• Ponderer
    2
    What is right or wrong? Can someone be right in the wrong situation?
  • BC
    13.1k
    "Right" and "wrong" are determined collectively, and over time, by society. "Right" and "wrong" are not handed down from on high, unless one lives under an absolute pisspot who is in a position to decree right and wrong.

    "Right" and "wrong" are both moral and legal concepts having different consequences when they are enacted by persons. One can be morally wrong and legally safe. Masturbation might be considered morally wrong, but legally indifferent.

    People are sometimes called upon, in very difficult situations, to act in a way that would, under benign conditions, be "wrong" but in dire straits, are "right". In times of social breakdown and famine, theft of food from a rich person to feed children would be judged morally right but one might be found legally in the wrong.
  • Rich
    3.2k
    Yep. It's all situational and always in flux.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    What is right or wrong? Can someone be right in the wrong situationPonderer

    As far as I can see, right and wrong are human standards, applied to us in particular and to the world in general.

    Being based on universal principles such as joy and pain, it has universal application. However, nature isn't obligated, like we are, to be right and avoid wrong. That's to be expected, nature isn't a conscious being. The problem is humans have a difficult task to bring nature into the world of right and wrong, to say nothing of the problem that human standards may be wrong.
  • MPen89
    18
    Agree with all the posts here.
    When you strip away the law, it is all a question of the observer. One person might think that something is right, when a different person might think the same thing is wrong.

    Right and wrong also has its own spectrum. Just as there is light and there is dark, there is also all the shades between light and dark.

    As to the actual question you are asking; no. I don't think there is truly such a thing as right or wrong. It is particular to humans, and i think that is because humans have a trait that animals do not; guilt.
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