What's the right thing to do?

Can I accept a free promotional holiday if I have no intention of taking up the timeshare offer at the end of it?

In a hotel bar, I saw a good friend's husband entwined with another woman. If I tell, my friend will be devastated, and she might hate me for it. If I don't, I'm joining her rotten husband in conspiring to deceive her. Should I tell?

Recently I noticed that my neighbour is growing marijuana on his land, and some plants are actually on my property. I don't want to confront him, and I don't want to turn him in, but I don't want to get in trouble myself. What should I do?

This sounded like a fun, interesting dip in and out of sort of read, so I bought it to see. It looks like it'll be interesting, made up of letters to 'The Ethicist', a column of the New York Times.

January 25th 2004
The End

I'm not entirely sure what to make of this book. What it isn't, for me at least, is a guide to ethics. Maybe that makes me unethical or amoral but instead of teaching me the difference between good and bad, as the title promised, it told me what I'd been aware of all my life: that people will twist morality to fit their own view of right and wrong, and that very much includes the author.

It was interesting to see what people worried about, doing the wrong thing seems to matter less than being seen doing it. Justification can be found for almost anything, if the incentive is great enough. It wasn't the letter writers so much as Randy Cohen that bothered me though.

Often his reply would contain little in the way of grey area, which just isn't practical in everyday life. As he say himself, to do so would mean changing the column to 'The Pragmatist' rather than 'The Ethicist', but I wasn't incredibly impressed with the ethics he championed.

According to Randy Cohen it's ethically unsound to spend $500 on surgery for a beloved pet when there are starving children in Africa, but it's fine to steal umbrellas if you're caught on a rainy day in New York after your own umbrella has been stolen. It's also fine to buy cheap seats at the opera, theatre or baseball game in order to move to more expensive seats that haven't been taken. I find all of this morally questionable, and many of Randy Cohen's replies bordering on offensive as he tried to buy a cheap laugh at the expense of his correspondence. His style was also intensely patronising.

My overriding feeling at the end of this book was that the most important thing in a moral/ethical leader is for them to be non-judgmental about the people asking for guidance. Maybe that doesn't make as good copy, but perhaps it's a tad more ethical.