Even a child would know that life is full of right and wrong, but a child might not be aware that the balance between the two might determine how comfortable our life is. If right prevails, our life feels good, and if wrong preponderates, the life feels bad. Very plainly put, isn’t it? But sounds uncannily logical! I wonder what is more abundant in Georgia – right or wrong. As if I don’t know! And are we good enough to tell right from wrong when the difference is asking to be revealed? My bones and brains, and the guilty conscience are telling me that wrong is showing more viability and resilience here. Right is doddering, somehow. Anywhere you go, something wrong is stuck into your nose, ears and eyes. And this is probably happening because ethical and moral reasoning of our society is not sharp enough to discern between right and wrong.
As if the criterion for measuring right and wrong is upside down. I said I have a guilty conscience. Yes I do! And my conscience is guilty because I have almost zero power to right the wrong except that I can every so often stab the wrongs with my pen, although I don’t think I can dispatch them in desirable numbers. Meanwhile, the Land is infested with perpetrators who only do wrong and hate those who usually do right because the right-doers are in their way of doing wrong. I am not an idealist – hence I don’t think one can always do what is right and honorable. I am only suggesting that we should not stand idly and find enough willpower within ourselves, and the right way beyond ourselves to castigate the perpetrators without any exception. Selective judgment would be mortifying here. But how do we judge those who are responsible for doing wrong? Well, first and utmost, we must have an adequate ability to tell right from wrong. This is a valuable ability which comes with experience and education, and has nothing to do with talent as such. Ludicrously, many of those wrong-doers are extremely talented, and the more talented they are, the more dangerous they happen to be for our society. Secondly, we need to be so elevated in terms of our morality that the process of telling right from wrong should only be based on our capability to discern between what is moral and what is immoral. This is elementary! So an accurate verdict in the judgment of right and wrong must be based on three main prerequisites as a minimum: natural wisdom, acquired knowledge and innate morality. If one of these three variables is missing, the situation looks comic, if two are out, then its smells like drama, and in case they are all absent, then we become the unfortunate actors of tragedy. We are all under the will and whim of our decision-makers, and often, those decision-makers of ours are themselves devoid of any ability to tell right from wrong, inadvertently turning thus into regular perpetrators. As I said, they need to at least possess those three features to be fair judges of right and wrong – wisdom, knowledge and morality. Is this nation lucky enough to be nursed by the decision-makers of this sort and magnitude? Maybe, although I am not quite adamantly certain about that! But I have seen and heard of the ones who do not exactly fall under this category. Can we ever forgive them their inability to discern right from wrong? We may not want to forgive, but the moral collapse is so obvious around that resistance against the wrong by the right is practically impossible. And the society is simply devoid of morally elevated and acceptable role models we would all like to look up to. There are no functional rules and codes that might allow us to tell right from wrong. All is mixed up and devalued. Just give me one name in the entire Nation beyond our religious realm, which could undoubtedly and irreversibly serve as an example for us and our kids. Tell me who would be most trustable a person in the whole country who would utter a word and the entire nation would be poised and ready to listen to with due attention and pleasure! I am not craving for a cult of some personalities, nor am I for the veneration of heroes – the ‘saviors’ of the nation. No! I am only talking about the deficit of that indispensable power to tell right from wrong, and then to defend the right from those who are wrong. Who is to say what’s right and what’s wrong after all? Probably the wisest among us – philosophers, as the ancient giant of thought Plateau would have suggested it. But where are they? Or if they are in hiding, how many of them do we have ready to serve the country? And of course, are we guaranteed that the Nation’s wise men will be able to tell between right and wrong if they are asked to? Whether we, as a Nation, have or do not have the ability to tell right from wrong is a very big deal. It actually is a matter of life and death. If by any chance we are lacking that ability, we cannot stop there – we have to act forthwith. As Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘The best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing’. Indeed, the worst thing is doing nothing!