Random reflections on being right.

 

Oh seasons, oh castles,
What soul is without flaws?
      - Arthur Rimbaud

    We all are born into this world with our share of flaws. None of us is flawless. Sometimes it is these flaws in us which make us what we are, teach us the lessons we need to learn and shape our lives for the better. It is not that I claim the flaws and imperfections to be right. But I think they form a necessary part of life's package. As we overcome the flaws, we live our lives. And sometimes that act of overcoming is what turns out to be the most important part of this great drama of life!

    But as individuals, part of the society, we are very much biased towards denying the flaws that characterize us. When a good friend points out a flaw of ours to us, the most common reaction we are conditioned to express is to find ways to defend it. Our mind gets involved in exploiting options and arguments which would put us on the path of being right. But, is being flawless actually being right? Or going a step further, is being right such a huge necessity? 

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so"
 - William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

    What is good and what not? What is right and what not? These are questions not to find answers but to actually find ourselves. An objective answer to these questions has eluded the best of all intellectual minds. The objectivity of right and wrong is battled on the turfs of moral and ethical philosophy for centuries. Was Thomas Scanlon right when he wrote - "Thinking about right and wrong is, at the most basic level, thinking about what could be justified to others on grounds that they, if appropriately motivated, could not reasonably reject."? But in the everyday living of ours, we all tend to behave in a way that we believe is right. So then, within each of us is an understanding of what we consider is right and what not. Given this understanding, is it that we live through life assimilating this understanding and behaving the right way or is it that we are compelled by the "need to be right" against our natural flow to live?

      Consider a girl who is engaged to a boy. They are supposed to get married in a couple of weeks, the kith and kin have been invited to grace their marriage ceremony and everything is being put in place for the 'fat' Indian wedding. Spending time with him, she realizes he is not what she supposed him to be. She gets to know that they both are of contrasting emotional wiring. She battles to let him know of their differences but the guy just can't understand what she yearns to convey. A week to the marriage, the girl gives up her attempts to make things work. Now, if she marries him owing to the pressure of the family because it is 'not the right thing to break the marriage after so much preparation', is she actually being right or is it the need to be right which coerced her into the knot?
     

"The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind." - Albert Camus

      Much of what is agreed to be right is not because we know it is right but because we agree to the social consensus of it being right. Despite the fact that social consensus is not independent of space and time, it is indeed very important. The social consensus on morality of an act is among the most vital governing authorities around which human civilizations have evolved. If not for its towering presence in our conscience, every civilization would have been reduced to anarchy! The system of law and justice is largely a codification of the social consensus on ethics and rights. But how far can the long arm of social consensus be allowed to stretch? And to what extent do we as individuals need to adhere to its judgment on right and wrong?

    Consider our own behaviour in every day life. Let us say at the place I work smoking is not considered to be the right thing and so I abstain from it there. Late in the night on a day of heavy workload, I stay back all alone at the workspace and since I am all alone, I smoke. Though I too consider it to be wrong, my desire and temptation succeed to get the better of me(as always!). But there is a raw(?) satisfaction because no one knows of the wrong I have committed. Despite having known I have wronged, I am considered by my colleagues at the workspace as being a righteous guy. Is it that I am actually right because being right is just a question of perception? Or is it that the entire notion of being socially right is flawed?

    Or that on another similar occassion I am caught smoking by one of my colleagues, who is gracious enough not to reveal it to anyone else. So whenever it is only the two of us working I start to smoke. My logic being that anyway he knows I smoke and what purpose in maintaing the image of 'being right' with him. Is this approach of mine towards the unmasking of myself right? Or is the act of committing something considered wrong irrespective of being watched, amounts to having done wrong?

“It is no longer being just and generous that makes us right; it is being successful." *

    Oh yeah, the dimension of success too is attached to the conception of being right! In the contemporary society of ours, maybe being successful is the most commonly agreed way of being right. (And this is the most paradoxical statement I could ever make!) We do not have an agreed notion of success anywhere but we agree to consider it to be a de-facto scale to call something right!

    Recently at a school near the place I live by, a mock election was conducted to introduce the concept of elections to students. A child (I call him a child because I was told he was barely 13 years old), who contested in it as a candidate demanded his father to buy certain gift items for him, which he intended to distribute among his friends who formed the electoral collage. On asking why he wanted it so badly, he said he needs to win the election and it was success alone that could assure him his 'right' place in the class! Is success an absolutely necessary pre-requisite in our struggle to be 'right'? Or is that the charm of so called success encashes on our credulity?

     I do not claim to know the answers to the questions which did arise in this unorganized, raw flow of thought. If left to roam around, these thoughts never settle down. Breaking away from their sway, I take refugee in Ghalib. Commenting on his verses and the right meaning they conveyed, he writes - "Na sataaish ki tamanna, na sile ki parvah. Gar nahi hai mere ashar me mani, na sahi." (Neither the desire for praise, nor the craving for reward. If my verses have no meaning, then so be it.) If in a world of infinitely many possibilities, my actions do not qualify to be called 'right', then so be it!

* This seemingly ironic quote is part of the larger statement “We are suffering a reign of terror because human values have been  replaced by contempt for others and the worship of efficiency, the  desire for freedom by the desire for domination. It is no longer being just and generous that makes us right; it is being successful.”, attributed to Albert Camus. But I doubt if it is a mis attribution.