Cultural morality and recurring human taboos

Are morality and ethics only social constructs?

Some rules vary by culture, but certain protective taboos appear widely, and political actors remain morally inconsistent, complicated people.

Many moral and ethical rules are shaped by culture, but some may be more than local conventions. Protection of children and hostility to cruelty toward small animals serve as examples of norms that appear unusually widespread. An anecdote about Vladimir Putin protecting a mishandled puppy shows students that a leader can act ruthlessly in foreign policy without fitting a simple, uniformly evil caricature. The teaching purpose is to examine complicated motives and inconsistent human behaviour without excusing policy. Historical and international-relations explanation improves when it separates a person's different choices instead of treating one judgement as a complete account of character.