The issue of 'right and wrong' has been going around and around in my head lately and I can't seem to settle on what I believe or what I should believe about certain things. Sure, I'm talking about smaller things, but the big things are even more important. I'm wondering what your take on this might be...
 
Why do we humans feel the need to label things right and wrong? Every different culture and every different time period has had a very different set of right and wrong. So, how do we as humans do that, and more importantly, why? Especially since our neurology is so very strongly fired up in response to right and wrong.

We feel so delighted and pleased and warm and fuzzy when someone has done something we think is a really good or kind or the right thing, and conversely, we feel so hurt or indignant or angry when someone has done a thing we think is bad or unkind, cruel or which we take as the wrong thing. And yet, as intelligent human beings, we also know that each succeeding 'civilisation' (whatever the words mean) has had a very unique set of rights and wrongs.
 
A few hundred years ago all over Europe you were evil if you didn't burn certain people alive at the stake. In some Muslim countries the right, appropriate thing to do is to stone woman to death in the street if she shows her hair or fails to hide her entire body under lots of loose black cloth, sometimes even including her face. Even children know it is the right thing to do to stone women to death who reveal a bit of the beautiful natural bodies their own God gave them.

The wild men from Borneo used to collect human heads, and the highest prestige went to the man who'd killed the most human beings and collected the heads for show around his hut. Some Africans believe it is a woman’s duty to give men sex and there isn't even a word for 'rape' in their language, because it is the right of any man and it is selfish of a woman to refuse a man his needs.
 
Murder, rape, adultery, theft, ownership, punishment, morals, integrity, values - all of it changes with each new society. Homosexuality used to be an evil, sick perversion and now it is special and protected by law in most of the world. They are now beginning to punt paedophilia in some circles saying people can't help it if they born that way - the very same way the gay movement started. How can we as human beings ever know what is actually, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ objectively? I mean, is there really such a thing, and if so, what is it?

Soldiers trained to go to war proudly invade other people’s countries and slaughter helpless civilians in their own homes and cities just because their president or ruler said he/she does not like the beliefs or policies of the president or ruler of the other country. Modern society doesn’t see that as terrible, cold blooded murder at all, even though we all know that rulers are not the people, and policy is usually dictated by those at the top and not by the citizens. We slaughter the citizens not the policy makers and call ourselves the good guys.

Some parents believe whipping children to be brutal, barbaric child abuse, and other parents insist it is the only way to bring up children properly and make them behave. Yet in the many homes I’ve been in, those where the parents believe whipping to be child abuse, usually have much better behaved children. Those who whip or beat children always find good reasons to do so again. Each group believes the other group to be totally misguided and irresponsible.
 
Maybe right and wrong is a bizare construct of the human psyche collectively wanting some kind of sameness or norms that we can judge each other by because we have a critical left brain function that we like to indulge, and an index finger we like to point? Maybe it is a need for self-importance or a need to control others. I don't know, but it all seems pretty weird to me.
 
If you think about it, every human being is almost always absolutely sure he or she has done the right thing or the only thing as dictated by the circumstances, and the other person or people are in the wrong. This is true of people through all time. If we are intelligent enough to know that each and every person believes themselves to be right (or the victim) and the other to be wrong (or the perpetrator), and we are intelligent and enlightened enough to realise that, why don't we just grow up? Why don't we see it?

Why do we still create something called 'wrong'? Every 'wrong' ever done is always only ever done because the doer of it thought the other did some 'wrong' first or has some unfair privilege. Every ‘wrong doer’ can logically explain their actions, and that logic seems very real, true and reasonable to him or her. So people go on living in this perpetual childish circle of accusation and retaliation hurting themselves even more than the ones they're accusing or punishing.

We have had a succession of different role models over thousands of years who have lived in peace, preached peace and led the people in peace, showing us a more enlightened way of being in the world. Surely we have the information, the means and the technology to educate the world’s entire population on the principles and practices of these role models? Why do we choose not to do it? Is there perhaps a natural driving need somewhere in the human psyche that craves drama and violence and policing even when it’s not necessary? Do we create the necessity by the very act of making rules, laws and punishments?

Lawyers are those skilled exquisite twisters of truth that we pay to distort things to get us off any conviction or accusation someone or the system has against us. The better he or she can lie and twist and distort, the higher the wage he or she can fetch in the market. The job holds the highest prestige. Is this right? Is this wrong? Is this good or is it bad? We label it as good and right in our society, and lavish great respect on very successful lawyers. Perhaps some other civilisation at some other time will read about this as aghast as we are when we read about the Spanish inquisition and the burning of witches.

How will we ever know objectively what is actually right and what is actually wrong, across all contexts, across all time, for all people in all circumstances? We get all our information from those around us, and those around us are declaring some things right and other things wrong. Some agree, some disagree. There is never a case where everyone absolutely agrees which is why every country has many different laws and rules.

As human beings we have a strong emotional reaction to right and wrong, and this emotional reaction sells millions of newspapers and brings up the ratings of television stations which cover a lot of wrong doing in their news bulletins. We also know that strong emotional reactions renders common sense useless. So we encourage the triggering of our emotions even though we know it will undo our common sense. We tend to feed on this kind of thing. Why? By this day and age we should know better, you’d think.

Being outraged makes human beings want to go out and attack, hurt and punish, assuming that more hatred and violence will kill the hatred and violence, and they call it ‘justice’, even though they know perfectly well that the perpetrator was probably only practicing what he or she thought was justice. Thieves steal because they think others have more and an unfair advantage - justice. Killers kill usually because they think the victim deserved it – justice. We love to hear about it, read about it, talk about it and discuss how the wrong doer should be hurt and punished – justice. So then, what specifically is justice? Who has rights to it and who doesn’t, and by what authority does one have rights to it and another not?

What is the answer? I really don’t know, but it is certainly worth a good think through. If we start taking better care of each other and put some effort into education and emotional healing on a global scale, I think we’ll go a lot further towards ending the madness and hatred than we’ll ever get through labelling things right or wrong and taking negative action against what we assume to be wrong. Things are not right or wrong, they just are, and action should probably be towards the positive, toward understanding the root cause and fixing that, rather than inflicting wrongs (justice) on perpetrators.

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