The only way to truly make a ‘right’ decision is to know what a ‘wrong’ one is and why you’ve defined it that way.
For example, unless you know that it’s wrong to pre-judge and condemn ANY group of people based upon the actions of a minority of their collective it can sound perfectly reasonable to punish all of ‘their ilk’.
Unless you know that it’s wrong to exclude, expel, convict and punish people that have no evidence against them whatsoever, it can seem like a sound plan to take ‘preemptive measures’ against them.
And unless you know that it’s wrong to teach hatred and bigotry to your children based upon your fear or anger toward a few members of any group it might just seem like a great idea for protecting them from the ‘real world’.
But people aren’t being taught, encouraged and challenged to explore their definitions of right and wrong anymore.
They’re simply being told ‘we’ are right and ‘they’ are wrong in ways that lack simple, common, fundamental humanity.
Want to know if something is right or wrong?
Ask if it would still be right if it were being done to you and those you love.
What if the racial, sexual, religious or ideological (and too many others to list) group you most closely identify with were ‘en masse’ told that you would have to pay for the crimes of a small number of people who just happen to ‘fit the general description’ of your group?
Would that be right or wrong?
What if, based on nothing more than having a religion, a race, a sex or sexual orientation or political ideology in common with a handful of trouble-makers you were to have your business closed, your livelihood taken away, your family split up and your home taken from you?
How would that sit with you?
And what if every time one of your kids went outside they were taunted, bullied and subjected to physical violence for no reason other than the fact that they belonged to one group rather than another?
Would that feel acceptable to you?
C’mon, you know it wouldn’t, right?
It would be just plain wrong.
If it were happening to us, we’d KNOW that what was happening was wrong. We wouldn’t even stop to question it. It would be self-evident.
But most of us don’t stop to think about right and wrong in these terms. We simply see what ‘they’ did and want to see ‘them’ punished so that ‘we’ can feel safe again.
And in doing so, we create yet more people who’ve been treated wrongly seeking redress to put things right… and often resorting to wrong ways of doing so.
And the cycle ever continues.
As it has.
Over and over and over again.
And that can’t be right.
Can it?
Truth, joy and love
Dax