Difference Between Right and Wrong? Where To Draw The Line?
How do people determine the difference between right and wrong?
In the linked Ted Talk, the speaker talks about how throughout history so many things that are so extremely wrong were normal and considered okay. Here is a quote from it that tells you some of the biggest examples of it happening throughout history.
Juan Enriquez said, “Human sacrifice used to be natural and normal. It was a way of appeasing the gods. Public executions. They were common, normal, legal. You used to take your kids to watch beheadings in the streets of Paris. One of the greatest wrongs, slavery, indentured servitude. That was something that was practiced for millenia. It was practiced across the Incas, Myas, the Chinese, the Indians, in North and South America.”
The biggest question we want to ask ourselves is why the heck did it take us so long to figure out these things are bad. You would think it would’ve been obvious, but no, apparently it wasn’t. Why? Because winners are the authors of our history.
The next question we all wonder to ourselves is how did we figure out that it truly was wrong. What made us realize that public executions were actually horrific events? The last time France used the guillotine was in 1977. That’s not very long ago. People that are in their 40s, 50s, and above were alive at the time of it’s usage. That is absolutely wack.
Juan Enriquez, the ted talker, talks about how the industrial revolution is cause for this change that legally happened within a few decades. He said, “Technology changes the way we interact with each other in fundamental ways.” That sentence is truer than most of us realize. He then goes on and brings up an example of machine guns and how they changed warfare. Warfare turned into people staying in trenches. You were either on one side or the other. The in between was no mans land and you would get shot if you ran in there. If you ran the other way, you would get shot by your own because you were then a deserter.
Then he goes on and says this, “In a weird way, today’s machine guns are narrowcast social media. We’re shooting at each other. We’re shooting at those we think are wrong with posts, with tweets, with photographs, with accusations, with comments. And what it’s done is it’s created these two trenches where you have to be either in this trench or that trench. And there’s almost no middle ground to meet each other, to try and find some sort of a discussion between right and wrong.”
There are two sides of politics that are cast into the limelight, the public eye. the extreme leftist views and the extreme right views. When in all actuality, most people are in no man's land, they are in the inbetween, but they are just afraid to bring it up or they will get shot by one or the other side.
Cancel culture is huge right now and getting out of control. What the world really needs is forgiveness. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth. The cheesy, cheddary truth. We can’t be canceling people for a joke they made 10 years ago that triggered you today. We should instead be focused on building a safe space to replace no man's land.
The speaker said this, “ Build a community, you have to build it and talk to people and learn from people who may have very different points of view from yours.” You can’t be on just on your side of trench to find out the truth. To determine what’s right and what’s wrong. We need to learn and listen to each other. Time to build a community like Enriquez said instead of tearing each other apart.
