Our sense of what is right and what is wrong has more power over us than we might imagine

Many of the decisions and choices we make are utilitarian in nature. When we buy something, even something inexpensive where we don't consciously weigh up all the upsides and downsides, the ultimate decision tends to be driven by whether we believe we get good value for money. But that is not necessarily how we judge other people's decisions, especially if they do not affect us directly.

Say, for the sake of argument, that we have a dislike of German cars (and their drivers). (I am told this predilection does exist.) If our neighbours – with whom we get on well – were to buy a new car of that provenance, it is quite likely that we would feel, deep down, that they made the wrong choice, despite the fact that it really is none of our business. They might well have looked at the costs and benefits, at the depreciation, the specifications and whatnot, and really quite rationally made their choice – yet we would find it hard to suppress the idea that it is not right.]

Two wrongs making a right? (photo: Qropatwa/Flickr CC BY NC ND 2.0)

Or imagine that one of the neighbours' children decides to emigrate to Australia because she has a fantastic lucrative job offer. The right choice, or not? Even though we're not involved, we probably have an opinion. Perhaps we believe that it is perfectly right for an individual to make that choice autonomously, after weighing up the material gains against the social ramifications. Alternatively, we might think that moving away that far from your family is mean, not done, and wrong.

All wrong

The original idea for this post, a good week ago, came from a news item that caused a fair amount of commotion here in the UK. P&O Ferries, the company that operates ferries across the Channel and the Irish Sea decided to fire 800 employees with immediate effect (via a video message, to add insult to injury), and replace them with cheaper personnel from far-flung countries. Unsurprisingly, there was widespread outrage – legal or not, you just don't do that kind of thing: it's wrong.

Before long a second example presented itself: the incident at the Academy Award ceremony last weekend, when actor Will Smith walked up to comedian Chris Rock and smacked him squarely in the face. Seconds earlier, Mr Rock had made a joke (not in the best of tastes) about Mr Smith's wife's alopecia, a condition in which one loses the hair from some, or all of one's body. Here, the opinions were more divided: some sided with Will Smith and his wife, and thought the violent reaction was, if not justified, then wholly understandable; others found his action (and his subsequent refusal to apologize to his victim) unacceptable totally wrong.

And as if the gods of the blogosphere felt I needed another example, in a speech in Poland, US President Joe Biden made a rather unscripted remark vis-à-vis his Russian counterpart. Having branded Vladimir Putin earlier as a "butcher" (not on the professional sense), he declared he "cannot remain in power". Here too, opinions were divided. Many voices rallied behind Biden, finding that he was absolutely right to state the truth about the Russian president; others (like French President Emmanuel Macron) felt that it was the wrong thing to do – insulting and threatening a head of state is not only not helpful, it is likely to make a diplomatic solution to the crisis in Ukraine harder.

It is difficult for even the most even-tempered person not to feel an urge to evaluate these occasions in terms of what is right and what is wrong. Very few people are directly and immediately affected by them, and yet we somehow sense that these events have a deep significance to us. Even if we don't experience the need to broadcast our opinion, our gut tells us that we do have one.

An illusory sense of certainty

Our sense of right and wrong is almost always accompanied by a sense of certainty. There is little place for doubt – hell, if we cannot be certain about that, anything goes, right? But given the right circumstances, might we not have a different view of what is right and wrong?

It is tempting, and comforting, to consider right and wrong as absolutes. It is also, dare I write it, wrong. We are all familiar with the concept of the "lesser of two evils". With a little imagination, can we not at least conceive of a situation where a business really faces a choice between bankruptcy and radically cutting labour costs by replacing al its staff with cheaper employees? I am not suggesting that P&O really had no other option, but that we should at least entertain the possibility that they decided their choice was the lesser of two evils, rather than unconditionally condemning them.

The rules of right and wrong we adopt are more flexible than we generally admit. In isolation, we may think it is wrong to smack someone else in the face. But we may also empathize strongly with someone who feels deeply insulted and hurt when a loved one is unfairly and cruelly being mocked. Which wrong is the worst? Not that easy, eh?

You shouldn't offend heads of state (unless it's Putin) (photo: jlhervàs/Flickr CC BY 2.0)

To make matters worse, our (often snap) judgement about whether someone's choices are right or wrong, often depends a lot on who is involved, and who we feel aligned with. Devoted fans of either Mr Smith or Mr Rock may tend to side with their idol, and to place loyalty above either the principle that you don't smack people for what they say (or at all!), or the principle that you should not be cruel to others, even in jest, and that if you do, you deserve what is coming to you. People with whom we feel more affinity – who belong to our 'tribe' – are more likely to be right, and the other side more likely to be wrong.

If you already harbour a strong dislike of the Russian president, it is easy to feel supportive of Joe Biden's remarks and consider them as right. For those who feel sympathetic towards Vladimir Putin – in Russia and outside – it is natural to assert that it is wrong for a head of state to openly offend another head of state, and imply they should be deposed.

Not so absolute

There is an easy test we can take to verify how robust and absolute our sense of right and wrong is: replace the protagonist (or the victim) in a scenario where we feel very certain who is right and who is wrong. Change the person whom we feel is definitely wrong to someone we like very much, or swap the person whom in our eyes is right without a doubt for our worst enemy. If we can, hand on heart, say that we would not alter our view one bit, we do have a surprisingly robust and impartial sense of right and wrong, and we should really congratulate ourselves, and go feed the pigs before they take off.

In the real world, we'll find this pretty much impossible to do. In that case, the best we can do is realize that people generally don't deliberately do something that they feel is wrong. We cannot divide the world into people that are right (that's "us", naturally) and people that are wrong.

We had better realize that, no matter how wrong something looks from where we are standing, there is a perspective from where it looks right to someone else – and there might even be a perspective from where it might look right to us.

That is also hard. But not impossible.