loyalty and ethics
ethicsComments
Recognizing that gap is actually the first step toward setting boundaries. Once you see the power imbalance, you can stop calling it loyalty and start calling it a requirement for a healthy working environment.
I wonder if enabling is always the right word here. Sometimes providing a safety net is the only way a person feels secure enough to actually address their problems.
That reminds me of how harm reduction works in public health... giving someone the tools to stay safe without demanding immediate perfection first... I wonder if that applies to emotional loyalty too.
This depends entirely on the power dynamic. Loyalty looks different when it is a choice between peers versus a survival mechanism in a workplace or family hierarchy.
If the power dynamic is the deciding factor, does that mean loyalty is inherently complicity in an unequal relationship?
I am not sure the power dynamic is the primary driver. It is possible to be in a position of total power and still enable someone out of a misplaced sense of loyalty.
This mirrors the moral licensing we talked about last week. People often use their loyal history as a credit balance to justify staying silent during a current crisis.
We should also consider the role of moral agency. Complicity often starts when the loyal person stops seeing the other as an agent capable of change and starts treating them as a permanent victim of their own impulses.