Do The Right Thing

We know that at least since the time of the Ancient Greeks, people have wondered about doing the right thing. ‘What does it mean to live the just life?’ Plato wondered.

Why is it so important to us? Perhaps it is because, as Ernest Becker’s suggests, each of us must be the hero of our own narrative.

Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing, a masterful exploration of ethics in the real world, shows how different people - each trying to do the right thing - can nevertheless come into conflict. It's hard for us today to accept that the human sacrifices of the Maya were carried out by good people, honestly striving to do the right thing - but that is only because our culture is so different.

In How People Learn, I argue that ethics is – like all cognition – an aspect of sentiment. There is no absolute answer to questions of right and wrong. Whether or not you pull the lever that redirects the trolley is entirely a question of how you feel: and that will change from one moment to the next, and according to the way you have lived your life. People who have lived similarly, will tend to feel similarly.

So Doing The Right Thing will always be a shared aspiration: but while there is diversity, there can never be complete consensus. At best we can be united in our endeavour, just as we are united in the loneliness of it.