How to Organize At The Ghetto Level Chapter Eight

But we have seen that ethical behavior can vary from culture to culture, and from society to society. Thus, what, we ask, is to be regarded as ethical?

Some argue that ethical is situational and may vary from culture to culture. This view is often criticized on the grounds that it is “relativistic” and there can be no definitive moral code above the particular culture one inhabits.
Therefore even moral codes can vary even within a culture.
Thus, there is no overall moral code in a given society, above small groups that can be agreed upon.
Thus a moral code as a project, and an underpinning for a society is not possible.
However, recent scientific evidence shows that up to three years old humans seem to have a built in sense of morality, a sense of what is fair, and what is not fair treatment, for fellow humans. Thereafter, cultural definitions, often take over for some.
We then might then have our attention drawn to the cultural realm. Then we can track its development from there.

So, upon birth, what is this basic ethical code we seem to be born with, does one exist? It seems to be summed up with the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as we would have done unto us.” This seems universal in humans.
From this we can draw not only ethics and ethical behavior, but also what constitutes justice in a given society.
It is this, and our sense of injustice, that accounts for our outrage if that is offended and what guides our sense of what will set a given situation tilting back to the justice side of things.

A Sense of Justice is a Key Component of Our Society

So we elevate this early sense of justice as universal in humans and elevate to our highest principle in society, no matter which society we are talking about. It is not relativistic, it is universal.
What is ethical is, in fact, a component of what we perceive as Just.
Everything else is what we adjust to as part of what our particular society teaches us, that varies from that initial norm and this in-built sense we seem to have at birth.

 "Morality is not just something that people learn, argues Yale psychologist Paul Bloom: It is something we are all born with. At birth, babies are endowed with compassion, with empathy, with the beginnings of a sense of fairness. It is from these beginnings, he argues in his new book Just Babies, that adults develop their sense of right and wrong, their desire to do good — and, at times, their capacity to do terrible things. Bloom answered questions recently from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. " 

1.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-moral-life-of-babies/

2.

"What are the first signs of morality in babies?

The earliest signs are the glimmerings of empathy and compassion—pain at the pain of others, which you can see pretty soon after birth. Once they’re capable of coordinated movement, babies will often try to soothe others who are suffering, by patting and stroking. "