Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. ~Georg Hegel
Yesterday, I had a conversation with an old friend from college.
It was more of a spirited debate, actually, about the nature of good and evil, right and wrong etc.
My world view, will, I'm quite sure, be of no surprise to you since you all know me--I believe good is a matter of perspective and that right is determined by whoever has "the bigger gun" so to speak. I believe that is way to few and far between the good people of the world outweigh the bad.
My perspective on this rarely shifts, and is also reinforced when tragedies, and oh--there have been many--occur.
Largely, it is an objectively unfair universe we inhabit, although I have a hunch it has a way of righting its ownself from time to time.
So the debate between my friend and I ensued.
My friend's world view was quite a bit different than mine--much more idealistic and much more indicative of his personality. In his eyes, is is certain that good always conquers evil, the meek shall inherit the Earth, all you need is love etc etc etc. He goes on to posit that good things come to good people and eventually, all the pieces will fall into place if you live a good life.
(I keep him around, this college buddy, because he gives me hope, and when I am feeling way too misanthropic and cynical for my own good, he gives me balance. All of the other times I mock him shamelessly for his "dreamy" and (what I consider to be) unrealistic view of the world).
So, my question(s) for you this week is--where in our spectrum does your world view fall?
Do you think people are mostly bad or mostly good?
What determines that?
Do you think that the person who does the right thing always wins? If so, what's the prize?
Are there clear-cut answers about what's right and what's wrong?
How is it all measured? Let's get a little Lang-y and tell a story (real or metaphorical--no matter) to illustrate/exemplify your points.
My view of the world varies depending on my mood, how I am feeling, and what is going on in the world at the time. For the most part, I feel like people are mostly bad. More and more often, you hear of a mass shooting, a kidnapping, and extreme cases of racism. Of course not everyone is like this or would even come close to do any of those things, but there are so many things that people do that I consider to be bad. For example, if someone purposely puts someone down and makes fun of them, they are a bad person, especially if they are doing it to make themself feel better about themself. If someone cheats on their significant other, they are a bad person. There are so many things that can label a person bad, so the list just goes on from mild to extreme. However, if someone does something bad on accident, but it was all in good intentions, I don’t believe they are a bad person. I don’t really know how to describe that, but you know when it happens. It hurts when you were supposed to help someone, but you end up damaging them instead, or even destroy the whole relationship. All of this is obviously just my opinion, so I think that a person’s intentions defines whether they are a good or bad person. If someone purposely did something “bad”, then they are a bad person, but if they didn’t intend to do said thing, they are not necessarily a bad person. People who do the right thing don’t always win. Others may look at their actions in a different way and think that they did the wrong thing. It all depends on the morals of others. Sometimes they do “win” and are praised for their actions, but it all depends on the situation and those who surround them. Of course there are no clear-cut answers about what is right and what is wrong because people have different ideas of what that is. Of course, if someone is choking and you can save them, that is the right thing to do. Also, the wrong thing to do would be to go and kill someone or anything that is illegal/seriously harms someone physically. Opinion plays a huge role in how people view the world and the people in it. My view of the world is different from everyone elses, even if we have relatively the same views. There is always something that will make our views different. Our views are constantly changing too, so “good” can change to “bad”, and vice versa.
