Day 7: Right/Wrong? Part I

What is right? What is wrong? Just perceptions of our mind, right? There is no real right or wrong. Then why are some of us so hell bent on “doing the right thing”? What does that even mean?

I’m one of those people. I had to always do the RIGHT thing. Stand by my principles. Be a person with principles to begin with. And my main principle was, always, “do the right thing, no matter how difficult.” That was me. Until some harsher realities hit and I just tossed everything that I ever was, right out the window and told myself, “I never was anybody. I just was who I had to be.”

It was only a few weeks ago, it hit me again, “Who I was, was a person who always did the right thing. As much as possible at least.” But now, I don’t know what the right thing is. Right and wrong are just so much easier when you’re younger. You believe you know what’s right. You believe you know what’s wrong. Most of all, you believe you are capable of making that distinction. And you believe in those decisions to be absolute. It’s just easier to believe when you’re younger.

I realize as I’m writing this, that most people are probably not gonna relate to any of the above. But here’s my dilemma. If right or wrong are perceptions, and I decide what is right for me, then that’s just right for me at this moment in time. Because I, like everything and everyone else, am subject to growth and change. If those things don’t happen, well then you’re as good as dead.

Maya Angelou, didn’t exactly always do the right thing, in one sense. But in the broader picture, she maybe did. She didn’t do the wrong thing when she hit her step-mom(equivalent), now did she? Subhas Chandra Bose teamed up with his friends to beat up a teacher with iron rods. He went to Hitler to ask for help against the British. What is right? What is wrong?

Why is deciding what the right thing is, such a difficult task? What’s more difficult? Deciding what’s right or doing what’s right? I’d say it’s the former. I swear this is why people have God and religion. If only I believed in God. Should I ask myself in times of indecision, “What would Krishna do?” Unrelated, is Chanakya really someone to look upto?

Reading history, biographies, autobiographies, I thought these things would be helpful. To learn from other people’s experiences, from their mistakes. Thiel says, actually a lot of people say, “to know where you’re going, to be able to make any decisions about the future, you need to know the past” - paraphrasing here.

Right, wrong. The things we fixate on. The things we feel all kinds of things about, would they just go away if we were to know exactly what right or wrong meant?

Is being rational how you decide what is right? What about emotions then? We are living beings, human. Evolution hinges on emotion so much of the time. Even when we think about the future, we value eudaimonic agents so much more that we’d sacrifice other things for them. Isn’t all of that emotion?

So, it seems, there definitely is a distinction between right and rational. Simply because something is the rational thing to do, doesn’t make it the right thing to do. Simply because something is right to you, doesn’t mean everyone else would agree, or that it’s right for anybody else. If that were the case, politics would topple in a second.

In times like this, House really must get a lot more credit. Not because he did what he did, but because he knew what to do.

Is there anyone else out there who fixates on doing the right thing so much?

To be continued…

This is day 7, and I apologise if there are any worms creeping up into your brain right now.