I tried to edit this essay as well as I can my self but I never been good with editing so hopefully I edited it well enough that no one will have a problem reading it. This essay is about 5 pages in word just to let every one know what to expect.
Determining Right from Wrong
How do we know what right and wrong? This is a question we all must ask our selves at some point. Even if you never asked the question directly you have in-directly. You base your actions on something. When you do something and later regret it as being wrong there something in your thinking that telling you it is wrong. The feeling is not coming out of the sky. When you take a stand on an issue there is something in you that is telling you that this is right. Every body thinks some things are wrong and something is right even if they don’t admit it. There no way around it.
Some things are easier than others to determine. Murder almost every one agrees is wrong but even that is not so clear cut. You might feel it alright to kill someone if they don’t prey to the same god of you. Is it no longer murder? Clearly this is still murder but yet it has been justified by many because they believe it is the right thing to do.
So how should we determine what right and wrong? I must believe that it not just a matter of belief. I must believe that no matter what anyone believe there is a universal truth of what right and wrong. The tricky part is finding what that universal truth is. Am I going to be able to tell you with certainly what this is? No, I am no better then anyone else. I am not born knowing any more then anyone else. All I can offer is my thought pattern of how I have come up with what I believe is right and wrong.
The one thing that I will tell you with certainly is to answer the question of right and wrong you must leave all your bias behind. Everything anyone has ever taught you must be thrown out the window. Every thing you have ever been told is by a man that is as flawed as you are. This doesn’t mean you should not study what other believes. What I am saying is don’t look at the other person belief. Look at the thought pattern that he used to arrive at that belief. The thought pattern is so much more important for determining the validity of the belief then looking at the belief it self.
If you are not willing to truly look at the question. I mean truly look at it. Not say well I been told x or y but instead really ask your self how do I know what right and wrong, then there no reason for you to read further. I can not change a belief that you believe is a fact. I won’t even waste my time with trying to but if you willing to look at the question from the beginning. Forgetting everything anyone has ever told you then keep reading and I will lead you through my thought pattern. In the end if we come to the same conclusion doesn’t matter. What matter is that at every step you look at it with only what you know and not what anyone has told you.
With any question we must begin with the question. In this case it is “how to determine what is right and wrong”. We must then determine something that every one can agree with to form the basis of answering the question. In this case the question so simple but yet has no easy place to start. For this reason it is easier to start with looking at what cant be a starting point and though that we might find a starting point to the question.
The starting point can’t be something that tells you what the answer is. Think about it. If the goal is to discover the answer what is the point at starting with the answer. What this mean is religion must be thrown out the door when asking this question. You can’t say well the bible say this or that. The idea is not to be told the answer but instead to discover the answer. You should believe nothing till you discover it for your self. This doesn’t only apply to religion but for anything anyone has ever told you to be true with out providing you with the thought pattern for why it is true.
Beginning with the realization that we must discover the truth on our own my thought pattern gives the following fact. Determining right and wrong must start at something we know to be true. I give you this then; we know that we feel pain. No one can deny this. Everyone have felt pain in there lives. If you believe nothing is right and wrong at this point because we have yet to discover it then would you wish pain on any one? I have to think that the average person after throwing out all the biases and excuses to cause pain don’t want people to be in pain. I challenge any one to come up with any reason you would want to cause someone pain after throwing away all bias.
The reason people justify causing pain is for the greater good but until we determine what right and wrong there no way to answer that. There fore I am confidence in starting with this “I don’t want to cause anyone harm”. This is the point in which we will start our quest for truth in our question.
From that point we can say this. We should try to avoid causing people harm. It is easy to see how we can come up with that conclusion. If you don’t want to do something then you should not do it. This will lead us to the first thing we can say is wrong. It is wrong to cause harm on to another. That allows us to say one more thing. It is right to prevent harm.
Now we have a strong place to start with in determining what right and wrong. To review, this is what I have determined right and wrong starting point is.
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It is wrong to want to cause harm on anyone
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It is right to try to prevent harm on to another person.
Now that this has been determined we can start to really answer the question. If you try to combine these two facts that we have determine, then you can combine them into one question to ask yourself. Do this cause suffering? Think of it this way. The first thing determined is; it is wrong to want to cause harm on anyone. If no one suffers then there is most likely no harm being caused. There is more to that question but, which allows the second fact to fit in. If allowing an act to continue cause suffering then it must be prevented. This question provides a balance between what I have determined to be right and wrong. It allows you to stop suffering when needed. To prevent the suffering you might have to cause harm to the person causing it. There is no way around this. If we all followed the first 2 facts we could end there but this is not the case. So we must add in the ability to stop suffering when it is occurring even if it causes harm. We can come to this question then. Does it cause suffering? I think to understand this we need an example.
If a man about to kill a friend of yours and you have a gun in your hand. If your only way to prevent it is to shoot the person that about to kill your friend most of us would fire that gun. This does not go against our question. Your friend let say is a good person that never caused harm to anyway. To take that life away from us would cause suffering to everyone. I am not going to give a long proof of this in this paper. I just say this every single person on this planet can affect everyone else. Every time a good person dies before he needed to the whole world suffers. Now can the other person dieing cause suffering possibly but he is the root of the possibility of suffering happening. No one would be suffering if he did not choose to, about to kill your friend. The choice must be to save your friend. This example let us make a second conclusion. The only time to cause harm on another is to prevent him from causing suffering.
