The problem of ethics is difficult. Imagine one customer trying to return a product he had bought the previous day; it was broken. The store assistant politely declines, saying that it is the company's policy of no return. The customer insists, saying that it is only ethical. The store assistant says that she is only doing her job. Who is right, and who is wrong?

The ethical problem is elusive because often time, we find our presumed ethical belief challenged when we stepped into another environment. We are challenged by another, who claim that their belief is right, and ought to replace ours. We may feel confused, or attempt to fight back. But give pause, for perhaps we are both right?

Such elusive problem requires us to trace back to the emergence of such things as ethics. Why do ethics become important to us? When did they emerge? What purpose do they serve? Back to the example of the customer and store assistant. If the customer does not fight for his rights, he would lose his precious share of cash, or potentially face the music of his spouse or whom he shares the product with. The product means to him a work function or enjoyment, within an activity he does alone or with someone else. The store assistant, if she agrees to repay the cash, would break the company's policy. She risks her job or a backlash at her annual review. The company's purpose is to earn money; she also causes her company lose money. She is seen as an irresponsible employee.

The customer and store assistant each sees the same product, but serves a different activity systems. The customer's system supports a work or social function. The store assistant system supports profit making. Both systems, within their scope of purposes, require a set of ethics to function. Thus, by measuring every ethic against the purpose of the activities they support, we cannot simply discount and replace an ethic for another. Doing so leads to functional disruptions to activity systems.

Ethical question may not be answered if we consider ethics as the means to the ends of the system itself. Imagine a terrorist purpose on killing a large number of people to instill fear on a population. His act was well supported by the terrorist cell and considered by themselves ethical. By standard of the general others, do we NOT say their act of killing is unethical? By considering the effect of one's act on another person of a different activity system, we can measure the ethical-ness of an act in a greater sense of things. An activity system does not act in isolation. There is transfer of goods, information, and services between activity systems; there are interactions. These interactions are roughly crafted out of complex cultural historical development of society, which in the passage of time determined a method of division of labor and outputs from the shared labor. The outputs, be them happiness, wellbeing, wealth, safety, or family life, require the activity system gives back to the society as a whole - in the way of taking in and passing on necessary goods, information, and services to other activity systems.

While each activity system necessitates legitimating its own set of ethics, the ethical set cannot effect and change the original purpose of giving back to the society. The ethical-ness can only be determined when viewed from the activity systems functions, interactions, and social benefits.