Do you believe that there are "Right & Wrong" choices, or do you believe there are just Choices?

Question

For me it boils down to a matter of individual, perspective. What I see as right may not be viewed the same way by another person, therefore even if I made all the right choices I could, they wouldn't necessarily be right to anyone else. This is what makes it hard to unite people and overcome bigotry, racism and narrow-mindedness, because all in all, no matter which choice you choose, it's only yours. In a way, you become the bigot. So for me, rather than believing in right or wrong, I would say I believe in Choice. Would you agree?

Feel free to "Get Deep"!
Thanx! =)

Would you agree that, more important than the choice is the reasoning behind it?

Answer 1

In the most simple terms, human capacity for empathy (at least in the mainstream) means that there IS a "right" and a "wrong" choice--the right being the one that makes happiness (however arbitrary that emotion is) and the wrong being the choice that makes pain (how ever constructed that feeling is). Robbing someone of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is wrong because we humans know what it is to hurt, and we also know that choices have consequences that have the potential to cause hurt. The higher the level of a person's awareness, the less inclined they are to behave in ways that cause others harm.

So, in a way, human kind has come to terms with this question. It was certainly "answered" on more than one occasion, and in different ways--and it continues to be answered--but it may have been answered most prominently as the world moved from nihilism (the belief that all choice is arbitrary and that morality is constructed) to existentialism (in my mind, essentially a belief that even though existence is absurd, we have control over our lives, and that there is a dignity to the human condition that leaves us responsible for living in "good faith," as such, behavior such as slaughtering millions of people in death camps is wrong.

The question you are asking IS indeed rather timeless, but I regard it as the question of the 20th century--the question that prompted the "death of God," two wars, nihilism, existentialism, and our current muddled, truthless, relativist post-modern malaise.

Arbitrary or not, the question may have received its most important answer to date during WW II--it's most prominent answerer? Albert Camus. While Camus refrained from referring to himself as an existentialist, like his one time friend, the father of existentialism, J.P. Sartre, he is certainly the philosophy's second-in-command. During the Second World War, Camus staged, in print, a series of "letters to a German friend" in which he renounces nihilism in the face of unmitigated cruelty. Faced with the horrors of the war, nihilism didn't work, didn't make sense, didn't allow for human progress, and ultimately human survival. Our instinct to take another breath mandated a philosophical paradigm shift and the novel concept of human dignity and self-constructed purpose despite the death of God. The uninformed write of Sartre as a depressive akin to Nietzsche, but to paraphrase him, he never knew a day of despair in his life. Seems enlightened to me.

Sad how we seem to be backsliding from what in retrospect seems the height of human thought; we couldn't live without our grand opiate for long--welcome to 21st century America.

Answer 2

To answer if there are right and wrong choices, you have to also determine if there is an absolute standard of right, or if as you suggest, right is dependant upon perspective. The difficulty of that question is that it is easy to defend as long as your choice only effects you such as a personal belief or lifestyle, but much more difficult to accept when your choice effects someone else negatively.

Let's look at this from a practical example. From your assertation, if someone is a racist and they make a choice to tie a black man to the bumper of a truck until he's dead, or take a gay man and tie him to a fence and leave him there to die, it's niether right or wrong. It's just a choice. Your question is really the precursor to situational ethics.

If you hold to the position that those choices are not wrong you must also take the position that there should be no judgement of the individual for making that choice. How can we hold someone accountable if there is no "wrong"?

Now conversly, if you take the position that wrong begins where someone else's rights begin (this is the position of the Declaration of Independance and the US constitution by the way) you are agreeing that there is an "right" independant of one's individual perspective thereby making some choices wrong.

Thus either your logic is flawed or we should dispence with the judicial system since you cannot judge someting to be criminal if there is no single standard of right and wrong.

Answer 3

Yes, you are right.

There are no right and wrong choices. Everyone is just trying to live their lives the best way they know how. People make choices depending on the current situation they are in and based only on what they know. Because every person in the planet is unique, living different lives, you cannot expect all to have the same viewpoint in anything.

