Emotional Pies and Doing What’s Right, or not.

Another week another theory. This one is also a holy theory but with a twist.

Hank Green explains Natural Law theory and the seven basic goods that accompany it.

Natural Law theory states that God is good. He made you. Therefore you are good too. And don’t you forget it baybee. 😉

The theory assumes that God wants us to want good things. These good things are intuitive and consist of 7 basic goods.

Life, reproduction, education of offspring, seeking God, living in society, avoiding offense, and shunning ignorance.

A big part of this theory relies on instinct. BUT if seeking the good that comes from being creations of God is instinctual, why do people do bad things?

Sometimes emotion overpowers reason and we fail to be the good little humans God created.

The film “Do The Right Thing” has characters that embody the flip side of this theory and chose to emotionally berate thy neighbor.

Sal, a racist pizza shop owner in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and his sons are vehemently against having Black people on their wall. After being called out on their racism, Sal and his sons lash out and destroy a customer’s boombox. Racist Sal threw reason right out the window and let his emotions guide his actions.

The pizza shop owner’s blatant racism is in direct opposition to this Natural Law theory. I mean he didn’t even try to be nice.

Juxtapose the purest of all the characters- Da Mayor. From the start, Da Mayor chose love over hate. When he was yelled at by Mother Sister earlier in the film, Da Mayor responded with nothing but love.

“I love everybody, I even love you,” he said.

Bless his kind soul. He continues to show this natural love later in the film when he defends racist Sal and his sons against a mob seeking justice for Radio Raheem after he was murdered by the police in an altercation with Sal.

It’s an ethics class so of course we will continue to revisit this idea of “doing the right thing”.

Technically Da Mayor “did the right thing” by avoiding offense and shuning ignorance.

But sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing. Especially when dealing with such heavy situations like mobbing racist people and racist police.

We get to be angry, we get to be mad, but how we act on that anger is what ultimately shuns ignorance. I find it hard to tell people how they can be mad.

“Don’t loot, don’t riot, be nice even though people have made your entire existence political.” It just doesn’t sound right.

Natural Law is a hard pie to swallow especially when the people making the pie are ignorant fools, but unregulated actions in the face of negative emotions seldom lead to good.

I don’t necessarily agree with Natural Law, but I understand how seeking a more spiritual approach to morality can lead to shunning ignorance and avoiding offense.

The film ends with two different views on violence. Martin Luther King Jr. claiming violence to be immoral and Malcolm X defining it as a form of self-defense.

Regardless, the question remains-

How the fuck do you determine what is good and what is not?