The President of Iran drew our attention to conditioning last week. He asked why we would criticize the Iranian government for stoning a woman when the United States was executing one in Virginia.

The woman in Iran is to be stoned for adultery, while the woman in Virginia was convicted of masterminding the murder of her husband and stepson. Is one execution right and the other wrong? It depends on your conditioning.

My nephew, who has served multiple tours in Afghanistan, was addressing the time frame of conditioning when he said, "Imagine some foreign government coming to this country in the early 1900s telling us that women should have equal rights and be allowed to vote, and expecting it to be done immediately."

Our sense of right and wrong is based on who we learned right and wrong from.

Is it right to burn the flag?

You may have had a passionate answer to that question. Where did your answer come from? It came from your conditioning.

What's the right way to hang toilet paper? People have arguments about this.

Conditioning is powerful and it fuels the divide between what's right and wrong.

Our laws reflect what we believe to be right and wrong and, often, we argue that they are not right.

Our religions take positions on right and wrong and how many of them do we disagree with?

Our parents have their own sets of right and wrong. No need to ask how right you think they are.

Before you get drawn into the next right or wrong debate, examine your conditioning.

Reminds me of a conversation I had with a neighbor this week . . .

My neighbor has a Better Homes & Gardens lawn. It's immaculate. Mine isn't.

He was power blowing fallen acorns from his yard when we had a chat. I complimented him on how wonderful his lawn looked. He credited his father who came from Ireland for instilling such a chickweed removing passion within him. He said his sons and daughters all take great care of their lawns. I went on to tell him that my father had little interest in lawns, although he knew how to sharpen a lawnmower blade. It then occurred to me that neither I nor any of my sons are lawn people.

It's not that I wouldn't like a manicured lawn; I'm just not willing to work at it.

If you are unwilling to take a look at your conditioning, you will be locked in with someone else's ideas of right and wrong.

There is no choice in conditioning. It's only when you step away and notice that you are conditioned that you get a finer appreciation of your sense of right and wrong and offer yourself a choice.

I would actually march in a parade (a fate worse than death for me) if someone campaigned on replacing right and wrong with fact based words like: "Works" or "Doesn't work."

Rather than debate the merits of right and wrong, we could consult the statistics of what works or doesn't work and let that be our barometer.

Right vs. Wrong never works; It perpetuates our lack of choice.

Please forgive my human hypocrisy, but I believe it's wrong not to offer yourself a choice.

All the best,

John