The Barrier

"Right and wrong are not what separate us and our enemies. It's our different standpoints, our perspectives that separate us. Both sides blame one another. There's no good or bad side. Just two sides holding different views."
-Squall Leonhart, FFVIII

I would be inclined to agree with this statement to a fairly large extent, actually. Though from my personal experience my conscience often tells me, or rather attempts to tell me, what is "right" and what is "wrong", I believe it still is important to respect the views of others, even if they are radical in nature. For example, consider what we did quite a while back in IHS. Terrorism. Though I see terrorism as "wrong" in that it is violence against non-combatants (by definition), from their point of view, they could be attempting to fulfil a unique interpretation of a prophecy in their sacred texts, establish a political community of people who subscribe to their beliefs, or otherwise.

Sometimes, I think we are too quick to pass judgments on things. An acquaintance once asked me to show her how to integrate the function ln(x) with respect to x; I willingly showed her the method of Integration by Parts. The moment I wrote the first line, however:

ln x = 1 * ln x

She immediately asked "What's the point of that?". As anyone familiar with the method of integration by parts would know, integration by parts requires a multiplication to fit the formula integ u dv = uv - integ v du. Hence appending a '1' usually works.

Some time back in Higher Chinese class, Laoshi told us of two arguments held by two different Chinese philosophers a long time ago, with regard to human nature being 'good' or 'evil'; and though this is not really related to the problem I'm considering as mentioned earlier, I think it is worth sharing. This also serves to illustrate a point - that "good" and "bad" are subjective; the same situation can result in grossly different interpretations.

What they were considering is actually a very young baby, commonly associated with a period of innocence. The philosopher who claimed that human nature is good would say that people would be kind enough to help the baby when it cries. On the contrary, the one who claimed that humans are inherently evil said that the baby crying is a manipulative act in itself, attempting to get things from others and get its desires fulfilled. Both arguments are relatively plausible (though to me, a pessimist, I am more inclined toward the argument that human nature could be inherently evil).

The choice is yours. Is there such a thing as an objective 'right' or 'wrong'? A subjective right or wrong can be determined; for example, if I say that from my point of view, drink-driving should be punishable by death (not that it's my point of view), it would be 'right' from my point of view, but probably not from an alcoholic. Hence, from my point of view, though infinitely many subjective rights or wrongs may exist, there is not true for an objective right or wrong; I believe no such thing exists.