ReplyDeleteI am cynical. I won’t deny it. I see the bad in the world and I always expect the worst because you can’t be let down if your expectations are already low. But don’t get me wrong I also see the hope in the world. With the coronavirus, I don’t just see the highly probable chance that it will kill millions of people but I also see the chance of a vaccine or a cure that will save the world before it gets destroyed. I try to avoid living my life with low expectations because with that comes sadness and fear and anxiety and the rejection of anything good. I’m in a relationship. There’s a chance it doesn’t work out but I can’t think about that because otherwise I miss out on every single good thing that comes out of it. I don’t think people are born good or bad but that the world they grow up in impacts what they become. Just because someone grows up in a great home doesn’t mean they are bound to be a good person because they might surround themselves with terrible people and that works vise versa. Being a good person is determined by how you treat people around you. If you treat everyone with respect, even if you aren’t nice to everyone you are a good person. Being a bad person means the exact opposite. You act like you are better than everyone else and treat everyone like that. The person who does the right thing doesn’t always mean you win. Take Martin Luther King Jr for example. He was doing the right thing by fighting for equal rights for black and white people. Now in this case he did “win” because his hopes were brought to fruition. However if we still lived in a segregated world with a still assassinated Martin Luther King Jr, he would not have “won”. His fighting would have been for nothing so he would have “lost”. There is not a clear cut line between right and wrong. In physics you could have the wrong answer to a problem but have the correct explanation for what you wrote and still get full points. Your argument could be entirely invalid but if you have the best argument people might still think you are “right”. You could also have the best argument in the world but you can’t get people to listen to you so they will automatically think you are wrong. And for the moral standards of right and wrong there is no clear cut line because everyone has different beliefs. Some people believe abortion is the worst thing this world has ever seen but others might believe that it is the woman’s choice as to what she does with her pregnancy. This is all determined by a moral compass that everyone has. That moral compass is formed by your life experiences. To use the abortion example again many people use religion to justify pro-life arguments. If you were raised in a non-religious household you won’t have the same beliefs as someone who did and you are probably more likely to be pro choice. And that holds true for everything in life with things as simple as whether or not curse words should be considered bad words. The whole concept of right and wrong is hard to define because everyone has a different view on the world.
ReplyDeleteI think people always want to be good. Keep in mind, this is about my definition of good and bad. To me whether you’re good or bad is judged on your reactions, because life is 25% what happens to you and 75% how you react to it, so reactions prove who you are. What do you do when you see someone drops money without realizing it? What do you do when you see someone being bullied or harassed? What do you do when you receive an honor you know you didn’t deserve? When they ask you to round up the price of your order to the next dollar for the Ronald McDonald house, what do you say? I think you can tell which answers match up with good and bad, and that little mini quiz might seem pretentious, but I think it’s a good gauge of character. I guess what I gather from these questions is, to me, being good is doing the right thing, when it’s not the easy thing, or having the right thing always be the easy thing for you. Back to what I said in the beginning, I do think everyone wakes up in the morning with the intention of being good. The people who do bad things and that I would consider to be “bad people,” are bad because life can be an evil bitch. It likes to do this truly diabolical thing where bad feelings, like anger, jealousy, sadness, and resentment linger on your heart for way longer than good emotions do. Simultaneously, it is way easier for bad feelings to stack on top of each other than good ones. Because of this, the goodness in the hearts of some people is drowned to death by a constant, overwhelming stream of bad emotions and their view of what is good is misconstrued. I think no matter what, there’s a light that represents goodness in people’s hearts, and while some may have a brighter light than others, it is never completely out for anyone. So I think there is a possibility for everyone to be good, but some people succumb to the anger in their hearts, and make bad decisions, and are afraid they can’t make up for it, so they don’t try. I think the person who does the right thing does always have a victory. For an example I’m going to steal a story I saw in a commercial once. It’s a basketball game, a team is down by one with 10 seconds left, the ball goes out of bounds, it is called out on the team that’s winning, the losing team has a chance to comeback, but a player goes up to the coach and says, “The ball was out on me, it should be their ball.” The coach replies, “That’s not how they called it. Anyway here’s the play-” The player goes up and tells the ref, the call is reversed, and they end up losing the game. While this may seem like