Thursday, February 18, 2010

shades of gray

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between right and wrong. It seems like they're always getting framed as totally black and white, or at least I was raised that way. In reality though, things aren't so distinct.
I find myself wondering who decides what is right and wrong. I mean, it seems like certain things are framed as morally wrong that are really just logically not good things to do. For example, I don't think it is morally wrong to do illegal drugs. I think it can be risky, both legally and physically, to do drugs. Because of the risks, the logical choice for me is to avoid them. But I know a lot of people who feel differently about that, on either side. I know many that believe doing drugs to be morally wrong and many that that believe doing drugs to be a perfectly sound idea. So where is the black and white in this situation? It seems a lot more like gray to me. I've been noticing more and more gray in my life lately as I've found that a lot of what I always thought about as moral issues are better decided as logical ones.
I'm not saying that life isn't full of moral dilemmas. It is. The tension between right and wrong is all over the place. I'm finding though, that few things are either always wrong or always right. For example, helping people is nearly always right. It can be wrong though when it turns to enabling. Then it becomes destructive, and it isn't right anymore. Are enablers doing it on purpose? Probably not. Do they think of what they do as morally wrong? I doubt it. But I do.
There is just so much conflict over this idea of wrong vs. right that none of it looks black and white to me anymore. All I see is a blur of gray. I have a personal sense of what is wrong and right that suits me just fine. I can see though, that other people have different ideas about it. To me, gray is ok. In fact, I think it is far more harmonious than the stark contrast of black and white. If people could learn to accept gray rather than trying to make things either black or white the world would be a much happier place.

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