So often I find that as people get older and become more experienced the more they put up wards around themselves. I say wards because they do become prisons just as much as they are forts. The unfortunate things that occur through one's life creates a mental imprint of the pain and an outline of where it came from. Regardless of whether the outline is true and accurate, we plan ahead to shield ourselves from whatever that path was. Many of us make active, conscious efforts to work around what has now become innate cautions because we realize that some of them may be unnecessary. But ultimately it does linger in the back of our minds and indirectly influences our actions.
Most of us hide behind egocentric shields that generate the illusion that we are special. These self serving protective shields allow us to believe that each of us is above average on any test of self integrity. Too often we look to the stars through thick lens of personal invulnerabilities when we should also look down to the slippery slope beneath our feet. We all couldn't possibly be angels.
I haven't quite come to a conclusion on why good people do bad things but I'm beginning to realize that good and evil aren't two independent entities that they somehow became in my mind. The idea that a great divide separates good people from bad people is a source of comfort for at least two reasons. First it makes things black or white therefore evil (the bad) is essentialized. Most of us think of evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some and not in others. Secondly it takes good people off the responsibility hook. They are automatically free from the same scrutiny that those labeled evil are subject to.
- The world is filled with both good and evil
- The barrier between good and evil is permeable and nebulous
- It is possible for angels to become demons and demons to become angels
3 comments:
Interesting talk of good vs evil. However, I think both are needed. You can't have a Superman without a Lex Luthor to refer to.
I really enjoyed your post. Even though good and evil are subjective, do you think that maybe people are inherently good, and it is because of the wards that people do evil things?
I always enjoy stories told from the perspective of the “bad” guy ...so that we can see what made him bad in the first place. Like Frankenstein or Hannibal Rising :)
As far as anything being inherent, idk. I can't tip the balance toward good that much. I think good just as much as evil is learned, we start off as truly blank slates and learn our moral standings as we observe the world around us and as our brains figure out what's normal and what's not.
Scientifically there are problems where imbalances in the brain can make it not function properly therefore a skewed perspective on the world can exist or an altered view on the norm. If good and bad balance each other then we should be able to imagine an imbalance that makes people pathologically good as well
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