Opinion
 

Right and wrong often absolute

By Jennifer Jackson

I've been told it's wrong to tell others they are wrong. (Consider that "logic" for only a moment, because your brain will probably revolt if you contemplate it for too long.) All humans are equal, my peers instruct me, so clearly, saying someone is wrong is saying that your opinion or belief is better than theirs, which cannot possibly be tolerant. But wait -- if I shouldn't be intolerant, it must be wrong to be intolerant, right? So, it's only right to tell someone they're wrong if they are being intolerant of others' beliefs, but any other opinions that could possibly be conceived are never wrong.

Well, except murder. 

The government is obviously the most offending of all of us, for it constantly has the audacity to insinuate and actually force U.S. citizens to accept they are wrong if they commit murder. A vast majority of the population (dare I say all?) agrees with the government that murderers should be punished in some way. 

Why is there not a public outcry against this horrible outrage? Does our list of absolute wrongs end with murder? Not at all. If any of us had our car stolen tomorrow, would we not call the police and angrily protest against this act? And what makes us do this? The simple fact that we believe it is wrong -- definitively and across-the-board wrong -- for one's possessions to be taken against his or her will. 

You see, we realize something about this universe, even if we don't like to admit it. We cannot -- we will not -- exist if we throw all absolutes out the window. We would have total anarchy.

And this is why: something can only be right if wrong exists, and vice-versa. We want a culture where nobody is wrong, but despite our best efforts, it is impossible to create a world devoid of wrong and overflowing with only right.

We can only know something is wrong if a right exists as its opposite. We can only call something good if the opposite of that is always bad. We can't create a culture where everybody decides his or her own values, or creates his or her own morals and ideas of right and wrong, because our separate little universes are constantly bumping into and offending each other.

Even the most tolerant person in the world doesn't want his or her mother shot in the street. That act might be the most "right" thing in the mind of the hoodlum who needs the $20 in your mom's purse in order to survive until tomorrow, but you still have the audacity to loudly protest the act as being wrong.

You may think this is all very obvious and question my real point. Here's an assignment: ask yourself these questions if you believe there is absolute truth.

Is it wrong to tell someone they're wrong? With absolutes, doesn't somebody have to be wrong? Do you have the absolute truth? And, if some things are definitely right and wrong, don't you want to know what they are? 

Jackson, an editorial writer for The Daily Cougar,
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu.