Rights and wrongs

How do we know that something is right or wrong? Difficult to say, since everything we see and do, think and act upon, takes place in a subjective, unreal, ever-changing world. Morals and ethics, the two aspects of rights and wrongs, are really two different concepts - while morals change with the passage of time, changing traditions and outlooks, ethics normally remain unchanged. 'Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority,' said H L Mencken. 'The more uncivilised the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilised man is always sceptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others.'

Considering that the moral domain is not cast in stone, it is certainly not okay to stand or sit in judgement over whether something is morally right or wrong. Morals stem from behaviour based on personal beliefs, whereas ethics is something that the community and society agree upon as being right or wrong, and on the basis of which laws are formed and enforced. Which is why when government agencies take it upon themselves to become moral police, enforcing their ideas of behaviour, relationships or dress codes, it creates confusion and is distasteful, even appalling, to the civilised among us.