What Makes Something Right or Wrong?

Recently my wife and I decided to rattle snake proof our desert courtyard. Five years earlier we had placed rot iron fencing on two sides of that area as a means of staying visually connected with our desert landscape. But that rot iron fencing had its downside. It offered easy entry to many desert critters—including rattlesnakes on four separate occasions. The fourth time, when a 2 ½ foot rattler curled up within a foot of our patio door, was the last straw. So, it seemed only right that we should attach mesh fencing to discourage such visits. I mean, who could say we were wrong for wanting to protect ourselves? Right?

Well, one answer to that question came the very next morning. As we sat on our patio sipping coffee and discussing the fact that the mesh fencing certainly hadn’t created an aesthetic distraction, along came one of our regular visitors, a little brown rabbit. Now, I won’t say we hadn’t discussed the impact our new fencing would have on our little friend. But that was a theoretical discussion that had followed our incident with the rattlesnake. Seeing that rabbit face-to-face staring at us through that wire mesh changed the whole dynamic regarding right and wrong. It actually reminded me of Hegel’s caution that “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.”¹

You see, this little rabbit had become a regular member of our courtyard family along with all the birds who visit our four feeders. He hung out on hot afternoons under our desert marigold bushes, and we had begun to think of him as our personal gardener. He seldom attacked any of our plants with any ferocity. On the contrary, he especially enjoyed standing on his back legs to reach one of the succulents that hangs from a large pot on the east side of the patio. Every couple of mornings he’d come along and trim the longer chutes that, if allowed to grow too long, would sap strength from the plant. You might say we had a symbiotic relationship. And, like the birds, this little guy had come to rely on the water from the smaller of our two courtyard fountains.

As I thought about this courtyard experience, I rationalized my conduct as simply following Maya Angelou’s advice, “Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.”²  I decided that perhaps right and wrong don’t represent as much of a binary option as they do a continuum of “more” right or “less” wrong. Or as Hamlet said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but that thinking makes it so."³  I wonder how many wars have been fought, lives have been lost, and friendships have been severed in the name of good, in the pursuit of right, or the condemnation of wrong? How many judgments have been passed on wrong doers?

How many of us are imprisoned by our own or by someone else’s definition of right and wrong? I know my wife and I were right to protect ourselves from the rattlesnakes who had invaded our courtyard. But try telling that to our little rabbit friend. His eyes told us he felt betrayed. After all, hadn’t he provided free landscaping? “Damn those humans. You just can’t trust them to know the difference between right and wrong.”

 
¹https://allauthor.com/quotes/136946/
²Angelou, M. (1969) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House.
³Shakespeare, W. Hamlet, Act II, Scene 2.