No right and wrong

What exist are acceptable, not acceptable and not yet acceptable.

Everything happens in contexts.

What is acceptable in one context may not be when the context changes.

Every society defines what is acceptable and what isn’t. Every action falls on the spectrum between being acceptable and not being acceptable. Throughout human history, the same actions have danced from one end of that spectrum to the other.

Right and wrong are ineffective tools we use in moving around the world. We keep using it because it sometimes gets us close to where we want. It sometimes help us imprint our perspective on others.

Every perspective is incomplete regardless of the truth in it.

We use right and wrong to create pain and judgement. We use both to grow in status and affiliation. We use both, even when it has become a prison.

That something is deemed as ‘right’ doesn’t make it acceptable. Others labelling it ‘wrong’ doesn’t make it not acceptable either.

When we swap right and wrong for acceptable and not acceptable (yet), we may find a better framework.

But when we use it, we can also be mindful to answer: acceptable to whom exactly? Who made this rule, and why?

Less than a century ago, it was not acceptable for women to vote or work outside their homes - until it was. It was acceptable for humans to kill one another as a form of entertainment and sport, until it wasn’t. Even within the same country, what’s acceptable for one family is not for another.

Many of what we consider acceptable today will be laughed at tomorrow.

The least we can do is to define what is acceptable to us, right now. And why it is. We know some of it will change. We expect it to.

And we can stop living the lie of being right and wrong.