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stork daddy
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You certainly aren't morally accountable in the sense that you aren't betraying someone who loves you and has some of the explicit or implicit expectations that often consciously or not accompany love. but really, that's what makes your transgression the more morally bankrupt in the universal sense since you also have less to lose and are making your decision based on your general appraisal of the worth of another (and are pretty much confirming you do not hold a stranger's feelings as being of value). If your only reason for not hurting another person is that you know them, or fear losing them, that seems more of a pragmatic almost economic decision rather than a moral one. The person who is involved with the other party actually has access to them, knows them, and so may be doing much less wrong since they might be privy to information that justifies their actions or at least they might be aware that if the affair were to come to light, the offended party wouldn't be too hurt. the other person in the situation cited doesn't know the person, and so should assume the worst case scenario that they might be crushing this person's world. therefore it is really the third party who in cheating, is showing what their default level for treating a general human being is. They are the ones who are most clearly defining their morality. The cheating boyfriend or girlfriend may have reasons, the only thing the third party can say though is that they didn't know them and so feel no kinship. that is a famous rationalization made by war criminals and sociopaths. purposefully deceiving another person is usually hard to defend morally, but morality is complex and there is no real maxim other than the old "act as if a moral law was going to be based on your actions". i guess it all depends on whether or not you think people are accountable to each other and should avoid causing each other suffering whether or not they are intimate with each other. but in a way, knowing you are doing something which could potentially cause suffering to another individual and proceeding to do it anyways is less ethical when you don't know them, since as i stated above you have no choice but to treat them in accordance with what must be your general moral code for the treatment of humans in the abstract sense
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040316
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