Poll: A quick morality question.

[crudus]

This was inspired by the recent piracy thread. I asked my friends if they pirated and if they thought it was wrong. Some of them do pirate and thought they were just while other pirated and thought it was wrong. This lead me to ask an interesting question: Is is more wrong to do something and think it just or do something and think it wrong.

I say the latter is more wrong since it means someone doesn't have remorse at least to certain topics.

note: the piracy thing was an example. Please do let it bleed into this thread.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

Probably to do something wrong and think it wrong, because that would imply you did it with some sort of malicious intent.

 

[crazyfoxdemon]

Doing something wrong and thinking it just isn't immoral, it's just ignorance...

 

[Kpt._Rob]

Why should one be more wrong than the other?

People who do something wrong believing themselves to be right do not temper their actions. They do what they want and feel no remorse no matter how bad the thing they did was. Case in point here, would be suicide bombers. People who do something absolutely terrible, because they believe it's the right thing to do.

People who do something wrong and know they are wrong, however, don't tend to be quite as forceful in what they do. Their conflicted conscience forces them to temper their actions. What they do is bad, but they are not likely to do something quite as bad as the person who believes what they are doing is bad.

That is to say that the pirate who believes he is just probably pirates a lot more than the pirate who believes it is unjust. And in turn, the killer who believes he is wrong is not likely to kill again, while the killer who believes his murders justified, is likely to continue. One to one, the actions themselves may not be more or less moral, but the people commiting the actions are likely to be more or less moral depending on their willingness to commit an immoral act again.

 

[googleit6]

Ignorance is something that people don't often realize they are. They can be taught, they can be educated. If you truly believe something to be right, you are justifying to yourself, and often, that is all that matters. That doesn't mean I condone someone killing someone because the murderer thought it "just". I'm just saying that if you do not realize it is wrong, steps can be taken to prevent it from happening again. It's like when a toddler hits you because they don't know any better. They learn from your example of not hitting, and then, they know not to do it anymore. They have learned from their mistakes, even though they didn't realize they were making a mistake in the first place.

Knowing something is wrong and doing it anyways is something that is very, very cruel. You are most likely doing it for your own personal gain, and knowingly doing something that is considered universally wrong is not good. For example, if you were stealing a candy bar from a corner store. Maybe you conscience is whispering to you, but you slap it away, and think "No, I don't care. I'm doing it anyways, because I want to." Obviously, there are more severe cases, but it can be as simple as, "I don't want to do the right thing because I am too lazy, cruel, tired, bored, etc.

To finish off, here is a hypothetical situation, one with someone knowingly doing something wrong, and someone doing something wrong without knowing it wrong, or believing it to be right:

Sally Jane is walking to school one day. Her friend catches up with her, and starts talking. Sally Jane's friend is very upset about something that Sally thinks is silly, and she tells her friend so, not because she wants to hurt her, but because she is trying to use "tough love" to snap her friend out of her slump. However, Sally's friend bursts into tears after Sally has finished telling her how ridiculous she is being. -End example 1-

Sally Jane is walking to school one day. Her friend catches up with her and they start talking. Sally Jane's friend is upset, and Sally is tired of hearing her friend talk about it. Deciding to end this conversation now, Sally Jane cuts her friend off with no warning and changes the subject. Her friend is extremly dejected and upset, and Sally knows it, but thinks she should suck it up, as her situation is stupid anyways. -end example 2-

The difference between those paragraphs is that in the first one, Sally Jane wasn't intentionally trying to hurt her friend's feelings, but did anyways. In the second, she was intentionally trying to hurt her friend's feelings for her own personal gain. In my opinion, Sally Jane from the first paragraph is more justified just because she was trying to do the right thing, but it ended up being the "wrong" thing.