Recently,
my wife and I have started re-watching the show Boston Legal, which is an
excellent comedy that deals with many issues that are still prominent today.
However, the one thing I like the most about this show is how it makes us look
at the grey area. Not that mushy grey area that rests between our ears, but the
grey area of morality resting between right and wrong; good and evil.
We, as
humans, are often very quick to judge most things, grouping them into “right”
and “wrong”. The problem is that, when it comes right down to it, there isn't a
strict dividing line between the two. In fact, there’s a very big mass of grey
right in the middle.
For
example, in one episode of Boston Legal, an elderly woman with no relatives had
fallen under the legal guardianship of a man who put her in a home and was
living off of her assets. When the main character (a lawyer) tried to solve the
problem legally, the man was able to stall – and then put the old woman’s house
up for sale.
The main
character – a man with a strong sense of justice but is not above unscrupulous
methods – hired some thugs to break into the man’s house (stolen from a different
senior) and leave him tied up in a chair so he’d know what it was like to feel
as helpless as the old woman did. Then, after about an hour, the main character
came in and forced the man to sign papers to release the lady from his control,
returning her assets to her.
As an
audience, we can’t very well condemn the main character for his actions. He,
himself, regrets them, but good won out in the end. The man was clearly in the
wrong, victimizing seniors. He was a terrible person. Yet, at the same time,
what the main character did was wrong as well. Two wrongs don’t make a right,
but everything turned out for the best.
The more we
look at what’s right and wrong, the more we can see falling into the grey area.
We tell ourselves that there are universal laws of good and evil, but there are
other cultures out there with their own universal laws of what’s right and
wrong. Everything shifts a bit, from place to place, religion to religion, even
from person to person. Who are we to declare that our set of universal laws are the ones that are true?
When I
think about what rules must be universally accepted, the first thing that comes
to mind is killing another person. I simply cannot fathom how anyone could say
that, morally, killing a person isn't wrong. Yet, there are people who don’t
see a problem with it. There are countries with capital punishment, cultures
that reward killing people and so many people fighting wars and killing each
other. Clearly, it is not a universal truth that killing a person is bad.
For
everything that is truly bad, a justification can always be found somewhere.
Likewise, for everything that is truly good, a reason can always be found to
explain why it was bad. Examining things closely enough, everything blurs.
Eventually, everything becomes grey. Does evil really exist? Does good?
Perhaps
there really is a universal law of right and wrong out there. I could be that
it’s ours. Or, maybe, we simply haven’t found it yet.
We’re too
lost in the grey area – the mushy one that rests between our ears.
If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.
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