It depends… doesn’t it?

 

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.