘right’ virtues e.g., honesty, courage and the like, would bring about the right
behaviours in just about any circumstance. And, though we have preached virtue
ethics in our schools and universities and continue to do so in the hope that they
may shape such behaviours and, for some, most likely have had the desired
outcome, think of those who enrol in the military or in some ‘humanitarian’ pursuit,
virtue ethics do little to help us understand and deal with as examples, those
religious doctrines or political ideologies competing to control the future of our
world, be they those that we agree with or otherwise.
In summary, notwithstanding our successes over time to address the issues
embedded in our ‘human condition’, an effective conversation about ethics now
demands a more comprehensive approach, one capable of bringing together all our
capabilities as a species in all that we do from the mundane to building a sustainable
world.
In the following, we will briefly examine some of the elements that should help us
understand the ethics we have: the basis for an analytical framework and, the ethics
that might serve us better: the basis for a transformational framework.
So, what would be the basis for such an approach?

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First, one would have to acknowledge that we are dealing with a ‘dynamic’
phenomenon where everything we do has an ethical dimension, simply put our
actions and accomplishments are a reflection of our values, principles and norms
and, importantly, our relationship qualities and commitments – the ‘operational’
basis for our ethics. So let us not ‘kid’ ourselves, walking down the street has an
ethical dimension e.g., do we greet – acknowledge - or not our fellow human beings.
In summary, ethics are our ‘human way’ of being in synergy with the forces that
gave us our ability to bring about our human world however dysfunctional e.g., wars
and tyranny, that this may have appeared at different points of our human history.
While ‘god’ for some, prophets for others or ‘wise’ individuals e.g., Buddha and
Confucius, have given us insights into how we can be in synergy with those ‘cosmic’
forces that sustain our existence in the universe, not to mention philosophers e.g.,
Aristotle, who have toiled on such issues pretty much since the beginning of our
existence as a ‘conscious’ species, for us the challenge remains: how do we grow –
make relevant - such knowledge and intuitions or, for some, god given wisdom, via
our ethical actions and conversations, more so, how do we continue the
‘transcendent’ journey of those wise individuals in our contemporary world.
As a starting point for this journey, the first place to look would seem to be what I
like to describe as our ‘core human potentialities’, those potentialities – basically
structuring energies – specific to our species that have driven our cognitive or other
potentialities e.g., social and political, that have made us who we are. These
potentialities, specific to our species could be identified as: ‘consciousness,
conscious will, a sense of self, personal identity, a sense of vision and, hope’.
Why not art, religion and science as examples? Granted, they are all profoundly
human potentialities, so why not ‘core human potentialities’? Quite simply, these
potentialities, which I describe as cognitive potentialities, are structured – driven-

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by our core human potentialities; simply put, they exist to give life and substance to
our core human potentialities. As examples, we would be hard put to have a
‘meaningful’ sense of vision without the contribution of art, religion and science; or
for that matter, our consciousness would be rather sterile to say the least if not for
these cognitive potentialities. Nonetheless, it is our potential for consciousness and
vision that spurs our vital cognitive potentialities and not the other way around.
Still, some would probably like to start the conversation with religion i.e., what has
given many in its institutional form their structured sense of belonging to the
universe along with those beliefs, values and ethics most conducive to respecting
and benefitting from such a belonging and, herein lies a trap; while institutional
religions and other forms of spirituality have made such a contribution, they have
made it on the basis of the needs – aspirations – of our core human potentialities,
those embedded in our human nature at a point in time e.g., our need – potential –
for vision and hope.
While some of the beliefs, values and ethics associated with institutional religions
will surely resist the test of time, our core human potentialities will continue via as
examples, our cognitive potentialities for art, philosophy and science, to seek out a
more satisfying sense of belonging to the universe via more sophisticated beliefs,
values and ethics. Obviously, this argument will not convince those who believe in
the contrary as we can witness in our contemporary ‘religious’ conflicts.
In summary, having a conversation about ethics is about having a conversation
about who we are and who we hope to become on the basis of our core human
potentialities e.g., what are those values, principles and norms and, relationship
commitments and qualities in our life that will foster the growth of our human
potentialities such as for consciousness e.g., understanding the connections between
my emotions / feelings and the world that I inhabit; conscious will e.g., having
control over what happens to me; a sense of self e.g., understanding what’s
important to me; personal identity e.g., who I am as a social being and who I want to

