Right & Wrong
What makes something right as
opposed to something wrong? What makes one action the right or good
thing to do while another action is the wrong or bad thing to do? Is
there an over-all standard set of ethical guide lines that all human
beings naturally carry? Or does it depend on the culture, society,
and family that you are born into. Where do people's ethics and
morals come from? Why is it that so many people can and do, act
outside of those ethics on such a common basis? In this article I'm
going to take a look at these questions that people have been
pondering over for thousands of years.
As you may already know, I set up an application on
this page a few days ago to poll people on their opinion on whether
or not there is an absolute sense of right and wrong that all humans
have built into them. Thus meaning that all people know and can
agree on what is a good or right action as apposed to a bad or wrong
action. In the poll I gave the option to answer this question in
three different manors: "yes," "No," or, "It's more complicated than
a yes or no answer."
Poll results
Yes = 14%
No = 19%
It's more complicated than a yes or no answer. = 67%
I have to admit that
these results surprised me. It has been my experience that most
people I talk to about this have the opinion that there is a
standard set of ethical guide lines that all people naturally have
in them. This may however be because I live in a rather
conservative, primarily Christian area. It is my understanding that
Christians believe that a god has established and has installed in
every human being, the guidelines of what is good or right, and what
is evil or wrong. Because of these built in moral attributes, most
people tend to avoid doing what is known to be universally wrong.
But there are some problems with this reasoning...
Humans have done some extremely violent things in their
relatively short history, genocide for example. Genocide is
something that occurs quite often. In
the past 100 years there have been 29 incidents of genocide. For
example it is
estimated that the American Government and settlers directly killed over 1
million American Indians from 1620 to 1890. Although many historians
argue that this is an arbitrary number and that the number of killed
North American Indians is far beyond 1 million. An even more recent
example is the killing of over 100,000 Bengalis people by the
Pakistani Army in 1971.
Below is a list of some of the incidents of genocide from 1900 to 1950...
-
1904 Germans killed over 10,000 Hereros.
- 1915 Turks
killed over 1 million Armenians.
- 1917-1920
Ukrainians killed over 10,000 Jews
- 1918-1939
Russians killed over 10 million Political Opponents in Russia.
- 1939-1945
Nazis killed over 10 million Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and
socialists
- 1940 Russian
killed over 10,000 Polish officers.
- 1941-1945 Croats
killed over 100,000 Serbs.
- 1943-1946
Russians killed over 100,000 Ethnic Minorities in Russia.
- 1947 Moslems,
Hindus Killed over 100,000 other Moslems and Hindus in Pakistan and
India.
Clearly, there are a
great many people that have justified the killing of other human
beings on a large scale. Given this information one could conclude
that if there is a standard set of ethics every human being shares,
it must be that the killing of other human beings is considered as
being one of the okay or even right things to do. However, when
asked, almost everybody will say that killing is a bad thing or is
wrong. So if everyone thinks that killing and mass killing is a bad
thing to do, then why do so many people do it? Whether it's over
war, resources, or differences in culture, it appears that humans
have no problem with adjusting their morals or ethics to meet the
circumstances. The following are quotes that refer to the policies
of the American Government towards the native inhabitants of North
America..
George Washington- "The immediate
objectives are the total destruction and devastation of their
settlements. It will be essential to ruin their crops in the ground
and prevent their planting more."
General Philip Sheridan- "The only
good Indian I ever saw was dead."
Benjamin Franklin- "If it
be the Design of Providence to Extirpate these Savages in order to
make room for Cultivators of the Earth, it seems not improbable that
Rum may be the appointed means."
Maybe the more likely
conclusion one can draw from these mass killings and justifications for the
decimation of entire civilizations are not that people just change
their morals when ever a new situation arrives. Perhaps it's that
different cultures or even different people have differing views on
what is ok and what is not ok. If everybody had the same ethical
code in-grained in them then there probably wouldn't as many
deviations and changes in this code on such a common basis as there
clearly are. Anybody who has spent time around different cultures
than their own can see that different peoples have differing beliefs, what is acceptable behavior and what is not.
In African countries such as Djibouti, Eritrea, Sierra
Leone, Somalia, and Sudan, it is deemed necessary to circumcise
women. Nearly 90% of women in these countries are estimated to have
been genitally mutilated.
In the United Arab Emirates it is a criminal offence to
eat, drink or smoke in public during 'Ramadan' from sunrise to
sunset.
We even see large variations in ethical opinions of
people living in the same society. As an example we can look at
environmentalism. In the last one hundred years western beliefs
regarding the destruction of the natural environment have changed
dramatically. During the 19th century pioneers and loggers cut down
every last piece of what was referred to as "virgin timber."
Millions of acres were wiped clean of their ancient forests. Many of
these areas were clear cut, leaving barren landscapes and destroyed
ecosystems.
As a person living in the twenty first century I see the complete
destruction of the natural world as a terrible, dangerous thing to
do, or let happen. But to many people, both now and in the past,
concerns about the environment are/were irrelevant. We hear the
conflictions of environmentalism vs. economics everyday in the news.
This can only be because of some major differences in opinions of
what is right and what is wrong.
My argument or explanation for our sense of right and wrong (and the conflictions which arise) is that humans, like most other social animals, have an evolved sort of a ethical guideline that they are inclined to follow for the survival of the species. In order for humans to survive we must work together on common goals such as gathering food and raising off-spring. This would not work well if no one could trust each other due to a constant threat of murder or rape by a fellow community member. We see this same type of communal behavior in pack animals such as wolves, lions, and chimpanzees. Chimps hunt together, live together, help to raise each others young, and generally work together for the common good of the group. These ethical guidelines however are not absolute. There are a great many situations in which we deem it ok to work outside of our ethics. Like humans, the morals of chimps are somewhat flexible in that they will often go to war with rival groups over resources or territory. These sorts of wars often result in the killing of a lot of rival chimpanzees. Perhaps this is the equivalent to our genocidal tendencies. Humans are able to kill on a much grander scale then other mammals because of our development of advance tools like guns and bombs. The human sense of right vs. wrong has probably risen from these evolved survival skills.
What makes something right as opposed to something wrong? This is a question that human beings have been arguing about for all of recorded history. I do not see this changing any time in the foreseeable future. However, even though we may all not be able to agree on our ethical beliefs, it is advantageous for each of us to think about them from time to time before making decisions. Perhaps our world would be different if everyone did this.