Topics & Discussions Good vs. Bad
2014-08-10 12:22:20
The greatest thing is always if people are talking about what good means and what on the other hand is really bad. We are talking as if these are universal constants, that cannot be disputed. Especially Christians will use their 10 commandments and expect everybody else to see them as a universal guideline to follow. With this piece I would like to contest these two. Good and bad. I would rather make a claim these two are not existing as a universal truth. It just depends on the point of view. You have a man who is a slaughter. He does care for his family. Is a loving husband to his wife and he also does a lot of community work and let’s say he is donating a lot of money to charities which give aid to the poor and needy. Now most people would say he is a good man. Most people’s subjective analysis would be, this man is good, because he does not do any harm to them or any of their friends, he is easy to handle and he probably does not stay in competition with anyone, as long as the people are in a different professional field. This is a subjective perception. Let’s do the objective view. This man is on the first sight a good person, but what is his job again. A slaughter? His job means to kill innocent animals every day. From the view of an animal rights activist this person appears more likely as if the devil came alive. Here we changed the viewpoint by focusing on his job. Now the person starts looking quite predatorily. This man waits for the farmer to bring their cows, pigs or whatever other farm animals over and he will go on and just kill them one by one. Kill as many per day as possible, so he can probably pay off his house quicker. Needs probably some more money to send his children to school. While somebody who does an office job could do the same without having blood on his hands. So should we all pursue a clean job career? Maybe there is also dirt on the office workers fingers. Maybe his job is selling people loans, which his company knows the customers surely cannot pay back anytime soon. In most cases he might not be aware of his companies dealings, or maybe he does, which many would say would make him an associate who knows he is involved into something bad. A drug dealer, who does the job to keep himself afloat, during the time of a job misery. Or maybe a drug dealer who sell drugs so he can buy fancy cars and have sex with prostitutes. Who would we individually judge as the better one. I guess the first one. He seems to still have more noble reasons for doing this job. But maybe looking from a closer angle we see the first guy is more of a ruthless dealer. Selling to weak people in the own neighborhood. Trying to introduce teenagers to harder drugs, in order to maximize his own profits. Give people the first shot for free, to gain new customers. With an attitude, as if he needs to kill for his own survival. He is clearly valuing his own life over the life of his victims. Meanwhile the other dealer is living the high society live. People buy from him, because they feel the drugs he offers are more pure. Also his customers might be rather people who would buy the product anyway, so he does not need to seduce them to do anything they don’t want. He spends a lot of money and enjoys life to attract others so he can socialize with certain circles who are premium customers. As you see me writing, it always depends on the viewing angle. Nobody wakes up in the morning thinking today I will do bad. I will terrorize the world. We have been learning this kind of behavior from television, because there it had to be clear from the beginning the opponent of the hero must be purely evil. In reality, everybody in their own sense does who he or she thinks is a good way to master their own life. The active people cause more impact than the passive ones. A fat single mother living on welfare, might rather be counted as a good person. It is because the impact on the world she has is little. In addition, we rather perceive the rich big boss of a company employing thousands of people as a bad person, because his management style is strict and he might have a bad temper, resulting in rather rude behavior. Please bear in mind he is much more active than the person who stays at home all day. Intentionally we reward the person without many opportunities to break out from the cycle of daily life by saying he or she is good. At the same time, the extravagant person appears as non-trustworthy. Surely, his lifestyle is so much different from the person doing a 9-5 job or equal. Although none of those people see themselves as the bad person. Nobody wants to do badly. Just the amounts of compromises you are forced to make in life, do make a difference. Add in your own personal standards. A person like Hitler was not evil. He thought what he did was the best in all German people’s n interest. He acted upon his own beliefs. His problem was just that he was not able to exercise self-critical thinking. His early success made him immune to any criticism. He also believed he did his absolute best for his preferred people, the Aryan race. He believed in them as the chosen people who he must lead, and fight of their enemies. He did not do anything different than let 's say a communist or another religions leader. The execution of his plans was just more brutal. Like in anything in this universe, there is no 100% or 0%. There is always something. This is why I do not believe into good or bad. I think there is subjectively favorable and unfavorable. Same goes for objectively (socially) acceptable and not acceptable. There are thousands of viewpoints. There is always at least one angle, from which you can show anything positive also in a negative way. At the same time, you can show anything negative in a positive way. It’s a matter of the angle from where you see the mixture ratio. Like inside a test tube when mixing 2 substances as showing in the illustration. Share: |
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