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become; ‘vision’ or the inner sense of beauty that spurs me to bring about a more
satisfying world; and, hope or, what gives me the energy to address my daily
struggles and to continue my journey.
How would this approach ‘work’?
Our human world like that of nature takes place in a world of competition – in its
social dimension this could be described as politics i.e., whose authority and power
‘carries the day’ and, in nature, who manages to get the resources – the ‘flower’ or
the ‘weed’ by the side of the road or, who of the eagle or the fish lives on to see
another day.
In our world as in nature, the results of such competition are dependent on what
could be described as ‘mediating’ structures e.g., authority and power is usually
exercised in an institutional context say the family or business with both having –
when things are ‘working well’ – a set of accepted rules for its exercise; one can also
see that mediation takes place on a broader scale e.g., the community, country or
planet via the UN as an example. In nature, mediation takes place in the form of
context e.g., the ‘flower’ or the ‘weed’ will be dependent on the qualities of the soil
and, in the case of the eagle or the fish, who wins depends pretty much on the
characteristics of the river giving an advantage to one or the other.
Since we all have the feeling, at least on some occasions, that we make decisions that
will affect us and others, we are pretty much like formal institutions, a mediating
structure looking after one’s interest and impacting on others with a set of rules that
we have either been given or, in some cases, chosen for ourselves with respect to
our needs, hopes and dreams.
From an ‘action’ perspective, engaging in a conversation about ethics is about
engaging in a conversation between ‘mediating’ structures, between individuals,
between individuals and institutions, between institutions and, between individuals,

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institutions and the larger mediating context e.g., community and society; the
results of such mediation being our ‘human’ world; more specifically, what will have
‘importance or what will be valued’ – what could be described in a socio-political
context as ‘authority’ and, who will have the ‘power’ or given the tools to make this
reality happen.
However, before addressing the world of our socio-political relationships, and the
social goods and social qualities that result from this mediation, let’s look at what
underlies and supports this mediation - what’s going on from what will be described
as our specific social / cognitive structures along with their ‘cognitive’ potentialities.
Our cognitive architecture: social / cognitive structures and their ‘cognitive’
potentialities -
Though our human nature contains elements of what could be ascribed to plants
and animals and which are essential to our survival, what gives life to what we
described above as our core human potentialities is to be found in our ‘core’ human
– social and cognitive - structures –, those structures that underpin all that we do as
a social species along with their embedded potentialities for bringing forth a
specifically human – social – world. In effect, our social structures (described below)
exist inasmuch as they are the expression of their embedded cognitive potentialities,
hence the reference to social and cognitive structures, those that together bring
about our social and cognitive world.
Looking at the situation holistically, one can see (or, can choose to see) that our
cognitive potentialities fall within 5 core social structures: 1) those cognitive
potentialities that stem from our human nature per se (our core social structure)
with its cognitive potentialities for symbolism, behaviors, explanations, invention,
faith, reason and technique; 2) those that relate to the self (as a social actor) e.g.,
cognitive (emotions, feelings) energies, embodiment, empathy, uniqueness, beliefs,
meaning and information; 3) those that relate to our domains of activity e.g., social

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qualities, (behavioral) forms, stories, beauty, values, truths and theories; 4) those
that relate to our mediating structures – individuals, institutions and ‘society’ – e.g.,
(their) universe, (sense of) order, ethos, aesthetics, ethics, ideology and knowledge;
and, those that relate to what could be described as our ‘collective human psyche’ (as
a species) e.g., symbols, rituals, myths, art, religion, philosophy and science.
Obviously, one can debate the choice of structures and what was identified as their
cognitive potentialities; on the other hand, one cannot debate that such features as
aesthetics, ethics, ideology and knowledge, together, play a role in our mediations as
individuals, institutions and societies and result in ‘culturally’ specific actions and,
we could also say, in social goods and qualities that we ‘recognize’ as members of an
institution or society. More so, one could not imagine having a conversation about
ethics without referring to our beliefs as a ‘self’, the stories and truths giving life to
our domains of activities, to our sense of order or, more generally, to the teachings
of ‘religion’ that have affected our sense of ‘morality’.
In summary, having a meaningful conversation about ethics involves having what
could be described as a ‘holistic’ conversation where all of our cognitive
potentialities work together to help us understand ‘who we are and hope to become’
relative to any given human challenge.
Nonetheless, this working together of our cognitive potentialities takes place as we
mentioned previously in a socio-political context where individuals, institutions and
societies compete for ‘authority’ – what is reflective of their ‘real’ ethical aspirations
or, overarching values as some would say –, and ‘power’ – for who will have the
wherewithal to implement congruent actions -. Here is what this entails.
Our struggle for authority and power or, creating a ‘congruent’ world -
As we have all learned to acknowledge, our core human potentialities say for ‘vision
and hope’ nourished by our cognitive potentialities as individuals, have usually

