Instinct and ethics

The windowless van carried the prisoner to the execution ground. Military police led him out and tied him to the post. The judge asked:

• Mr Trần Hữu Ba, do you wish to say anything before the sentence is carried out?
  The prisoner Trần Hữu Ba said in a faint voice:
• Let me apologise to my comrades, let me apologise to my homeland.
  The judge asked:
• And do you want to say anything to your family?
• No. They had so much of my love that I betrayed my oath to my country. I don't want to mention them any more.
  The judge, tears welling, saluted the prisoner and turned away. A moment later a volley of shots rang out.
  The inspecting officer from the military investigation agency sat in the vehicle with a sad face and said to his colleagues travelling with him:
• The enemy took control of Mr Trần Hữu Ba's daughter and forced him to steal secret military documents and hand them over to ransom her. Whatever they threatened him with, he did not dare report to the security agency, and obeyed their words to the letter. Only after his daughter was returned did the army discover that the documents were missing and that it had suffered heavy losses. Military intelligence began an investigation, found him, investigated further and counterattacked fiercely, smashing the enemy intelligence nest as well.
  The military court sentenced him to death. He was deeply remorseful and kept saying that people must put their family beneath their homeland, that they should sacrifice themselves and their family rather than do anything harmful to the homeland. Today, in his last words, he repeated that idea: love for one's family must not exceed love for the homeland.
  Another officer said:
• Most enemies take control of family members to force state employees to become traitors. In the deepest instinct, everyone loves their family more than their homeland. The enemy keeps exploiting this instinct and nearly always succeeds. Many intelligence officers do not dare start a family because they fear this fatal weak point. Few have enough ethics to love their homeland more than their family. Loving one's family is instinct; loving one's homeland is ethics. 💕

Instinct is a natural, very powerful tendency that urges people to live and act in a certain way. Love between man and woman is a natural instinct. Sexual desire is a natural instinct. Parents' love for their children is a natural instinct. Greed for money and material things is a natural instinct. Touchiness when insulted is a natural instinct. Looking after oneself first is also a natural instinct. These instincts give people pleasure but also reduce their ethics. That is why educators and sages have had to put forward countless moral principles so that people can control their instincts.

Ethics is the power of reason to resist instinct. Instead of only loving one's children, ethics makes one love one's parents. Instead of only looking after oneself, ethics makes one look after others. Instead of only knowing sexual desire, ethics makes one seek inner purity. Instead of only loving one's family, ethics makes one love one's homeland.

Some animals with a degree of reason have developed an ethic that runs contrary to instinct. For example, we see a goose holding a shrimp and lowering it into the water to feed it to the fish. We see a lion protecting a fawn so that other lions do not eat it. Or a pack of wolves nurturing an abandoned child. Ordinarily, animals' instincts overpower their whole inner life, because they have very little reason.

Humans, with intelligence that rises above, are able to develop reason and ethics to resist instinct. The more ethics, the stronger the reason, which also means the greater the intelligence. Whoever lives too much by instinct will be foolish and lacking in ethics. Living by instinct leads to many mistakes, and even to crimes that violate the law.
All our lives we must keep cultivating ethics so that instinct does not deceive us.