Where do right and wrong come from?  Why are our societies so trapped in these value/moral judgments?  Is there an alternative way to view the world and to make experience of it?  The western world prides itself on the norms, rules, legislations that officially define what is right or wrong.  Countries, believing to have found the right formula of civilization and democracy, persuade, blackmail, or downright impose their political systems on other countries ruled by, what they perceive to be, the wrong political systems.  Religious groups from all over the world are ready to proclaim that their way is the right way to go to Heaven or Hell.  Even spiritual teachers and movements often sell their teachings and techniques as the right ones to attain spiritual enlightenment.  A simpler example can be that of parenting styles.  Pick one street in any city of the world.  Each family on that same street is likely to have a different, yet absolutely right, view on how to raise children. 

Yet, history has repeatedly shown us that moral compasses shift and change every century or decade, depending on the issue at hand.  The easiest example is the good, old, surely-well-intentioned Catholic Church, who has changed their “rules” on so many different occasions it is hard to keep count.  It was a sin to eat meat on Friday, and then it no longer was.  There was a limbo (for children who died without being baptized), and then there wasn’t.  Similarly, heretics used to be tortured and burnt.  Today, people with documented different views are considered luminaries.  Women, presumed to be witches, were burned at the stake, but they no longer are.  Inter-racial marriages used to be wrong; today they are common practice in many parts of the world.  Today’s current judgments are about homosexual marriages, transsexual operations, abortion, and the use of euthanasia, just to name a few.

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