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brought us in competition with other individuals and, similarly for institutions and
societies for what we described above as authority and power. In such a context,
one might ask: how can we make this competition ‘generally’ beneficial to our goal,
say for fulfilment and growth and, how can a different understanding of ethics be
helpful in this quest?
As a backdrop to our discussion, we can see that our domain contributions, or
domain decisions for that matter, do not have an equal effect, some enhance our
core human potentialities e.g., for consciousness or a sense of vision and hope and,
others do not or do so minimally so, that over time, we could hypothesize that these
core human potentialities will signal one way or another to the individual,
institution or society and, to the species as a whole, what works and what doesn’t
work for us pretty much like our successes and failures as an individual help us
distinguish what’s right and what’s wrong.
Historically, the ‘holders’ of such knowledge have been associated with, or have
been given the role of ‘authority’, as with the elders of the tribe or with valued
institutions such as the church or universities and, have been given the means –
power - to exercise this authority; however, in our contemporary world, we can now
say that authority and power is also vested in a multitude of social actors be they
formal institutions or the individual holder of a useful expertise, simply put, to any
institution or individual perceived as capable of contributing to our human
effectiveness whatever that might be e.g., a technology company such as Apple or, a
medical doctor dealing with our health issues.
Now, probably more than ever with the advent of information and communication
technologies, we can see that authority is a matter of competition and, those who
win in the authority ‘marketplace’, get the resources – the ‘power’, often expressed
in monetary or political terms. As an example, for good or bad, corporations have
increasingly usurped the authority of governments to regulate them in the name of
their ‘authority’ in the world of ‘competitiveness’ thus giving them the power to

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impose their authority or what has importance for them. We could also say that our
institutional framework as a society, say the place of the family in our hierarchy of
institutions – its power -, is a reflection of its perceived authority or contribution in
our human affairs.
In such a context, some could say, let the competition continue and ‘may the best
person win’, and put their faith in human nature to sort out what’s best. However,
history has taught us that letting the ‘powerful’ run with the ball i.e., what has
‘authority’ for them, has its consequences; we have learned sometimes the ‘hard
way’ that human hubris has to be channelled for the betterment of society and, that
the quality of this channelling via our societal governance institutions as an
example, will determine our faith as a species: what has authority for the petroleum
companies may not be best for us all!
With these challenges in mind, how do we foster the kind of authority and power
dynamics that will grow our core human potentialities as individuals, institutions
and societies and lead us to more fulfilling lives? Though religious doctrines and
political ideologies e.g., communism, capitalism and democracy, have been – and are
still used – in our institutional mediations to fulfil this function, their contributions
to our collective well-being are increasingly being challenged by ‘hard facts’ e.g., the
spreading use of terrorism in many parts of the world for political power, our
biological ecology which many consider be on the brink of collapse and, our social
ecology, even in ‘developed’ countries, is being challenged by increasing inequality
in both opportunities for contribution and reward.
So, what does this mean for our conversation on ethics?
As a point of departure, it would seem useful to acknowledge, irrespective of their
contribution to human accomplishment, that the authority and power dynamics
sustained by our religious doctrines and political ideologies alike and, our more
mundane authority and power dynamics, are the product of our cognitive – species

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driven - potentialities e.g., their realities are based on domain stories – think the
Bible or the Koran - or sense of beauty – think God or the creation – and truths –
think democracy -. Simply put, our authority and power dynamics are embedded in,
but also in synergy with our cognitive potentialities e.g., change the story or
narrative and you change the authority and power dynamics and vice versa.
In ‘real life’, authority and power dynamics are also the underpinnings of our socio-
political landscapes where they ultimately decide on matters of social qualities and
social goods, those that will give the landscape its realities, more so, those social
qualities and social goods that will ultimately serve to maintain a given set of
authority and power dynamics, think our contemporary addiction to automobiles
or, more positively, our capacity to feed ourselves via sophisticated agricultural
technologies.
From a practical ‘relationship’ perspective, we can see that authority and power
dynamics are also, most importantly, the ‘in your face’ expression of the landscape’s
ethical realities and dynamics, those that either create positive ethical tensions
where individuals and institutions compete to bring about a collectively inspiring
vision or set of overarching values say, creating a more ‘just’ society for all or, where
ethical tensions easily become sources of ethical violence where vision for some and
their overarching values suppose the domination of others as in the context of
‘authoritarian’ political regimes and, all those situations in between such as with the
vast income and opportunity inequalities in our corporatist societies.
Finally, as we have previously mentioned, we must recognize that all of us as
individuals, institutions and societies are ‘condemned’ by our human nature to
compete for authority and power, driven sometimes by a desire to contribute to
‘human good’ as in the case of accepting political refugees and, at other times
seeking to maximize our own well-being irrespective of the damage to others e.g.,
our ‘love affair’ with the automobile or air plane travel; simply put, ‘ethical’ violence
is pretty much in our human nature as Freud and others have well described.

