Sentenced to create—be it molecules, or laws, or paintings you may love or hate—we give in, with feeling, make new substances, transform old ones. Still others in the economic chain sell them; I teach about them. Each of us has a role in the use of chemicals. That use does immense good. And just sometimes does harm to people or property. Even though molecules are molecules, not in and of themselves good or evil. What is an individual chemist’s ethical responsibility when this occurs? Well, each of us confronts ethical questions in the light of his or her traditions. Nothing is simple when goods collide. I don’t want to preach; the only advice I would presume to give is: “Mind the shade.” Let me explain. Political campaign ads to the contrary, very little in this world is pure good or pure evil. Yet evil gets done. No, it is not the work of Satan; it is the work of pretty normal men and women, who are likely to be kind to their children and goldfish. And those who mean ill intuitively know that responsibility for exploitation or hurt had best be diffused, so that an individual in a necessarily long chain be little tempted to see the ethical consequences of the whole. Also people intent on no good construct, subconsciously, for themselves (and their collaborators) a mind-set that transforms the act psychically, taking it outside some personal ethic. In the analysis of evildoing by real people, not comic-book characters, one finds incredible compartmentalization, and the fanning of dehumanizing prejudices. Why? To self-justify actions that—in another part of life, dealing with others—would clearly be counter to the ethics that everyone, even evildoers, carries around. Given this tendency of evil to diffuse and transform itself, it is precisely those actions that are ethically gray or shaded, neither clearly good nor bad, which should be thought through in greatest depth. If there be a data point that indicates disagreement with a theory, or hints at side effects of a drug, shall I discard it before I tell my supervisor? To do so seems easy, so harmless, especially when little is certain.
Voting “Against Islamization”? How Anti-Islamic Right-Wing, Populist Political Campaign Ads Influence Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Muslims as Well as Voting Preferences
