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. 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.
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.
Part 1 - The Basement
ReplyDeleteAnimals, by Pink Floyd tells the story of the dogs, the pigs, and the sheep, each representing a different group in society. It’s basically Animal Farm except concerning capitalism, and not Stalinism. Fancy stuff, isn’t it?
Yeah. I’m not going to talk about Animals. Thought I’d bring it up anyways. So I’m sitting in my room right now, facing away from the door. This gives the robots ample opportunity to sneak up on me, and they do so with haste. They carry me away, and my life flashes before my eyes. I remember writing a blog before realizing I needed it in story form. It’s a shame too. It was turning out better than usual.
Anyways, they carry me to the capital building, and have me stand before congress. At this point I realize how stupid they all are, for bills like the SOPA and the NDAA. Also, pizza is not a vegetable, congress. And then I remember the riots around the country. Actually, the riots around the world. I realize the world isn’t such a good place after all, but congress doesn’t want me to think that. They want me thinking I live in the best country in the world, and then send me to the “basement.”
I notice in other rooms all of my friends. Generally nice people. Are they good people? I guess so. They never seemed so charitable, aside from Mike. Thanks for the snack box Mike. Those peanut butter cookies were superb. I’d say they aren’t bad people, aside from Dan. That guy is just so mean all the time. Yeah Dan, I’m being sarcastic. So what? You gonna do anything about it, nice guy? Maybe they’re all just nice, neutral people. Maybe everyone is like that. Well, almost everyone. Those stupid old white guys on the first floor didn’t seem to be good people. But they’re acting on natural instincts, things like greed. I guess what makes someone a neutral person is acting on these instincts only to a certain extent, so that they aren’t hurting anyone in the process. Good people don’t act on these instincts all that much. Maybe they aren’t even instincts for them. Who knows.
I stop self-reflecting like a huge moron, and consider ways to get out. I notice No Country for Old Men playing in the next room. I’m not sure why. That movie is the exact opposite of a conformist movie. It presents reality. Good loses, and evil lives on in the end, free to reign after some recuperation and a nice cup of tea. Evil tea. This also represents the predicament I’m in right now, where evil is totally winning out in the end. The dishonest guys on the first floor have the power, and don’t let the good guys have it. How selfish. Oh hey look. Scissors.
Part 2 - The Part with no dolphins
ReplyDeleteI stab the robots to death. Not sure how, but it happens. Suddenly it smells like cheese. Must be dinner time. Wait. No. The robots are cheese. You can’t stab cheese to death! OH GOD. Okay. I’m running, and they aren’t that fast actually. I realize this story is just as cheesy as these robots. That’s a good thing, because the robots were never actually cheese. Turns out, I’m made of cheese. And just as I’m not cut into neat slices at the moment, the answers about what’s right and wrong are also not clear cut. Of course, there are certain religious texts that set up absolutes. Our glorious and magnificent Constitution, made by the incredibly smart, caring, and extremely handsome people in congress --- Okay. Hold on. Turns out, I’m being brainwashed. And I’m not cheese. These chemicals must be getting to my head. Anyways, time for some self-reflecting that I definitely don’t have time for.
The clear-cut answers to right and wrong have been sought after for quite some time. It’s apparent, considering examples such as religious texts and our Constitution. Each sets up absolute rights and wrongs based on the opinion of old white guys (wow, they’re everywhere!), old Semitic guys, or God, if you’d like to argue with me about the other two. But they can certainly be combatted. When has eating shellfish or pork done anyone any harm? How about wearing cloths of mixed fabric? I’ve done work every Saturday since the beginning of school, and I have yet to be smitten by the lightning bolt of Zeus. These texts have told us what is evil, and what is good. But their definition of evil isn’t what I’d call correct. I wouldn’t call any of these definitions correct, because there can’t be one set definition. It’s all about the perspective.
My self-reflecting gives me the power to break out of this rather flimsy chair. Then, I actually stab the robots to death. Nothing cheesy happens either. But I’m starting to feel bad. These robots only wanted to help me love my country, is all. This glorious country of ours. Where everyone is free. Man, I really love Big Brother, don’t I? NOPE. I’M GETTING THE HELL OUT OF THIS PLACE.
I make my escape, letting out all of my fellow comrades. I lead them to the first floor. To Congress. To victory. “Congress! I believe we should figure out how to measure right and wrong!” And then, at the worst possibly moment, I fall into a stupor for some good ol’ self-reflecting. How do we measure right and wrong? Usually things that upset people are wrong. Killing. But the death penalty can be right, sometimes. Gosh, it’s just so open for interpretation. At the moment, we measure right and wrong by morals and values taught to us by our parents, the Constitution, and whatever religious text you read from. It seems to be doing us okay, but not great. Could be better. I then realize my current situation could be better if I would stop self-reflecting soon. So I do.
