A simple question of right and wrong.

Hi, I have been enjoying my days in the US but not without a lot of thinking. More exposure, more interesting people with interesting thoughts and more food for thought. One of the questions that have stood out for me in this trip is the question of what is right and what it wrong. I don't really know if I'll make justice to my thoughts if I write them down here but I have decided to give it shot anyway.


What is wrong??

So, to know what is right, we need to first define what "wrong" is. And the definition of wrong for me can be classified into two - "The society's definition of wrong" and "A personal definition of wrong".
These two aren't exclusive sets. Actually, it can safely be said that the first is a raw average of a huge collection of the various possible definitions of the second. This analysis led me to the basic ideas of right and wrong. The question at this stage became a more difficult question to answer : "Who is a bad person?"

When I tried answering that question with the obvious "A person who does wrong things consciously is a bad person", I hated that my definition did not mention whether the wrong was "socially wrong" or "personally wrong".


For example, I'm a Brahmin, suppose I eat meat, my society would say I am "sinning" and would be entitled for punishment. But my personal definition of a wrong might not include eating meat. So, am I a bad person?

Extending this argument to more accepted "wrongs". Suppose I kill someone, do I become a bad person? Why is it that "right" and "wrong" in our society is determined by what the major number of people personally feel about an act.

A bad man in Brahmin society might be a normal man in Western society. So, does it mean that being born a Brahmin revoked me rights?


A few personal definitions of right and wrong

Coming to personal definitions of right and wrong, I'd like to claim that everything we do in our lives or everything animals and plants do in their lives is for pleasure. It may be momentary pleasure in the physical sense or psychological sense. Or simply the pleasure of living to see another day.

I want to put down two things that can support my claim.

•   That the basic acts of reproduction, eating and sleeping are pleasurable to us.
•   That "unselfish" acts also have motives for a pleasurable tomorrow for ourselves or for our interests (other people or other animals/plants/objects)

Life is driven by desires and seeking/fulfilling desires gives us pleasure. So, life is driven by pleasure. Selfishness is the only motive behind all acts made by anything that has living cell(s). 

So, upon this understanding, I questioned as to where the line between right and wrong was drawn. And I got myself a few interesting answers : 

• "An act is right if it does not affect/hurt any other organism."

           As an argument against this answer, I raised more questions against myself. Do our day to day activities (like eating a carrot, roasting coffee beans, watching our favourite TV show, taking a bath, driving a car) not hurt/affect other organisms? What makes these acts any less punishable than committing murder or stealing from someone or poaching or deforestation? We are hurting people anyway. We are hurting animals anyway. We are hurting plants anyway. Why are these acts imbibed to be right or wrong? After all, isn't pleasure what we seek? If killing or stealing is my way to pleasure, isn't it right?

• "An act is right if it does not cross the limits of your conscience"

          This was a tougher answer to contradict. I fully do not understand what a "conscience" is. But having seen my conscience change over time, I take it to be safe to assume that it is not a permanent thing. Which means "limits of conscience" is a loose term and changes over time. So, when someone kills for a living, maybe his conscience lets him do it guilt free. And considering that in barbaric age, killing someone was less of a crime, can it be possible that in the future, driving cars will be a crime? If so, why do we even bother defining right and wrong and just seek pleasure on a moment to moment basis?

Evolution of nature's new organism : SOCIETY

A society's "responsibility" can be seen as making sure that people don't turn into savages and threaten the very existence of life. In my opinion, the humans have very little responsibility towards this. If anything, it might be the law of nature to create and destroy. And no matter what man does or does not do, the days of man-kind are counted. Pollution or not, crime or not, religion or not, man will not be man forever. 

So, from the day when nature created a society in the large sense of the word to today, it has evolved, morphed and fissioned into many segments and types. I see it inevitable to create a world order in which the whole world sees the rights to pleasures of an individual as the only rule. And like a circle, from the days of barbarians where the individual had ultimate rights to the days when rights of man ranged from "Royal" to "Pauper" and back to the future days of complete 'equality' and 'liberty'; I see that the evolution of society takes an interesting path.

What the future really holds in store is something we do not know, maybe evolution of society is not a circle but actually a spiral. Or maybe it has no shape at all. With dimensions yet to be defined, plotting a shape is very much impossible, let alone extrapolating it to precision.

So, standing at this one point of society's evolution, a right or wrong today might not have been so yesterday and might not be so tomorrow either. Thus, finding a clarity in the simple question of right and wrong is not as simple as we think it is. 

Like Einstein's theory of space-time, there ought to be a theory of wrongs-time. It may require a genius to theorize how wrongs will change with time, but it takes just a historian to say how wrongs have changed with time.

Am I even gonna answer?  

I can answer what right and wrong is and what good and bad are. But my answers will be a mere reflection of my perceptions and definitions and the influence that my society has had on me. 

I can conclude only with one statement : To punish might  one day be as much a crime as murder. And on that day, philosophers might be able to find out the shape of evolution of society. Is it just a circle? Is it a spiral? Is it inwards? Is it outwards? Or is it plainly a scribble of a child, a random shape of no real significance?

But in any case, right or wrong will be contextual. And people who are "bad" or "wrong doers" might actually be people who should have been born long ago or those who were born long ahead of their time. 

Maybe one day, the world will see someone who is a "terrorist" today as the pioneer of the free world. That's how faces like "Gandhi" were made. If Gandhi had been himself today, he would hardly ever visit jails as a prisoner. 

My definitions of right and wrong are immaterial, just try finding out yours and try to make your definitions free from social conceptions. Only then will we be able to find our primal desires. For it is these that give us maximum pleasure. And the pleasures we experience today are mere shards the imprisoned primal self. 

So, like Jordan Chase from "Dexter" : "TAKE IT!!"