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Let’s try to address each of the above issues as to what they imply for our
conversation on ethics.
Authority and power dynamics and our cognitive potentialities -
Since authority and power dynamics have their origins in our cognitive
potentialities i.e., those specific to our species, our point of departure for
understanding and, eventually, transforming authority and power dynamics – what
we also described above as ‘ethical dynamics’ – must begin with as examples, those
symbols such as ‘money’ that bring about our individual, institutional or societal
universe and the human qualities that they inspire and, we could also say how those
qualities e.g., compassion or greed, are embodied in the rituals e.g., sharing through
altruistic behaviour or stashing away for personal use, that give a sense of order
(good or bad) to this universe; and, we can also see how these rituals will give rise
over time to our collective myths, those that give our society its collective spirit or
ethos, itself serving to give us our sense of aesthetics e.g., what is ‘beautiful’ is
expensive in the case of money, and to summarize briefly, our ethics or the ethical
values and principles that will drive our relationships, the ideologies that will frame
our collective thinking and, the theories that will be the basis for our knowledge2.
Skipping this understanding or, at least an effort to do so, say limiting our
conversation to matters of values and how they impact on such and such reality, is
avoiding the synergistic nature of our cognitive potentialities: each dimension of our
cognitive world is in a dynamic relationship to the other. Better still, a conversation
on ethics must have a ‘structured’ approach to understanding the synergistic nature
of our ethical reality.
Authority and power – ethical - dynamics and social realities -
2 - One could also begin the analysis by seeking to understand the realities embedded in our ethical
values and principles.

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As we mentioned above, authority and power dynamics or, ethical dynamics, are
always driven by and in synergy with a given set of social qualities e.g., fairness,
security and individual freedoms, and social goods e.g., food, education and public
transit, and a host of other social qualities and goods; however, we have also
mentioned that social qualities and social goods can be ‘manipulated’ to maintain a
specific authority and power structure or, specific ethical dynamics: social qualities
such as greed that emphasize individual wealth as oppose to the common good and,
social goods that emphasize a particular e.g., corporate based consumption pattern,
both tend to foster those ethical dynamics that could be associated with unbridled
capitalism.
Therefore, since social qualities and social goods are not ‘ethically’ neutral, a
conversation on ethics should normally seek out both their embedded ‘social
relationship’ values and principles e.g., ‘who wins – who loses’ but also, how their
embedded values and principles e.g., those that drive social goods such as
automobiles, impact on our core human potentialities say for our personal identity
and sense of vision and, as we will see later, on our core social potentialities e.g., for
contribution and accountability and, on what will be described as our institutional
dimensions e.g., those related to our sense of family and nation, importantly, those
potentialities and dimensions that give social relevance and meaning to our
individual or institutional contributions.
Authority and power - ethical – dynamics: their impact on our social potentialities and
institutional dimensions -
At the outset, we must keep in mind that our authority and power – ethical -
relationships in the best of circumstances are pretty much what has kept our species
from self destruction or, from a more positive perspective, put it on a path of
increasing sophistication in multiple areas of endeavour e.g., from the political to the