I take a moment here to show that what we have determine make a few things wrong. Revenge, when some one does you wrong we have all felt the want to have revenge. This is properly a survival instinct painted into our genes from earlier times. We are smarter now and able to ask our selves what right and wrong. Revenge goes against everything we have concluded up this point. Revenge does not stop suffering. It does cause suffering. Revenge might make you feel better but it is a false feeling that when looking at the larger picture is a small feeling indeed. If you need to prevent the person from causing suffering again then is must be done but to cause suffering to him just for revenge is a petty thing indeed.
Also this makes your beliefs irrelevant. It does not matter what you believe as long as you don’t cause anyone to suffer. It means what religion you are means nothing when determining right and wrong. It means blowing your self up for a god is wrong. It means killing anyone for a disagreement in beliefs is wrong.
It also means something that I hope all that read really take seriously. Your actions make you who you are. You can not cause suffering through beliefs alone. It is actions that cause suffering. How good a person you are, your worth to society is all determine by your actions. Don’t ever forget this. You can say I believed something but never once let your action show it, then you believing it is less then worthless. An action can be sharing beliefs that cause other to take actions. That is still an action. Writing down your beliefs is an action. Just believing something is not an action. Believing torture wrong then going out and torture someone mean you wrong no matter what you say you believe, your action reflects the truth. On this subject let me leave you with this. A man that always helps others is always better then the man who believe in helping other but never act on it. As the cliche goes the man that stands and lets it happen is just as dangerous then the man committing the crime.
I got side tracked a bit but I think it is important not only to determine what right and wrong but also how to apply it to life. To remind everyone we have determine that to determine right and wrong we have two conclusions so far.
- Never cause suffering.
- Only cause harm to another in order to stop suffering
We could end here but I don’t believe those two things completely answer the question. I believe there need to be something else to be added to these two facts. That there are certain things that should not be done, no matter what happens. For example limiting free speech might prevent suffering in the short term but should never be right. Again I can’t just ask you to believe this. I must show you why I believe this through logic. I ask you too look at history in order to accept this. That every change for the positive started by someone exercising speech to speak out against the evil’s. That debate through out our history is required for things to get better. For this reason any suffering preventing hate speech might give, in the long run it will do more harm then good. For this reason I give you one more truth on this subject that I believe can be concluded from that fact.
You should never hinder someone freedom unless the action hinders another person freedom. I think we can answer any question of right and wrong with these 3 facts alone. I believe I have shown you my thought pattern in it entirely and why I have come to my conclusion. So here is the answer I give to the original question.
Right and wrong is determine by a balance between these truths. First never cause suffering. Two only cause harm to another in order to stop suffering. Finally never hinder someone else freedom that does not affect another person freedom.
Now I believe once you find an answer to any question you must test it. For this reason I am now going to provide ethical dilemmas and then use the answer I have come up with to determine what is right and wrong in those situations.
I start with properly when of the hardest questions to answer using my answer of what is right and wrong which is the Iraq war. There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein was causing suffering. There is no doubt he was hindering people freedom. With that fact the option to prevent him from causing more suffering is a valid one. For now let’s ignore how the war was sold to us which I believe was sold without telling us the whole truth. Instead let just look at it with the facts we know to be true. Going in there to stop suffering would be right I am willing to say. The question is did us going to war stop suffering. It stopped the suffering Saddam Hussein caused but yet suffering is still going on there. Actually it might end up causing more suffering then it prevented.
Now I admit I use this example not only to show how to use our results but to back up my point that results of the actions is what matter. You must remember that when looking at what right and wrong. The result of the Iraq war was it did not prevent suffering. It could be causing suffering. At the moment it looks like they might have just as little freedom as before. The idea to stop a dictator was good. The way it was executed was wrong. In the end I answer the question that going in Iraq was the wrong decision.
Let go to a much easier question for our answer of what right and wrong to answer. This issue is really clear cut in the conclusion we found but an extremely controversial topic in the United States. Gay rights. Is anyone suffering by two men being together? No matter how hard I try I can’t think of how it can cause anyone to suffer in anyway. It might make some people feel icky but some people feel icky thinking about a black man with a white women. I doubt anyone dare make a case against that in our government. Then we ask the second part about freedom. Clearly two guys being together does not harm anyone else freedom but stopping them from being together does take away there freedom. When you look at this question without bias it seems like such a silly question. It seems silly that there even a need to debate it.
Again I choose my examples on purpose to make a point. In this case the point is that many questions become obvious and silly when you take the time to really determine what it means to be right and wrong. Why should anyone care about something that doesn’t affect them? Why should anyone feel threatened by the actions of others that cause them no harm?
What you see is using my definition from the two examples is we can focus on the hard questions that must be answered like the Iraq war. We can spend much time debating it making sure we get it right and not instead waste our times on stupid issues, where the answer should be oblivious. You see a great benefit from this definition, that the important questions become real debates and the un-important questions become oblivious answers and there no need to waste time on. This gives credibility to this definition because any universal truth should make the easy question easy and allow us to think on the hard ones.
I will conclude with painting a picture of a world where everyone followed my definition in hope that it will make you see it would be an idea world which give further credibility to the definition. What religion, what race, what country you from, what sexuality you was would have no real meaning. You could live your life with anyone you want. You would never be insulted for who you are. There would be no reason to cause suffering. There fore the need to prevent suffering would not be needed. There fore no one would cause harm on anyone else. Every one would be free to follow there dreams without fear of the results. It would be a great world indeed. It is the world that I believe we will have one day.
The bias of the past has lasted a long time but they won’t last for ever. If we all fight for what truly right and wrong the world will change. We the logical thinkers of the world will cause the problems of the world to go away. Will this happen in my life time, properly not but what better gift can we give our children, then to start them down a path that will eventually lead to paradise. Then let our children continue down that path we start, and then there children until some generation in future finds the paradise at the end of the path.