Crossing the Meadow Between Right & Wrong
Every month at BreakBread World, we publish a prompt. This month’s prompt is about right and wrong.
Between the fences of right and wrong, there’s a vast meadow flowered with questions, possibility and mystery.
What is right? What’s wrong? Tell a story of righteousness – either about your own or another’s.
Our prompts are the kind of questions that lead to more questions.
What do we do when what is right for me conflicts with what is right for you? How does what’s right or wrong for an individual conflict or align with what might be right or wrong for the wider community, society, or planet? Are there universal “rights” and “wrongs” that are inherent and unassailable?
Martin Luther King Jr. said:
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Believing in a moral universe implies a belief that there are higher principles guiding us and our decisions. If you disagree, then what are the determinants of right and wrong for you?
The question of right and wrong points to another question: how does one lead a good life? Or what does it mean to live life as a good person? This is not to be confused with “the good life” as defined by a sense of having achieved a level of material comfort and success. Essential to being a “good” person or leading a “good” life is to have a sense of what’s right and wrong.
Living together in family, community, or society necessitates boundaries and guidelines. This is part of culture — the rules: spoken and unspoken. In a fractured globalized society rich with diversity, who holds the moral compass? Where do we turn to for moral leadership? You could say religion offers this moral compass. Yet, we’ve seen throughout history how the religious fences of right and wrong can become walls of righteousness planting the seeds for fundamentalist fortresses that spring us into witch hunts, inquisitions, crusades, and genocides. We in the United States have separation of church and state and in theory, practice the rule of law. But just because something is technically legal does not necessarily mean it’s morally right.
Is the market capitalism that guides so many of our societal decisions, moral? Has self-interest and money in the form of profit become the arbiter of right and wrong?
It’s not only free markets but also new technologies that are sometimes accompanied by moral arguments claiming to foster more equality, empowerment, and justice.
These were some of the hopes expressed in the nascency of the Internet, social media, cryptocurrency, blockchain and now even AI. Now we have algorithms trawling through our personal data dressed in a moral veneer of efficiently delivering products and services catered to our specific individualistic needs and desires. Is efficiency, convenience and profit moral?
In search of justice, social initiatives and organizational frameworks to address systemic inequalities and advocate for the rights of marginalized communities attempt to balance the scales of justice. Affirmative action and DEI are both examples of attempts to instill moral order in our institutions. They are both now demonized as immoral by the current administration which seems to place unquestioned loyalty in strongmen as their moral north star. What’s right? What’s wrong? Who’s good and who’s bad?
What about an internal compass? Can we rely on ourselves to follow some internal sense of right and wrong?
This puts us in the land of preference, opinion, and identity, none of which can serve as absolutes – even for ourselves.
Journalist Walter Lippmann said:
“if what is right and wrong depends on what each individual feels, then we are outside the bounds of civilization”.
That internal compass works fine until it meets up with another’s compass pointing in a different direction. What do we do when what is right for me conflicts with what is right for you? Individual, collective, people, planet — who decides and how?
Welcome to the vast meadow flowered with questions, possibility and mystery.
Photo by Yunus Tuğ