We've seen what happens when political or economic systems are forcibly based on philosophical, or should I say, ideological, preconceptions. The twentieth century is littered with the tyrannies and horrors spawned by the unfettered fever dreams of abstract thinkers who fancied they had discovered the laws of human conduct, and that they had the obligation to enforce them. New ones are continuously bubbling up through the cesspool to replace them, championed by the usual collection of political demagogues and religious fanatics. Even the strict and supposedly neutral precedents of formal legalisms and constitutional law do not necessarily lead to justice or freedom. These are all intrinsically religious ways of looking at problems in human behavior and communities, complete with prophets, divine guidance, sacred texts, persecution of apostasy and unreasoning, unquestioning dogma. And religion, no matter how benign, is still superstition.

Religion and its analogues can certainly give us moral and philosophical guidelines which are of value, but there is no guarantee that they will. Neither does science, for that matter. Psychology, as a medical discipline, still has great influence in our culture. Psychiatrically justified testimony is accepted as evidence in our courts, can be used to condemn people to medical confinement, prescribe or even mandate psychoactive drug therapy and even maintains an influence on our literature and popular culture. Couched in its legitimizing pseudoscientific jargon, its methods can be used to profile potential criminals and terrorists, sometimes even before a crime has been committed. And all this based on a science which has shown itself vulnerable to fads and wildly conflicting schools, which cannot show unanimity among its practitioners, and which is not based on any form of rigorous testing or experimental control.

In human affairs, it is rarely possible to rely on guidelines which are as dependable and verifiable as those which we depend on in engineering. Sometimes we have to wing it, fly by the seat of our pants, or just trust our intuition and common sense and trial and error. Inevitably, we won't get it right every time. But if we must do this, let us be sure we are aware that is exactly what we are doing: muddling through as best we can. There is no rule book or noble ancestor we can rely on for guidance.

Once we delude ourselves into thinking our rules and regulations are inviolable, that they must be right because they are justified by science, religion, principle, philosophy or ideology, that they are legitimized by severe logic, university courses and degrees and wise men shielded by diplomas, then we are on a slippery slope indeed.

Morality comes from the human heart, and ethics is merely morality a majority of us can agree on today.