No one does anything wrong. Or is it no one does anything they think is wrong?
I’m fascinated with this idea that no one does anything that they think is wrong.
Why do people do so many things that seem so obviously wrong?
The guy running the stop sign and cutting you off. Not wrong (to him). The lady that rubs cocaine on her crying baby’s gums to get it to quiet and sleep. In her mind perfectly fine. The general who initiates a coup d’etat to overthrow a just and competent leader. He feels that he’s doing what must be done.
There are so many examples of actions people take every day that surprise me, but they shouldn’t. And they shouldn’t make me angry, but sometimes they do.
People’s motives are different from what I believe. The fact is people are inherently selfish. At a fundamental level, if they can get away with it, if the action won’t harm them, and if they think the action will benefit them, they will do it.
Wow!
This view on actions and moralities was philosophized by Socrates. He thought that no one willingly chooses to do wrong. He reasoned doing something wrong harms you, and because of our sense of self-preservation (self-interest), we won’t take an action we know will hurt us.
This is pretty interesting and makes sense. Socrates goes on to reason that wrongdoing is done out of ignorance.
But wait a minute, the guy running the stop sign knows it’s against the law. He knows it’s wrong.
Just a couple of weeks ago a guy was going 50 in a 35, and another guy ran a stop sign. They both knew what they were doing was wrong, that it was against the law, but they did it anyway. One guy speeding and another running a stop.
In the end, the speeding car t-boned the car running the stop. The guy who ran the stop sign won’t ever do it again because he died later in the hospital.
So that’s the conundrum. People still do things that they know are wrong. They aren’t ignorant.
This is interesting. It turns out that if the action is worth the risk, if the individual thinks they can do what they want and get away with it, they will. The feeling of self-satisfaction overrides the risks. The belief that they are helping ease a primordial need trumps all.
In truth, they don’t think what they do is wrong, not really. People are selfish, all of us are, and we’ll continue to do what we want (if we think we can get away with it). If the risk is worth the reward.
Tomorrow, there will be countless cars speeding down that road, past the same stop sign where the old man died. There will even be a few who run the same stop sign, and other signs all over the state.
They’ll do it not because they wish to harm (themselves or others). They’ll do it because they’re in a hurry or because they want to be in front. They’ll simply do it because they want to because it is in their best interests (consequences be damned).
It is only until they have grown enough, understand enough, until they have lifted their veil of ignorance and truly understand (if they ever do) that they will stop.
So long as people are ignorant – wrongdoings will continue. Unfortunately, wrongdoings will always continue. We have as much control over that as we do over gravity.
Fate willing we will all continue to grow and understand our own ignorance.
For humans to truly overcome ignorance will take millennia to come. Socrates understood these things over 2000 years ago, and yet the human race continues to be mired in doubt and fear and hate and ignorance.
Most humans act as mere animals more than that of sentient beings. Our only hope is that a majority of our kind will one day be able to use the one thing that sets us apart from the rest of life on the earth, our ability to think and to reason.
Photo by Luke van Zyl on Unsplash