a crushing defeat, the player realized that a tainted victory is no victory at all, and it’s better to lose with honor and knowing you tried your best. Sure if he won, he would have a trophy, but not one he earned, and he’d have to go on knowing that he screwed the other team out of their victory and feeling of triumph they earned. You might have that thirty extra dollars off the street, but you have to live knowing that someone went up to the register to pay for groceries, and had to go through the humiliation of not being able to pay for food they had money for. I don’t think the right thing isn’t always cut and dry, there’s moral arguments where no option can win such as “Is it okay to steal bread for your starving family,” (thanks Les Miserables). Different people are always going to have different opinions on what the right thing to do is in a situation, that’s what makes it hard, nay, impossible, to be a good person in the eyes of everyone. You just have to live by your truths and be what you see as the best version of yourself.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the thousands of years that humans have been living on earth, not one of them has been good. not a single one. Because a good person to you, might be a bad person to me. Sure, they might have done something great, something that “saved” the world, but they’re always going to have some form of bad in them, at least to some people. No one is that pure, that genuine, that good. Really, it’s just based off of perspective, and how others view you. Not everyone on the planet is going to think that you’re the best person ever, or the worst. You could be a nazi, white supremist, trump supporter, whatever… and when that’s really horrendous to me (and most people), there’s still some people out there who think that’s great. They believe in that and view it as being good, even though it’s definitely not. My point is, you can’t be a completely good person when some people could think that you’re just bad. It’s always going to be like that, and no act of kindness or heroic act is going to change that. Humanity is mostly bad, and they pretend like they’re good. They paste that ideal all over their face, their words, their actions. They do whatever they can to please the human eye, and that makes them a bad person. If you feel like you have to force yourself to be nice to someone, or plaster a smile across your face, you have some bad in you- even if it’s just a subliminal amount. Don’t even try to deny it; and that’s for everyone. Someone is going to bring out the worst, or best, in you. I don’t think that the person who does the right thing always wins, even though I wish that that were the case. The reason for this correlates to my previous response; everyone has different opinions on whether or not something is the “right thing.” Even if the majority says that something’s the right thing, there’s still viewers out there who say it’s wrong. My point expands out to the non-autonomous statement: “You did the right thing.” No. no. no. I did YOUR idea of the RIGHT THING. Because the right thing to you, could be the wrong thing to someone else, or maybe even to me. I could’ve done the “right thing” to appease you- you’re welcome, I guess. It’s honestly pretty difficult to make this all come together. For example, say Hitler was hanging from a cliff, and needed help. Some could say that the “right thing” would be to help him, but others could say that that was the “wrong thing” because he was a horrible person and deserved to die. So would letting him die be the “right thing?” Morally, no, because you’re letting a human being die, but at the same time… he caused millions of innocent people to die. But, back to the beginning, your idea of right, could be someone else’s “wrong.” That’s just how the world works, man. Good will cover the bad in people, and I don’t care if you were Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, or Jesus… someone out there is going to say you’re bad, and just plastered with the “good.”
ReplyDeleteMy view of the world falls pretty much directly in the middle as I believe that no one is inherently good or bad, but because we learn from others around us and since the popular majority of society has mostly good morals, the new generations coming in are more good than bad. When you do something right, depending how you look at it you either win or lose. If you didn’t want to do it but you did then you mentally lost but morally you did right. It you wanted to do it then it may have not been the option with the highest personal payoff but morally and mentally you won. ( these scenarios aren’t saying that the right decision is always the lesser option, but rather if that was the case ). For an example, take Tim Duncan, arguably the best Power forward to ever play in the NBA. Despite winning 5 championships, 2 MVPs, and many other accolades, he could have put up higher stat totals, gotten more personal accolades, and more money, but he not only sacrificed his stats to play a role that fit his team’s system but also took lesser contracts so the team had the money to pay all of its players or sign new ones. If he had played for himself and cared more about personal success he would have never won those 5 championship rings (the greatest accomplishment of all in the NBA and a true team effort that is need to get there). The point is that depending on the person, you can be good or bad based on who your influences were, and whether or not doing the right thing is “right” to you or not. Rights and wrongs aren’t clear cut, as they’re being dictated by the majority rule of our society.
