Right and wrong has never been as easy as black and white. From rooting for personal moral values or dropping bombs to stop wars, human history is haunted by ever inconclusive and confusing debates about what and who is really right. If we dig deep enough, every side of the story seems to have a seemingly rational explanation and even heroes seem to have a dark side. There are very interesting historical examples and patterns that might help us gain a fresh perspective as an unbiased spectator of this perpetual human drama revolving around conviction about right and wrong.

The dropping of the atomic bomb is a prominent example of a controversial ethical dilemma that we will never be able to fully justify for either side. Although the bomb, in theory, forced the Japanese to surrender, the majority of the approximately 200,000 people killed were civilians. In fact, only about 20,000 Japanese soldiers were killed and Nagasaki, location of the second bomb, did not even have a military base. Wrong? Definitely yes for the innocents killed. But in a bigger picture, could we argue that Japan, taken as a single entity, was innocent throughout history? Not really, because even aside from their alliance with the Germans before World War II started in 1939, Japan began its invasion on China in 1937. This invasion in what is known as the Second Sino-Japanese War caused the deaths of 10 to 25 million Chinese civilians. The only motive for Japan to invade its neighbor was nothing but military ambition to gain more resources and expand the Japanese empire. 

But  not all brutal deaths happen in a show of flash and spectacular  clouds for people to condemn. Some lesser known atrocities in history resulted in slow and painful deaths of millions of people. Winston Churchill, for instance, was definitely a hero of World War II who fought with blood, sweat and tears to save and inspire the British as well as the world to retaliate against the despicable German brutalities in Europe. However, on the other side of the globe in India, the greed of the British Empire was causing bloody famines that would have been easily inevitable if only leaders like Churchill had empathy for native citizens of their empire. But the British were too busy with war and their rule. Beginning with the famine from 1770-1773, during the British rule in India, approximately 10 million people died as a result of starvation. While the Europeans were busy with World War II, the Bengal Famine of 1943 killed 1.5 to 4 million people. Churchill is said to have deterred the supply of aids to the famine affected area and supply the British troops instead, who were already well provided. Churchill has even been quoted to have said, “Famine or no famine, Indians will breed like rabbits.” Judging by the number of deaths alone that could have been easily prevented by a stroke of pen and change of policies, do we still see the face of a pure hero in Winston Churchill? The reason for such despicable actions? I see it as greed for profit and arrogant ignorance about the value of human life. 

Now let’s narrow down the human motivation for doing the right thing to more specific research on individuals in an office environment. White-collar crimes are parallel to atrocities that happen in the background without global attention. A shop lifter is publically shamed, in no way is his act justified. But the bank employer stealing one cent from 3 billion customers would not be caught as easily and shamed as he deserves. We do have some statistical data to shed light on white-collar crimes thanks to an economic experiment by Pal Feldman in the book Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt. Feldman began a simple business model where he delivered bagels to 140 companies and left a cash basket for customers to pay for the service, willingly, without any seller to maintain the purchase.  Feldman’s profit calculation showed that the payment rate was 80-90 percent, which means a lot of his customers were stealing his bagels with no one to watch. Could this bagel crime incident be a reflection of hidden criminal minds in our society? If so, it’s bad news because 1-2 out of every 10 people are ready to steal from you. However, it’s also good news because when Feldman started out a lot of people predicted that his “honor-system” of conducting business would result in loss. Reality proved otherwise. So it is good to see, that at least in those particular companies, 80-90 percent people were willing to pay and could be defined as “good”. 

It should be a well understood fact that rules and regulations, books and revelations have never stopped the tides of crime. Early settlers of the United States, despite being blessed by the knowledge of the holy books and in their pursuit of freedom, did not logically see the obvious value of freedom for innocent slaves. So it is not a book written in stone that will dissuade    immoral deeds, but rather it must be a book within us which is read with our cleanest consciousness and heart, will always help us distinguish wrong from right. Is the human race born into sin and always ready to take selfish advantage of one another? I will never believe that, at least not 80-90 percent of the time.