Only those institutions that seek to control and dominate create rules and regulations. It is a means to manipulate the minds of a large amount of people. They are the ones trying to dictate wrong vs right. Religion was used by the conquistadores then in the 1550s to occupy lands that weren't theirs. Group consciousness now is being used to wage war on groups that don't have the same orientation.

Why do you think rules are always broken? Why don't they work if they're supposed to be perfect? It is because we are beings of love. Love cannot be restrained. Any rule that goes against the freedom someone is feeling deep down in his heart, he will violate.

God has no preferences. He doesn't judge. Why would He? He gave us the freedom of choice in the first place. Perfect love does not limit or control.

Answer 4

there is always a right and wrong...but it depends on how one looks at the question or task...just as there is an easy way and a hard way...we all have choices and and we each must decide which one is correct for us personally....

It is the same as two wrongs don't make a right...and two rights don't make a wrong....

the only time you can say there is right or wrong is in exam in school...the teacher knows the right answers...but in live it is different.

the same goes with the law...there is a right and wrong...and wrongs can place you in a situation with the legal that can become uncomfortable...

so to answer your question the relevancy of right or wrong...it depends on the situation....and the person that is doing the right or wrong...

does this make sense?????

Answer 5

I agree with you in theory but not in practice. Bigotry and racism are just pretty names for the character flaw known as hatred. I don't think too many people would honestly say that hatred is a right choice. I don't think that too many people would honestly say they are proud of themselves for hating. People try to dress up their choices and mask the ugliness of their decisions by saying that they are proud of who they are so it's OK to hate others or that's all they've ever known so that makes it OK to hate others. In fact, while a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet; a wrong choice by any other name still stinks.
The idea of reducing right and wrong down to individual choice whitewashes the fact that there are wrong choices in life. It somehow softens the blow that there are, after all, absolutes in life. We absolve ourselves of responsibility for our actions when we tread into that dangerous deep water of, "It's my choice so that makes it OK."

Answer 6

I'm not going to get deep ...

Instead I'll just say I believe in choices, however, I do believe some choices make you better off then others, but they are still all just choices and matter of opinion.

(also some choices are wiser then others, that doesn't mean such choices are right OR wrong, it just means it's wiser. It's wiser to treat all humans fairly and justly or you might fall victim to what you perpetuated)

Answer 7

I totally get what you mean, you are exactly right.
But that might just be my individual perspective.
So yes, I believe that there are just choices, and you have to take the bad with the good.

Answer 8

i think that a choice is like a road when your lost....you could turn back but you don't want to look back because it the past and you don't want to be wrong so you keep going, i don't think that a choice is either bad or good because if you think about it...think of what you did that was consider bad and then think if you didn't do that what would of change about your present.....i think about the time i stole a game (not my proudest moment) but i think if i didn't do it would i be here now with my family with my wife with my son...i think the choices i done whether "good or bad" aren't neither their choices i made to get where i'm at now and if that was a bad choice growing up i would say that the best choice i made because that choice lead me to having myself a healthy little boy!!!!

Answer 9

i think and feel in my life that there is no right or wrong choice because if u believe you can learn from everything and so it is not a "wrong" choice because you needed it to be a step closer to your goal. in today's world the only a few people think.....and know or want to know who they really are; i guess this could be a real matter,but in real(in my opinion) it is not because every man in this world always have their own choices and you have to accept that...everyone has to learn but not in the same tempo or dimension..
So I would agree that there are "just" choices and we make them to learn if it is not always conscious.

Answer 10

It really depends on the situation.
If I want to get a tatoo or die my hair green or something then there's no right or wrong choice because it involves only me. And other people shouldn't juge.
If I have to decide between stealing my friend's lunch money or not. Then the right choice is not to steal and the wrong choice is to steal, because it has nothing to do with me, my body, my hair, my lunch whatever, it's only about her.