ReplyDeleteThough there's so much wrong with the world, I think there is so much to look forward too. Though many bad people fill the world, they all aren’t bad. With things from Corruption, terrorism, and just all around hatred, you have to think, wow we are in a terrible state right now, but I don’t believe that. I believe that everyone in this world is mostly good, though there are the few in this world that are complete scumbags, that’s not everyone. Well you might say, well DJ how when you have thief's, gang members, and terrorists who just commit crimes all the time,how could they be good or doing anything right? Yea that’s true but go into their shoes for a second. I can’t speak for everyone in the class, but I’ve never had to worry about the next plate of food that’s going to be on my table, or if I’ll have a roof over my head, or that my life’s on the line everyday, or wanna go out and commit crimes, and this all thanks to my wonderful parents. Not everyone though is as lucky as me, and probably you. Them “Gang banger” do the things they do because that’s all they know, they might not have had food in front of their faces every night, or even a place to stay every night. When they live like that most turn to gangs and crime, because that’s what’s easiest. Too be able to eat and to have a roof over there had, they turn too lives, that nobody wants to live, but once you get in it’s impossible to get out. So when they do something I feel that it’s wrong, but for the right intentions, to feed themselves, and maybe even their families. I do believe if you do the right thing, you will be rewarded or “win”, maybe not right away but eventually you will be. Even if that reward is just the fact that in your head you don’t have guilty conscience, that’s a win in my books. What determines these factors though, whether your “good” or ‘bad”, is the intentions behind it. If you’re stealing something from a store just because, or stealing it because you just got laid off, and can’t afford to feed your family, is the separation between good, and bad. So the clear cut answer, is your intentions behind what you are doing whether it’s illegal, not right, or even if it’s the right thing to do. I think everyone in this world is looking at the “bad” people and labeling them, but in reality, I think they’re good, but don't have the same opportunities, as a kid in my shoes.
ReplyDeleteI don't believe that majority of people fall in a category of mostly bad or mostly good. Everyone has a different version of themselves, and whichever version they are to you, is how you make that decision. Your best friend may be the best person ever to you, but behind your back she's a completely different person. I would know. Your significant other may treat you like gold, but his family like crap, and then you have to decide which version is more important. As far as my view on the world, I believe we are going very far in the wrong direction. From the rapid change of the climate, to the divide in politics, we are not at all unified to do anything to make a positive change. Doing the right thing does not always make you win. Sometimes, doing the right thing hurts you more than doing the wrong thing. There are no clear cut answers on what's right and what's wrong, it all depends on your morals and what you believe to be right and wrong. For example, if you shoplift. Returning the item would be the right thing to do, however you could face serious consequences. You could avoid them by doing the wrong thing and keeping the item, but that would come with guilt and the morals that stealing is okay. Although, there is a lot of bad in the world, there is still some good. We all woke up this morning, we made it to school safely, and get to wind down and be productive with this lovely morning jazz.
ReplyDeleteHow I feel about the world generally depends on what is happening in my life at that moment. I'm usually the happiest in the summer and I feel like I'm leaving my best life because of camping, no school, warm weather, and being with my friends all the time. Now, during the school year I see my life as stressed because of, drama at school sometimes you can't stay away from, school work, cold weather, and more. During spring/fall isn't bad, unless there's something going on in my life, but that just depends. I used to try and think very positive and believe everyone was good. But, I changed my mind once I got a little older. There actually are some people that are just not good news. Maybe they have one or two good aspects, but sometimes the bad can over weigh the good. I do believe that everyone has good and bad in them at times, but it all depends on which one the person wants to be more. Sometimes the good people don't always get prizes in my beginning and they'll want to give up. I actually think about this a lot because the worst things happen to the good people. And I never understood that, but some of them are strong enough to get through it and make it to the end with the prize. The prize could just be them knowing they're a good person and feeling good about it, or even farther and them winning the lottery or just having good karma. There's really no exact things you have to do to be right or wrong. Everyone thinks different of "right" and "wrong", but there's no instructions on what you have to do in order to be right or wrong. It's all measured in different ways and opinions. For example, my dad believes that cursing at certain times is fine, but my mom on the other hand thinks its completely wrong.
