I'm always right.

In my philosophy 101 class this past Friday we had an interesting discussion that really got me thinking. A sidetrack as it were, the topic was about the "meaning" of right and wrong and the inherent uselessness of the defense of what we perceive of as right. Naturally, once McGowan got on this topic he used war as a contemporary analogy but was careful not to keep his politics relevant to the discussion (does he know I've been reading frontpagemagazine.com and the Students for Academic Freedom website?). Relating it to Nietzche, we discussed how the events and actions that we perceive as good or evil are not inherently so in and of themselves. Murder as an action is not good or evil, it is generally interpreted as evil because of the value most of us place on human life. Similarly, giving your sandwich to a homeless man on the street is nothing more than the implied actions. It is good because many of us apply notions of goodwill or kindness to such situations that seem to produce some sort of positive inner emotion or state of well being.

What McGowan was arguing and what really got me into the discussion was that the nature of actions and events (lacking an inherent quality of good vs. evil) renders defense of a position pointless. In other words, it was useless to defend your opinion as "right" and someone else's as "wrong." Indeed, read any great philosophical work and rarely, if at all, do you find overt claims of rightness or superiority of opinion. From what little Kierkegaard I've read, he's never said "I am right and others are wrong and this is the way the world is." McGowan again applied this concept to the modern day situation of American expansionism and patriotism. During class I argued that the defense of freedom is necessary because I place a value on being free. Of course, this statement would make any liberal or socialist cringe (re: Ward Churchill). That's when McGowan brought up the paradoxical nature of "freedom" in the American sense and before I could allow this concept to fully process in my brain, the class was over. It was a hell of a way to leave the argument but I agreed...it is very paradoxical. A brief one-on-one post script after class left me suggesting to McGowan that one has an obligation to support the American war on terror (but not necessarily how we're going about it) if one is to take advantage of other benefits that American citizenship entails (i.e. laws, criminal prosecution for someone punching you in the face, etc.). I think we left it at that before the next class in the room kicked us out.

The whole discussion really got the wheels turning. What does it mean for something to be right or wrong? That day I realized that nothing is right or wrong in and of itself, which is kind of a mindfuck because I've grown up in a society that places value judgements on things as if they were concrete. As a result, I have been trained to deem certain things as right or wrong. For the most part, these assumptions are correct and allow me to lead a productive and successful life. But many questions were raised, particularly the role of defense. What exactly are we defending when we bomb another country to the ground or kill even one innocent person in order to destroy a bomb plant? It's easy to argue that destroying that bomb plant potentially saved millions of lives so the loss of a few innocent civilians is incidental. I would still take this stance even in light of my realizations from Friday's class.

What made me think is that there is in fact an alternative to good and evil...that what we do in our lives is very much a product of our own value judgements that have no basis in reality at all. Some people trace their values to God. Since I don't, what is there? (This is when the Christian fundamentalist starts chastising me and convicting me to a life in hell). While it's a discomforting question to explore, it's one that I will not readily give up by simply unloading it all on a concept of an all-powerful being; that's too easy and a copout in my opinion. I'm left with many questions that I have a strong feeling will never be answered. I suppose for the time being I'll just have to trust my instinct on what is right and wrong, no matter where it came from.