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scientific, with its obvious ‘ups and downs’. Simply put, they are at the core of our
social, hence human, existence.
So how have we avoided – generally - those authority and power – ethical -
relationships3 that give rise to, or depend on the creation and maintenance of
‘ethical’ violence and, how have we, for example, promoted those relationships that
have given us a sense of accomplishment and growth? Better still, how do we create
a more ‘constructive’ ethical synergy among the social actors that we are as
individuals, institutions and societies.
This is a tricky question since, as we mentioned above, ‘ethical’ violence and human
relationships often go hand in hand and, ‘violence’ can be very much viewed as in
‘the eye of the beholder’; furthermore, little progress in human affairs usually
happens without some measure of ‘ethical’ violence for some, think the automobile
in the age of the horse and buggy for those who made a living taking care of the
horses.
To get a grip on this challenge, we must go one step beyond the issues that we
described as related to authority and power or ethical dynamics and their
connection with our cognitive potentialities and, social qualities and social goods
and, address more specifically their connection with what will be described below
as our core social potentialities – those potentialities, like what we described for our
core human potentialities, that make it possible – give us the impetus - to grow a
‘human’ social community via the institutional dimensions i.e., as individuals,
institutions and societies, that they have spurred and that have become the myriad
channels for their enactment and development.
For example, authority and power - ethical – relationships driven by such social
qualities (or values) as fairness, security and individual freedoms and, social goods
3 - Slavery being a prime example of our human failure to avoid such violence along with the
‘working’ conditions at the dawn of the industrial revolution, among other examples…

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such as education, food and transportation and their embedded values, will also find
their relevance (e.g., beyond what we described for our core human potentialities)
inasmuch as they contribute to growing our core ‘social’ potentialities i.e., those
related to empathy, belonging, contribution, social synergy, accountability and a
shared sense of destiny and, to those ‘institutional’ dimensions (as individuals,
institutions or societies) that permit our domain enactments to be ‘productively’
connected – mediated - to a larger social purpose i.e., institutional dimensions
related to a sense of family and community, to a particular ‘professional’ expertise
and capacity, to ‘production’ whatever that may mean in various contexts, to the
opportunity for participation in a broader institutional life such as in civil society
and the state and, from a more universal perspective, the opportunity for sharing in
our broader realities such as with a sense of nation or ‘people’ and, ultimately, our
identification with the planet.
Simply put, our social potentialities as individuals, institutions or societies provide
the social energy for our domain contributions and their embedded values while our
institutional dimensions provide the social structure for their ‘inter’ institutional
mediation – in the creation of our world.
While the choice of the above social potentialities and institutional dimensions can
be debated, one aspect that can’t is the role of ethical dynamics in the construction
of our social world and the need for a transformational framework sufficiently
comprehensive to offer hope, not only to those individuals, institutions and societies
currently at ‘the top of the pyramid’ or sharing in the dominant ideology but,
importantly, for those aspiring to a ‘better world’.
From a practical viewpoint this would mean that a conversation on ethics, say in a
car company or computer firm, that would focus solely on the relationship between
the ethics – values… - underpinning workers’ social potentiality for contribution and
their impact on the company’s production dimension would be both alienating to
workers – reducing them pretty much to a simple ‘instrumental’ role such as robots

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– and, stifling for the growth of the company, especially in our post industrial
economy.
In summary, our ‘human’ social potentialities and institutional mediating
dimensions exist – have a life – in each of us as individuals and in each of our
institutions and societies since they derive and are a construct of the ‘human’ mind,
permeating all that we do; together with the dynamics of authority and power -
ethical dynamics - and resultant social realities, their ultimate aim is to grow our
core human potentialities, those that we described as: consciousness, conscious will,
a sense of self, personal identity and, a sense of vision and hope for us all – as
individuals, institutions and, more broadly, as societies and species.
Beyond our conversation about ethics, what does this mean for all of us?
As humans, like it or not, we live as part of an organic whole i.e., as a species
occupying a specific place and function in a broader universe be it the planet for
some or the universe per se for others. More so, our growth and sense of
accomplishment as an individual is very much tied to our effective participation in
this organic – social – whole even though we may have the illusion otherwise, think
of someone as original as Picasso without ‘paint or canvas’ or without the benefit –
stimulation - of the range of artists who preceded him.
In this context, what the above has endeavoured to describe is that ethics, especially
understood as being the basis for ethical dynamics, are the nexus where what we
have described as our human, cognitive and social potentialities come together to
bring about our human world.
As a corollary, trying to deal with our contemporary challenges, be they at the level
of the individual struggling for an understanding of the forces shaping his realities
and motivations or, more broadly, at the level of our planet’s civilizations striving
for both cultural congruency and participation in human emancipation, will require
that we shed our current understanding of ethics as mainly in the world of our

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societal, religious or otherwise, values, principles and norms, and address ethics as
embedded in – in synergy – with all our human potentialities, sometimes driving
and sometimes being driven by our other potentialities.
i Abraham Chiasson is a former executive with the public service of Canada with
responsibilities for executive education, corporate development, service quality along with
other responsibilities for strategic planning and policy development.