The human concepts of “right and wrong” are normally decided/dictated
by laws, whether by
-civil/criminal laws
-biblical (holy books) laws
-ethical (innate/understood/societal) laws
-natural laws
-“school of hard knocks” (street) laws
-etc.
with each of these categories also having “degrees of
severity” of right and wrong. For
example, criminally speaking, there is a difference between contemplating murder,
attempting murder, and actually murdering.
But let’s take something not so dramatic; say the ethical law of
lying, as in “little white lies.” Are such innocuous lies always “categorically
wrong” no matter what, or can they be a “necessary wrong” but for the right
reason (motive)? Little white lies might
be civilly/criminally wrong if said under oath, but not ethically wrong if said
in everyday conversation. “No, those
pants don’t make you look fat.” I
once asked my husband if he ever lies to me.
He said, “Only if I have to.” 😉 So yes, like much of
life, the concepts of right and wrong, legal (laws) or otherwise, can get kinda
complicated.
While there are many overlapping areas from one kind of right
and wrong law to another, a common theme run through all such laws; the driving
force of determining what’s right from what’s wrong. For this OP, let’s just concentrate on the ethical
laws category; whether something is ethically right or wrong.
I grant you, the ethics category is in itself a further
complicated can-of-worms in that it can also, for example, be societally
based, as in one society’s folkways and mores being different from another
society’s. It can be a societal ethical
jungle out there. 😊
Ethics is not so easily defined because it’s also a dynamic
thing that can change/morph/bend with time and place of origin. What’s not societally/socially ethical today
may be socially ethical in some distant future society. Therefore, ethical notions are not as eternally cut-and-dried as some of us would like to think. (I told you it was complicated.)
With that general thinking as our limited template here, let’s
think about someone "doing the wrong thing for the right reason." How about:
-Desperate little boy steals food to stay alive. Stealing is ethically wrong BUT survival is ethically
right.
-Politician takes money from and makes false promises to a
nefarious wealthy donor in order to build a community center in a poor
neighborhood so the kids have somewhere to go after school. Accepting bribery is ethically wrong, lying about your intensions is ethically
wrong, BUT building a new community center is ethically right. Kinda like Robinhood Syndrome: robbing from
the rich to give to the poor. Or, “the ends
justifying the means.”
Your Task: Give examples of doing an ethically wrong
thing for an ethically right reason. Or
is that not even possible, as some might believe? Think about it.
Thanks for posting and recommending.
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