July 2026

When I think about ethics I’m often taken back to ethics in psychology and the ethics course I took in philosophy. Some things stayed with me like not using people as means to an end and another phrase which I’ll put roughly. If you’re say in a dilemma and you’re not sure what’s really the right thing to do, you ask yourself the question; that say you choose action A would you be okay if that action became a law for everyone to do, whether in that situation or some other? If your answer is no then you kinda know that it’s not the right thing to do. After writing Lechwe Scammers my mind has been on and on about what really is the right thing to do or what’s right and wrong in any situation. I have a heavy guilt conscious so half the time as I exist in the world my mind goes over my interactions like did I respond okay? Was I rude? Was what I did right? Should I care about this or that and it goes on and on and maybe I just overthink everything but I suppose it’s my faith and the ethics information in me at work. With my faith most things are straight forward on what to do or what not to do, some you kinda have to really gauge with reference to what’s in the bible, intent/heart posture, consequences and such. But my thoughts aren’t so much with that aspect, when I think about the little girls in the Lechwe Scammers story I think, okay say this issue reached some court how would this go down? I decided to go over my ethics notes and just play around with the scenario and see what I’d get at. To begin with these were children so were looking at them being moral patients, this means they do deserve some moral consideration and have legal rights. But the thing that I’d highlight about children is how they can of course evaluate situations rationally (if they are at a certain age, as we see with the girls) but they can’t really be held morally blameworthy for their actions. They are still developing mentally and some of the areas responsible for say impulse control or long term planning aren’t full developed, so they can’t necessarily be held accountable. They still require special moral protection, patience and care from moral agents or adults and really I suppose this makes sense if you look at the reason why the little girls did the bad deed. So I went further, which moral theory would be ideal to use to break it all down; there’s Utilitarianism which talks about actions being right or wrong based on the amount of good or bad it brings to the majority of people. It’s about consequences and so if my killing of say a rapist brings about happiness for most of the nation it is the right thing to do, it wouldn’t be about the killing action. But with the little girls their action only benefited the two of them so this theory wouldn’t work well. I then found the theory which explains the two things I mentioned earlier that stuck with me. Kantian ethics and the categorical imperatives. So basically there’s this guy Immanuel Kant and his theory is based on duties, so the right thing to do in his view is that which you have a duty to do regardless of the consequences. It’s about doing what reason discloses to be the intrinsically right thing to do, those things that rational agents understand by virtual of their rationality. Rationality is basically like how you use reason, logic, and evidence to form beliefs and make choices. There’s a cool book by a guy call Pojman called How We Should Live, my lecturer in Uni recommended it, I enjoyed reading it then and I went over it for this analysis on my Lechwe Scammers and it helped a lot. Kant says we should perform duty for its own sake, we should do the right thing for the right reason for it to have moral merit. So then when you think of if you should do something, you would need to evaluate it and he comes up with what he calls the categorical imperative (CI) and the information on this is what I begun with. It states that “act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. I’ve already stated it simply but I actually liked this, like if something became a public general rule for everyone would that be okay or work well? Would the little girls like it if different people came to the doors under false pretence to take something from them? Their answer would most likely be no so what they did was wrong, their action would be self-defeating if it became a universal law. They could tweak their argument and add conditions like if someone was really in serious need they could go door to door under false pretence. It could work but then again we’d need to have to evaluate what really makes a need serious that it would require one to lie to get that help. There problem with the CI is it can be absolutist or exceptionless, like say you’re in a situation where you need to lie that you’ve hidden a child to protect it from being abused. You’d need to tell the truth if say the abusers came asking if you had that child with you, that would be the right thing to do. Truth telling works as a universal law but now you have a child who would get abused, the consequence would be bad. So W. D. Ross comes in with the prima facie rule to help supplement or solve the problem of the CI. Prima facie basically is about deciding which action or thing has greater moral force, so you’d lie because it’s better to protect the child than tell the truth about hiding it and have it end up abused. Now Kant himself had his own I’d say solution to solve the issue with the CI and he added the principle of ends, the other thing I stated at the start. It says “so act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end and never as merely a means”. Do not use people basically or manipulate people to get what you want. When we look at the Lechwe Scammers, using this principle their action still comes out as wrong because they used the innocent people as means to their selfish end. It really wasn’t looking good for the little girls no matter which way the evaluation went, Kant also added the principle of autonomy. How we should think for ourselves or that we are self-governing and the moral laws come from us. It delves into our autonomous process of deliberation and how if an action is to be right, it should be thought about and not just acted on or based on some external influence/inclination. Anyway this still doesn’t help the girls, they contemplated and planned to do what they did and it was wrong. They were always wrong but they were also always moral patients and maybe couldn’t really understand the true consequences, meaning or right action. They I suppose could be taken in as juvenile delinquents but they were also at the threshold with regards to their age. I wanted to play around with this despite knowing their actions were wrong but I suppose it’s always good to think about what we are actually doing. Is it right? Would we be okay if everyone acted how we did? Would we be okay if people treated us as mere means to get things and not as ends in ourselves? We have value and we should be conscious of what our actions are and the consequences they have on others whether or not they find out. Morality or right action is really about everyone being able to be free and this only happens if we can consider one another. I cannot control if you’ll choose right actions or deliberate at all, maybe you’re okay with doing wrong and only you can change that. But please do try to treat others as ends in themselves just as they do/treat you.