Might is Right

Where does our sense of right or wrong come from? A popular theory is that there are universal laws of ethics/morality and those are used to deduce if a particular instance is right or wrong. Like the concept of God, this is very appealing and from evolutionary biologists’ point of view, this has a lot of survival value.

There a few problems with this theory of universal laws. They are not clearly documented and agree upon in specifics. People believe in the general principle that killing is bad. But in specific situations, it becomes difficult to apply. Killing cows is fine, because we eat them. If a person kills my child, killing the killer by sentencing him to death is fine. If a pack of stray dogs kills my child, killing the stray dogs is unacceptable. Killing mosquitoes, rats and cockroaches is fine. Killing people in the name of religion or country or ‘war on terror’ is fine.

Here’s an analogy. Like different religions, people might believe in the general concept of God, but when it comes down to specifics, the general rule is that “we are the chosen people” and those who don’t believe in my God are all going to hell. People tend to ignore the possibility that there is no God. Similarly, it might be possible that there are no universal ethics or morality.

However, a look around the world we live throws plenty of evidence that ‘might is right’ could be a better theory that explains how we accept what is right and what is wrong. Here, ‘might’ does not refer to a single living entity. ‘Might’ can be an invisible force such as fear of backlash. A few examples will clarify this. When stray dogs kill my child, I cannot kill the stray dogs because there is the ‘might’ of animal rights people. When a person kills my child, the ‘might’ of the government gives the right to sentence the killer to death. Since there is no ‘might’ to protect cockroaches, it is right to exterminate them.

Is it right to have reservations for backward communities in educational institutions? How is it right that a maid servant slogs it out seven days a week and earns what Aishwarya Rai earns in one second?

One answer is that we have got models of what seems to be acceptable to the majority of the people. Notice that ‘acceptable to majority of the people’ is another ‘might’. So we have models like capitalism and communism. A capitalist model can explain the discrepancy between the earnings of Aishwarya Rai and my maid servant. A communist model might aim to avoid this discrepancy in the first place. But, the point is, does it answer the question of right or wrong?

Here’s another example. There is propaganda all over the world on how we are depleting the earth’s resources and hence we need to conserve energy, recycle etc. Clearly, the major reason for this is that there is too much human population and it is growing. Somehow, I’ve not seen a single propaganda that shows that population reduction is one way to avoid resource depletion. The message is usually, ‘protect the world, so our children might enjoy it’ – not ‘don’t have children, so we may protect the world’. Mankind’s might versus rest of the species.

Capitalism accepted that human beings are essentially selfish and greedy and hence capitalism is thriving. Communism failed because it assumed that people will work for the community and put the community ahead of the individual. Is Capitalism right and communism wrong? Is democracy right and monarchy wrong? For a long time, monarchy was mightier so it was right. Now democracy is mightier, so monarchy and dictatorship are wrong.

So what’s my message? Let’s be scientific and accept the realities and then design systems that serve us well. It’s not about right or wrong. It’s coming up with theories such as: it is OK to exterminate cockroaches because it maximizes mankind’s happiness. It is not OK to kill each other in the name of country because of the grave danger of reducing our happiness drastically. So what are the measures we can take to abolish armies?