My opinion on how you tell what’s right and what’s wrong in any given situation is that there isn’t some objectively right answer handed out by the universe that you just have to memorize.
Real life is complicated. The ‘right’ solution to a dilemma is the ‘correct/optimal’ solution, but there are several criteria to measure this by - in line with your principles, does the least harm, does the most good, respects other people’s autonomy, etc.
You can’t just pick one set of criteria and only look at that like ‘the needs of the many’ because you know what the many need? To not be murdered for their organs because one person’s organs could save a dozen other people. So any solution to an ethical problem that fails to prioritize ‘bodily autonomy’ is a bad solution. ‘Lying for a good cause’ seems like a no brainer, but do you know what a power-up for our species ‘not fucking lying’ is because trust enables 10000000000x more cooperation and honest cooperation is the mathematically proven best strategy? Way to screw it up for everyone!
So when you’re faced with a difficult choice, you’re going to have to try to come up with a way to ‘solve’ it in a way that does both the most good and the least harm. It requires actual thought to create a plan of action that’s as ‘right’ as you can manage.
Like… humans are wired to seek revenge, but then we became smarter, invented forgiveness, and forgiveness was such an A++ strategy that it was heavily evolutionarily selected for. Yeah, if you kill someone who hurt you, then that person won’t hurt you again, but if you instead engage with the reason they hurt you or decide to not contribute to the total level of ‘hurting’ humanity experiences, then you can do something about that reason and ensure that multiple people won’t hurt you, including the offender’s grieving relatives. Just because someone in the past said ‘this is the best thing to do in X situation’ doesn’t mean someone can’t come up with something better, but no one’s going to come up with that righter thing to do if people are just listening to voices of the past on what the right thing to do is instead of trying to figure it out for themselves. Humans are the least violent of the mammals because when you’re stupid, violence can be the ‘rightest’ tool in your arsenal, but if you’re smarter you can come up with other strategies that don’t delete a near-copy of your genes from the gene pool. Of course non-violence is heavily evolutionarily selected for when evolutionary success = maximizing the number of carriers of your genes, not reducing their numbers.
Someone who thinks about what the right thing to do is on a regular basis is going to handle a complicated situation more ethically than someone who follows a preset moral code automatically because the person who has to make choices on a regular basis has practice weighing issues of right and wrong and allowing for the complexity of life.
So the answer to the question of ‘how do you know what the right thing to do is?’ is ‘you don’t. There is no one ‘right thing to do,’ only ‘the best things we’ve come up with so far.’ But it’s your obligation as a human being who enjoys ‘not being murdered for tripping and falling into someone’s shadow’ to continue and contribute to our collective effort to make our lives as good and unlikely to end abruptly as possible.
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
origamiaround
2087
germansingergirl
areudirty
dededos
