Right And Wrong In Isaac Asimov's The Relativity Of Wrong

Nothing in the world is completely wrong or, for that matter, completely right. While it may seem that in any given situation, there are only two outcomes, a right solution or a wrong solution, that doesn’t always mean the right one is obvious or even “right” at all. Instead, right and wrong are not absolutes that are applicable to every situation. In other words, not every wrong is equal. It is in fact possible for one thing to be more wrong than another. Isaac Asimov’s “The Relativity of Wrong” offers an insight to what makes something more wrong than something else. He explains in his essay that a common misconception exists in the belief that if something isn’t completely right, then it is wrong. Asimov debunks this belief by explaining

Asimov begins by stating that, “The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are absolute; that everything that isn 't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong”. Instead he sees right and wrong as “fuzzy concepts” (Asimov 825). He explains that while something may be wrong if it is less wrong than the other options being considered, then it can actually be considered to be right. He continues on to explain that in many cases every option that can be exercised is neither right, nor favorable, but instead these “wrong” options can be made relative to each other and compared with each other to determine the wrong which is worse than the

However, when considering the alternate option of risking the lives of hundreds of thousands of allied troops, the former option may sound more appealing. This is the basic dilemma addressed in Paul Fussell’s, “Thank God for the Atom Bomb”. In his essay, Fussell strongly supports the use of the atomic bomb in its role in ending World War II. He acknowledges that while it was far from being ethically right, when the consequences of the alternate solutions are analyzed, it become apparent that dropping the atomic bomb was the lesser of the wrongs. Had the Allied forces pursued a land invasion of Japan, Fussell states that, “Planners of the invasion assumed that it would require a full year”, and, “one million American casualties was the expected price” (Fussell 723). This is an exact example of what Asimov attempts to prove in his essay in regard to making a decision between two seemingly wrong options. As Asimov states, simply because there is no perfect right answer, not all options and solutions should be discarded as uselessly wrong. Instead, Asimov would argue that the best way to end the war was the way that was the least