Complicated problems
What’s the difference between right and wrong? (Not merely ethically, but circumstancially.)
It’s obvious: Right is justified, wrong isn’t.
Except what about when it isn’t so clear cut? When ‘wrong’ isjustifiable.
What do we do when the reasoning isn’t so cut and dry?
It’s certainly ’wrong’ to steal from a vending machine…but what about if you’re literally dying of thirst?
It’s clearly ‘wrong’ to be late for work…but what if it was caused by uncontrollable cirmstances (traffic accidents, snow storms, 300-story gorillas?)
Or consider contrarians (of all kinds)? How do you know when it’s foul-play versus the next clever invention? Or the next clause you didn’t even know to expect?
A simple (and effective) solution might be to acknowledge that each case is different. Choosing to address problems on a case-by-case basis, instead of writing off a person or a situation because they apparently conform to a standard we’ve seen before.
Because as it turns out, most cases are, in fact, the specific ones. One’s where simple principles and pithy aphorisms don’t apply.
The trick is figuring out where these instances land on a sliding scale. Is it more like this, or more like that? Is it less or more tolerable than what we imagined?
Certainly, there are no easy answers. That’s (sorta) the point.
Because complex problems aren’t solved with simple solutions. They’re solved with a subtleness that bends (without breaking) the rules.