ReplyDeleteMy view is everyone looks at things in different perspectives. It is all about your mood and reaction towards something, it is what you make it. If you want to think the glass is half empty, that is just how you were raised or your typical attitude. Looking at problems like that can be a negative thing and people might say you're a sad person. Looking at the glass half full is how I like to look. Being positive I hope is how most Americans look at things, but they don't. Sometimes it is hard trying to find positives in situations, but there is a reason for everything. You turn the news on and 75% of the stories are sad and upsetting. I think that there are too many people that see the world as half empty and that leads to these tragic stories and the world being so depressing. Somethings humans can't control in the world like forest fires, illnesses, whatnot, which is hard to find a positive. The person that does the right thing doesn't always win. Doing the right things sometimes can make you lose a friend, ruin someones life, makes things harder, but if you think it is the right thing go for it. For example, you know someone stole, doing the right thing would't be you snitching, it is just you helping out the person they stole fro . Of course stealing isn't right but turning them in can be the right thing. Your friend is telling you how she wants to go do things they should't because they are under age and it is getting pretty bad, telling someone isn't a bad thing, you're helping them. they might be bad at you and might not get over it, but you're helping them for the better. Sometimes you just know some things aren't right. Eating a rock, not good. Sometimes you know things are right. You don' talk while someone else is, that is right. I don't think there is a fine line for some situations. Obvious things you know not to do or to do. There isn't instructions on what is right or not.You should just know. My mom thinks some scenarios should just be left alone and not brought up , but my dad thinks I should bring those things back up to stick up for myself. I know my limits on what to say, but my parents have different opinions on what far is.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the world is mostly good. The majority of the news is bad things happening the world, THE WHOLE WORLD. Imagine how good is out there though, that is not being shown. SO much.But also believe that if you are good theres no guarentee that if you do the right thing it will always turn out in your favoir. The world works in weird ways where the liars could be calling you a liar. Sometimes bad guys win and the good guys suffer. Why do always good people die first? I do not think there is any clear cut answer for what is good and what is right because there is so many variations and opionions. For example, a person who is being attacked and about to killed, kills the person who is attacking him for his own safety. In some states that is seen as wrong, even though it was in self defense. The way it works in some situations ( the line between right and wrong) is weird. Sometimes it is just how you precieve a person. Some may think they are bad, but you could think they are good. You may think you are a good person but in reality you aren't. You never wan't to believe you are the bad guy.
ReplyDeleteMy view on the world varys all the time. Sometimes I see it as a great place with great opportunities and other times I look at it as a terrible place and wondering what is the purpose of it all? I mostly question the world during school time because of the stress. The stress of school always takes a toll on me and brings my spirits low. In the summer I am always happy and positive because I get to spend time doing what makes me happy and nothing is stressing me out. Therefore, honestly stress and ongoing issues in my life are what defines my view on the world. I think the majority of people are good but everyone has their bad times. There are people who aren’t good and have bad intentions but it’s hard to read through them sometimes. There are people who act good with bad intentions but there’s people who act bad but with good intentions. It’s hard to really know who is what. Someone who always does right does not always win. To me winning is all happiness and nothing bad happens to you. Someone who can always put others first will always have something negative happen in their life. They will lose a love one, have negative things happen to them, or have someone treat them wrongly, when they’ve done nothing but put others first. Not one person will ALWAYS win no matter how good you are to the world. I also believe there is no clear cut difference between right and wrong. It all depends on what situation you’re in, who you’re with, where you are, and what you’re doing. If i started jumping up and down on the bed in front of my mom she would probably yell at me. But if I started jumping up and down on a bed at my sisters house she would probably join along with me haha. Therefore you can’t really say jumping on the bed is wrong or right, because it depends on the setting and who your with that determines it.
