American Literature 2011: Day 1 - Anticipation Guide Reactions: "Hi Students! Post your reactions to one of the anticipation guide statements to which you had a strong response. Responses should be at leas..."
#2 "The difference between right and wrong is clear"
-I do not agree with this arguement, specifically because it right and wrong, in my opinion, is all about perspective. Say for example I am poor and have to feed my family. Because I have no money, I steal from a local grocer to provide for them. While this may seem right to me, it is wrong in the eyes of the store manager because that is money that he has lost. Or for instance I am in danger of failing a class and cannot graduate. I cheat off of the adjacent person to me during the final exam, and am able to graduate high school. This is right for me because I have passed that class, but is wrong from the standpoint of the teacher because I haven't honestly earned that grade. Often times, interpretting an action as right or wrong is difficult to distinguish because of clashing perspectives.
The issue of distinguishing right from wrong connects to the idea of politics and religion as well. For instance, many people are in favor of the Patriot Act because it gives the government more jurisdiction to search emails, text messages, and tap phones to try to identify an terrorist acts. However, many Americans argue that it is wrong that the government is able to have this sort of power to invade in our personal cyber lives. When discussing religion, the class of Creationism (The belief that Earth, life, and humanity were created by a superficial being) and Darwinism (The belief that life on Earth evolved over a long time through a series of evolutions). To Creationists, their belief in the origin of man is right and the beliefs of darwinism are wrong. To many people, who is right and wrong in this arguement is difficult to decide. While someone raised on the ethics of Christianity will believe in creationism, one who was raised to think scientifically will favor Darwinism. What's right and wrong in politics isn't always clear either.
Finally, the distinction between right and wrong can also be difficult to distinguish to a person due to societies expectations. We are told as children never to lie, no matter what. It's easy then: Tell a lie=wrong, tell the truth=right. However, as we grow up and mature, we begin to get mixed messages from society. We learn that our parents lied to us "for our own innocence" about such issues as Santa Claus, The Easter Bunny, The Tooth Fairy, and so on. Now we see our parents contradicting what they taught us to believe. We see successful economic leaders succeed through shady morals and methods, and now the idea has been incepted in our heads that maybe it is through those means which we can succeed. Simply stated, societies beliefs often confuse us in our distinction of right and wrong because we are unsure what is accepted by society and what isn't.
The idea of being able to differentiate right from wrong is not a realistic statement because there are too many factors to take into account, including societies expectations, morals, and ethics.
Citation: wikipedia.org
