Isabella Osborne

Mrs. Thomas
UWRT 1102-034
12 February 2015
After small group conferences many of my questions about this inquiry
proposal were answered. First, writing my proposal I knew I had to question my
inquiry question. I thought of ideas and how those ideas could relate to finding out
the answer to my inquiry. In the conference, though, I realized I needed to explain
as to where I would find the answers to my questions. I googled for information and
there were a lot more psychological reasons to why humans choose right or wrong
than I thought. I feel that the future of this paper will be very interesting and quite
enlightening. I want to be able to look at influences of the media and past leaders
and connect to how the mind works with choosing right or wrong. In this proposal I
added where I was going to look for information and I explained as to where my
main focus will be; influences on the mind. I hope my proposal is more thorough.
The Grey in Between- Draft #2
At a young age we are taught to know the difference between right and
wrong. At first, knowing the difference was easy. It is wrong to hit your siblings. It is
right to share your toys. These are the obvious scenarios. As we grow up situations
become harder to decide to what truly is right or wrong. In middle school, most of
us probably faced the decision to include or exclude someone. Junior high rolled
around and we had to decide whether it was a good or bad decision to help a friend
cheat on a test. Then as we entered high school, right and wrong became a lot
harder than when we were five and twelve. Instead of having the obvious, we were

faced with questions. Is it okay to drink? Is it wrong to do drugs? These type of

questions may come easy to someone when friends are doing them. Right? Wrong.
Now as we have entered the real world, college, right and wrong are no
longer black and white. We find ourselves faced with the question of choosing right
and wrong every day. Some days are easy to decide while others are harder. Making
those decisions could change our lives in a blink of a second. Those decisions could
even change the lives of all the people around us, even if we never meant to. How
do we know the difference between right and wrong in todays world in this
generation? Similar to high school, we still have those influences on us, like our
friends, that blur the decision making process. Leaders, teachers, media, peers, and
basically everything else around us influence our decisions in what is right and
wrong. That blur that is created messes with a persons mind and can make them
do something wrong because they are told that it is right. Making someone do
something because you like to do it is right. Right? Wrong.
It was simple back then to say no. It was simple to just turn the cheek when
you believed in doing what was right when something was wrong. What happened?
Why are the heroes and villains today harder to pin point? What is this grey in the
middle that keeps us from deciding the ultimate choice? Some would say to just go
find other friends or other role models. Except what happens when your new friends
blur the same exact situations as before? It happens everywhere and to everyone.
Can anyone even say that they have never conformed to society or the people they
surround themselves with at one point in their lives? When looking up to others, or
trying to fit in makes some things in life, like going out the day before a test or
game because everyone says this is what you have to do to get the full college
experience, harder to choose if it is right or wrong because we do want to be

accepted. We do want the full college experience because hey we are college
students. Even though this is a simple example, situations like this one create
blurred visions. Is it wrong to want to fit it? I really do not know the answer to that.
Maybe?
To find information on how wrong is burred into right I will be analyzing
examples such as the one above and many more from our generation to answer my
inquiry question. My main focus will be to analyze the influences around us that
make people choose right or wrong. The media will be a main source to my
research. I will look for information on what they do to the public to influence their
decisions and how they do it. How does the media manipulate their viewers? What
makes the viewers believe in what they are saying? There has also been
experiments in the physiological field that have been debated what causes the
moral decision process. I will look at this information that these scientists have
found to see how the brain works when making right or wrong choices. The
influences of the people and things around us could be connected to how the brain
works in some way. My job will be to figure out this connection. I want to further
investigate the question of grey, the space in between white and black. Could wrong
be right in some cases? How does one really know when the world is telling them
otherwise? I will look to more scholarly journals and research to answer the question
of grey. Are there instances where we, as people, have to choose wrong in order
to do right to others?
The great leaders of our world even manipulate the people around them to
believe what is wrong to be right. Looking back to history and past leaders will also
be a focus on answering my inquiry question. I know this sounds clich but if your
absolute role model told you to go kill a random stranger because they did not fit

into society would you? I mean, you look up to that person and what they do and
say plays a huge influence on your life. Leaders such as Hitler, Stalin, Martin Luther
King Junior, and Abraham Lincoln are some of the greats that influenced people in
multiple ways with words. They created followers by having people decide what is
right and what is wrong. The differences between these leaders though are the
types of words they said to get what they want. Where King and Lincoln used words
to spread the message of a right that created fairness and equality. Stalin and Hitler
manipulated words and ideas to sound as if they were right to created turmoil and
death. As we know from the history books they were in fact wrong. Very wrong. Yet,
through this manipulation wrong was blurred into right and they, especially Hitler,
had their people believing in and acting upon wrong ideas.
Even though Hitler was to the extreme in having wrong blurred into right, he
still portrays a heavy example of what it means to know the difference between
right and wrong. He was someone people looked up to and took advantage of
knowing that people would listen to what he believed to be right. In his case, killing
innocent people based on their orientation. Where does someone draw the line
then? Even though our cases as college students are not as horrific as killing
someone we still have to draw a line at some point. Is there always a wrong within a
right? Could black and white ever come back to focus? Will society and the people
we look up to always have this influence over us? As humans we must always want
to do what is right. Right? Or am I wrong?