ReplyDeleteIf I had to be honest, this question is tricky; is it life that's bad or is it the people. We were all given free will some argue we weren't but that's ana argument for another time. I know we were all created for different purposes and all experience different situations in life. So some may say life throws difficult things at us, yes we have no control over them but what we do have control over is how we react. If we react the wrong way you will make things more difficult whether it's at that moment or the future. So if I had, to be honest, its the people, but that doesn't mean people are bad all the time. It is all up to you, we are all accountable for ourselves. I do believe there is more good in people than evil then again it depends on us. If we do good to the world there is always something that comes back for our reward; it may not be right away but there is a chain reaction that will develop and come back to you. So, overall the person that brings something good to the world always wins, it may not be clear to us but just the fact you did something well is already rewarding because you are benefiting yourself. We learned the story of adam and eve defined the line of Good and evil. Adam and Eve were told not to eat the fruit of it would have a great effect on our world. The fact they were tempted was their choice and because of their choice, it leads to sin spreading into the world and us. I honestly believe there are no clear cut answers of being right or wrong because there are times I don’t think I did something wrong. That's one of the main reasons God gives us grace and sent his son. He didn’t like the state the world was in and he knew how easy it would be to fall into sin even without realizing.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could see the world as a good place, but I don’t. When I atempted to answer this question the first time, I thought about the world we live in and negativity flooded my mind. The nation split into two and being pressured into picking a side, diseases spreading as fast as the fires that destroyed Australia, depression overwhelming the minds of innocent children, people living in third-world countries never truly given a chance, people being crusified for not fitting into what society thinks is acceptable, the planet being ruined by the only people who call it home, selfishness roaming through life climbing to the top and given credibility and power. I focus on the negative, maybe I am just a negative person.Growing up my mother would always tell me to “stop being so negative”, to keep my thoughts to myself if they weren’t going to be positive, and I often find myself getting in harmless diagreements with my bestfriend telling her that she only sees the good in people. As a natural instinct, I think all people are bad until they prove to me otherwise. Not all people that I come across give me the ‘bad person’ vibe, but in my mind people are automatically untrustworhty. I believe that manipulation and selfishness is what labels a bad person bad. I believe that in most cases, the right person never wins. I see a world where the bad people climb to the top, taking advantage of anyone they can and once given power, they turn into their truest form and express even more bad to the world. I see the good people that carry the biggest hearts being the ones taken advantage of. For example, my grandmother. I have yet to come across someone that has such a loving personality, it is in her nature to be there for anyone who needs her, she will hit pause on her life to be there to help. I have seen her do it, she put everything on hold to make sure my brother and I were living in a safe environment even after not seeing her for years. The day I called, she literally left work and drove all the way to Philly, then after getting picked up from school and going to her house with none of my belongings, she took my brother and I to the store and made sure we had everything we needed in order to stay that weekend. Later on, after realizing that we would not be going back home with my mother or recieving any of our belongings, she made sure that we had everything we needed. It breaks my heart to see her get taken advantage of by other family members. My grandmother acknowledges it, she tells me that she feels used and as soon as it’s her asking for a favor there’s always a lame excuse. I believe that the good people never win, there will be people who acknowledge that they’re good and have good intentions, but the selfish will see them as people who are easy to take advantage of.
ReplyDeleteI’d say my view on the world falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. I always try to be as optimistic as possible, but it can be hard sometimes. It’s impossible to say that the world is 100% a good place when there is so much wrong with the world today. I think that hate has overcome the minds of so many people that we become more and more divided each day. However, I know that there are good people out there because I know so many good people. I don’t believe that a person can be born good or bad. I think it all depends on the environment that a person grows up in. Our beliefs are molded and shaped from our experiences and life when we were younger. Bad things that people do can sometimes be traced back to their early childhood where they may have experienced trauma or mistreatment to cause them to act that way. I don’t think that can always be used as an excuse though for inexcusable crimes that a person may commit. That’s why this is such a tough question because if a person does bad things, you have to remember why or for what reason they may have done that. In reality, I don’t think that the people who do the right thing always “win”. Good people die everyday, innocent people are sent to prison for crimes they didn’t commit and so many other things as well. It all really depends on everyone's personal definition of good and bad. An action that you see as good, another person may see as bad. Therefore, there are no clear cut answers as to what is right and what is wrong. It all relies on our own personal opinions and beliefs.
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