Why should we honor the elderly, and how can ethics justify and synchronize the value?

Honoring the elderly is important as a social ethic, and ethics has the task of justifying and synchronizing its practice. Prior to the modern era, justification and synchronization of ethical values were based on metaphysics and community traditions, but after the modern era, the focus on justification shifted to individualism. Modern ethics balances justification and synchronization and seeks to promote ethical growth throughout society.

 

“Honor your elders” is an ethical value that we share as a society. Honoring the elderly goes beyond mere courtesy or custom and implies respect for human beings, which is an important factor in strengthening social solidarity and a sense of community. The practice of these values is motivated by motives. From this point, two key issues in ethics emerge. One is the justification task, which is to demonstrate the value of a moral principle, rule, or ethical behavior, and the other is the motivation task, which is to motivate people to act on these values. The justification task asks what is just and why it is just, while the synchronization task deals with how we can guide and induce behavior in order to bring about action. These two are the two horsemen of ethics, and depending on the era, the tasks that ethics has focused on have tended to be biased toward one or the other.

 

 

Pre-modern ethics, whether in the East or the West, grounded its justification in a particular metaphysics. For example, ancient Greek philosophy sought ethical justification through the Idea of the World, while Confucian thought in the East presented moral principles based on the Heavenly Way. In addition, the ethics of these periods are grounded in the reality of a particular community, which means that they are set in the history and traditions of that community and rely on specific political and legal practices. Therefore, ethics recognized the authority of these traditions and practices and focused on synchronizing norms and ethics based on them. Such a system of ethics served to ground individual moral growth in the history and traditions of the community.
When ethics becomes more committed to the task of synchronization than to the task of justification, the associated ethical system becomes complacent and dogmatic in its practices and customs, and tends to conservatize and authorize the status quo. For example, Christian ethics in medieval Europe formed a system of ethics based on the authority of the church, which was strictly upheld by religious practice and doctrine. In general, when an ordered community is stable, the need for legitimization is not as acute. However, when a stable community is disrupted and new communities are formed, the challenge of justifying a new system of norms to maintain order comes to the fore.
In the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern era, the ties that bound individuals to each other and mitigated conflicts between them gradually weakened, and commercial relationships became more and more prevalent. As a result, individualism prevailed, and the need for justification increased dramatically. As a result, post-modern ethics has been preoccupied with the task of justifying duty, rightness, responsibility, and so on, and has failed to address the motivation of behavior in ethical life. The task of synchronization requires more than just a set of norms, but also a methodology for getting people to follow them, and modern ethics has fallen short in this regard.
New approaches to driving ethical behavior are needed, especially as modern societies grow in diversity and complexity, and methodologies for understanding individual motivations and promoting ethical behavior based on them become even more important. Research from other disciplines, such as social psychology and behavioral economics, is needed to develop ethical synchronization strategies and drive real behavior change. This should not just be a theoretical discussion, but a concrete methodology that can be applied in real life.
Since any moral action has both a justifying and a synchronizing aspect, ethics needs to balance the challenges of justification and synchronization in all moral domains. In doing so, every virtue should always be reflected upon and examined from the perspective of justification, and every duty should be pursued from the perspective of realistic synchronization. In this way, ethical life can take on a richer and more practicable form. This will contribute significantly not only to the moral growth of the individual, but also to the moral maturation of society as a whole. In the end, ethics must continue to fulfill its role as a practical discipline aimed at improving the quality of human life and society.
This approach of ethics can be materialized through education and social institutions. For example, school education should teach ethical values and principles, while providing students with a variety of experiential activities that allow them to put these values into practice. Businesses and governments should also fulfill their social responsibilities through ethical management and policies, and create an environment where citizens can naturally practice ethical behavior. In this way, ethics can lay the foundation for individuals and society to grow together.