Are we Really Civilized?

When I think through myself and see the happenings around, I always have this question intriguing me, Is there a clear demarcation between the right and the wrong? People do have different views for this question. The opinion from the major group is, “Yes, there is a clear demarcation”. This pops up another subjective question, Can this line of demarcation vary from a person to person? Or can it vary time to time for a same person? Ideally it shouldn't vary because this line helps to measure ourselves if we are a better person each day. If this line fluctuates then we don't have a proper reference to evaluate ourselves.

At present, we try to dilute the line of demarcation for our personal benefits and push it towards the wrong end. Thereby the right things gets a wider bandwidth which makes us assume that we are doing right but actually we are not. To quote a trivial example, many of us skip the traffic signal and u turns, and we pretty much know it is wrong and it affects others who follow the rules but we still go ahead and break the rules to save some of their time, eventually not a great time though. This is violating the morals for personal benefits.

If we are doing it unintentionally and correcting later after realizing, makes us a better person, but doing it intentionally to achieve personal benefits without caring about the loss of others is highly unacceptable. If these small mistakes are left unnoticed, how do we evaluate ourselves on a day to day basis to become a better person? Instead the line of demarcation is pushed here saying this is not wrong as it is common.

Let's make it little complicated here, is killing someone considered wrong? The direct answer here from most of us is yes. If killing a person for self-defense is considered wrong? So, Does the act of right and wrong is defined based on the situation? My perspective here is a no, if we can justify our act, everybody will have their own justification for their actions to prove it right.

The modern civilized world works in this justification theorem called the moral dilemma and ethical dilemma. Moral and ethics are the synonymous words which can be used interchangeably. There is a marginal difference between the two, ethics is the set of rules set by a culture or group and they are consistent with respect to the context, whereas morals are the basic principles irrespective of the group, culture or context. The former example deals with the moral dilemma whereas the later can be considered as an ethical dilemma. 

As a matured human being we are expected not to have moral dilemma at least for the better civilized life.