“You just have to accept that there are bad people in the world,” is something that various people have said to me at various times.
A lot of people think that I am a little naive, but I can’t help but think that it is more naive to dismiss someone as a ‘bad person’ if they’ve done something which is clearly morally wrong. Casting somebody off as a ‘bad person’ suggests you look at them as somehow different from you, when in fact, I don’t think things are even close to that simple. When somebody does something bad, there are a lot of complex reasons for them to do so; a person may know that what they are doing is wrong, but sometimes things that are wrong need to be done for the greater good, and from their perspective it was morally justified. Of course, just because they think that, it doesn’t mean they’re right, but it is the culmination of a person’s life experiences up until a certain point that lead them to making any decisions.
I suppose I’m going a little bit down the path of determinism, but the point I am trying to get across is that it is more naive to believe that some people are “just bad” than it is to think that everybody does their best and believes that their actions are justified, even if they are actually doing terrible things.
A lot of people think that I am a little naive, but I can’t help but think that it is more naive to dismiss someone as a ‘bad person’ if they’ve done something which is clearly morally wrong. Casting somebody off as a ‘bad person’ suggests you look at them as somehow different from you, when in fact, I don’t think things are even close to that simple. When somebody does something bad, there are a lot of complex reasons for them to do so; a person may know that what they are doing is wrong, but sometimes things that are wrong need to be done for the greater good, and from their perspective it was morally justified. Of course, just because they think that, it doesn’t mean they’re right, but it is the culmination of a person’s life experiences up until a certain point that lead them to making any decisions.
I suppose I’m going a little bit down the path of determinism, but the point I am trying to get across is that it is more naive to believe that some people are “just bad” than it is to think that everybody does their best and believes that their actions are justified, even if they are actually doing terrible things.
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