What is the difference between what is right and what is acceptable?
I can look at the situation like this: What society accepts as a norm is to be right and is based on the idea that norms such as law or socially acceptable behavior are based in, of, or out of what is thought to be moral. But what happens when an individual believes what is socially acceptable is in fact morally wrong?
So then how do we draw the line? Or whose side do we take?
If morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason – that is, to do what is best based off of the reasons presented for doing – while giving equal weight to the interests of all parties affected by the decision, then how can we come to just one answer of what is right?
And then, if laws and social norms are based on morality, is it fair that they enforce a certain sense of morality? After all, morality is subjective. Or can the law be seen as self-serving? And can morality ever be truly self-less?
I think this is best way to consider the difference between what is right and what is acceptable.
But if any of this is true, then how can anyone be trusted to enforce laws and social norms? Should we now resort to anarchy and return to an agriculture-based society in which the law of the land is what the owner of his home or property imposes?
What do you think?