But there are a lot of reasons to have some sort of standard why you conduct yourself. Here's what a recent commenter had to say about the utility of having such a standard :
You said, "The only code that’s worth having or that I respect is becoming the best in whatever you decided to do."
When you can't feel empathy for other people it makes it easy to manipulate and hurt them for whatever reason you see fit. I was taught my code by my grandfather, at an early age after many years of violent and manipulative behaviors. I knew the differences between right and wrong, I just didn't care because I never felt them. He taught me to use those abilities to protect the people who are close to me and that being able to do those things for my own immediate selfish reasons was the lazy way to react, and in the long run would not allow me to do what I wanted to do in the first place.
It took several years before I understood what he meant. Not until after a few issues with the court system. It made me completely powerless; I could no longer do what I wanted. Afterward when I returned to school a friend of mine got into a fight. He had done something to provoke it and felt so bad about it that he couldn't defend himself, he just took the beating. A few days later they crossed paths in the hallway and my friend got sucker punched and didn't defend himself again, he couldn't he still felt bad. I stepped in for him and after slamming the guys head between and open locker and its door several times was promptly sent back to my 10x10.
The judge was impressed that I had thought about somebody else for a change instead of only myself and gave me no time. What he didn’t know was that I really was only thinking about myself he only saw the ‘good’ that I had done. In his eyes, I stood up to a bully for a friend who couldn’t defend himself. Personally I didn’t see it that way, he pissed ME off, disrespected MY friend and was going to take whatever punishment I gave him as a consequence.
When I returned to school again, I had a different mindset, a code to base my behaviors on if you will. I still live my life based on that code to this day. I learned that appearing to be in the service of others who feel they cannot defend or stand up for themselves brings more long term opportunities for me. Who wants to sit in jail, where is the fun in that?

