Right and Wrong

 Well You Started It Painting by Robin Pushay

What's right and what's wrong? Perhaps what it comes down to is perception. Is pre-marital sex right? Is drinking wrong? Is going to an all-night concert okay? Is there even a right answer for these questions? I don’t think so. We need to learn to draw our own lines and know our own limits so that we don’t harm others. Harming another person is not justified, even if it is for revenge or done in ignorance.

Defining right and wrong is one of society’s ways of keeping sanity in sight. It’s similar to how religion was enforced more in olden times, when political courts didn’t exist. The fear of future consequences, albeit in the afterlife, helped fight crime. Stealing was “wrong,” murder was “wrong,” pre-marital sex was “wrong.” But now, when most people have started questioning these definitions of right and wrong, what it has come down to is the judgment of whether an act hurts someone else or if it infers with any rights (moral, civil, societal, etc).

Definitions of right and wrong should be delicately considered with knowledge and open-mindedness, not with blind faith and blind belief. Going out late at night might have been “wrong” for young women decades and centuries ago because it wasn’t “safe.” Now it can be, so the definition changes. It’s the same for everything. Judge an act by its consequences, by your experience, and your intuition—and not by what others press upon you to accept.