Then I declare pizza to not be a vegetable with one bill, and change the political system with another. And then I start the glorious reign of Cole the Magnificent Guy Who Made Everything Better. First thing’s first. Everyone who is taller than me must be put under house arrest.
'As I stand up from the remains of what had once been the White House, still smoking and sending out occasional gouts of flame at innocent bystanders who approach too haphazardly, one brave man gathers enough courage to raise his voice:
ReplyDelete'MY GOD!’ he clamors, falling to his knees, ‘It's Schuyler, back from his interstellar voyage to seek the meaning of life from far beyond the Horsehead Nebula and past the Oort cloud!'
Instantly grasping this man’s words as the truth, the multitude at once falls to their knees as well. No doubt this soul will be remembered as a Saint in ages to come for first correctly identifying Earth’s True Hero.
I effortlessly pulverize the nearest bit of smoking statuary and recline upon it, in a pose most decidedly reminiscent of The Thinker. Behind me the President staggers through the ruins of what had once been his palace, on fire in several different places and yet still managing to sob with awe upon glimpsing the true face of Truth and Justice. It is truly a turning point for mankind. He is able to realize this before he is consumed by the flames.
From the back of the growing crowd a catcall floats to my ears. ‘He can’t really know this stuff! It’s just, like, your opinion, man!’ I focus my gaze on him and his head explodes instantly.
Hobbes’s grave explodes.
Rousseau’s grave explodes.
Nietzsche’s grave explodes for good measure. There will be no interruptions. Who’s got meaning now, eh?
‘Fear not, mortals!’ I barely whisper, but my voice carries and the crowd is suddenly silent. Several women swoon upon hearing me speak. ‘I have the answers you seek.’
‘For indeed, I have visited the Moralites on the distant planet of Subjectivism, and I know now all about human morality and, uh, justice I guess. You know. All that good stuff.’ The crowd leans in closer… ‘And I’ll tell you, too.’ The crowd explodes in wild cheers and fits of ecstasy, and yet I silence the mob with a wave of my hand and begin my exposition.
‘Well jeez, this is actually all rather complicated, I think,’ I start off. One errant hand traces figures in the marble while I consider the problem. ‘Well, first off, I think genetics rules everything. Well, if not everything, most things. Basically. What food you will like, how you’ll prefer to dress. Not just physical things. Mental behaviors, too. A baby is not a blank slate. Human nature DOES exist, you know. And… Well, it’s bad and good. Altruism is human nature, you know? It’s in monkeys and chimps. But so is greed. Self interest is the largest goal of the individual, but at the same time, the purpose of the individual is to preserve the group.
Hm.
I guess I’ve mostly always been a pessimist, in my own way.’ Several optimists run, crying, from the crowd at this point, desperate to find a tall enough cliff to hurl themselves from, longing for the warm oblivion that is the only escape from my scathing criticism.
ReplyDelete‘I mean, I’d be more likely not to trust a person than I would be to trust a person. Jeez, I don’t think I’d ever trust a complete stranger. Basically everyone is out to screw everyone over, right? And that’s life. Individually, your interests trump the other person’s interests, always. It’s why people steal, or why the settlers drove out the Native Americans, or why any of that cold hearted stuff. They weren’t mentally deranged. Just human. And that’s what everyone is, right? Just human?
And I can’t say in good faith that the ‘good’ person always wins. Perhaps the good person wins more often than you would all think, perhaps I’m just being a modern day Thrasymachus with my talk of ‘power is justice, interests of the stronger’ and all that. Because, you know, I do think good wins out some of the time. Your friend isn’t WRONG, you know.’
At this point the fourth wall snaps like some overextended rubber band, lashing out and toppling the Washington Momonumorial. ‘Because, I suppose, if good didn’t win out some of the time… Why would anyone still be good? It’s not even that I think good people feel better about themselves in the end, though this may certainly be true, and that in and of itself is a reward. Good people, ultimately, have the mob on their side, because even if no one is good everyone the idea of good ITSELF is appealing to everyone, so that a truly good person is someone people will rally around. Gandhi, for example.’
‘But, in the end, nothing is black and white. Absolute morality doesn’t exist. It’s all shades of gray, like some noir thriller or something. And just as smoky and mysterious. You can’t measure good and evil the same way you can’t measure a cup of jealousy or a pint of altruism.’
I stand up at this point and spread my arms majestically, as wings sprout from my back and every medal everywhere is instantly bestowed upon me. Forest creatures fight their way through the crowd to lie at my feet. The Universe itself cries, great sobbing tears, every one a black hole, so that the great span of space is suddenly spangled with a multitude of new vortexes.
‘So yeah,’ I say. ‘I guess people aren’t that bad at heart.’
I wait and stare at the crowd. A man near the front furrows his brow.
‘Nah, I’m not sure I share your opinion,’ he starts.
Instantly the crowd breaks out, each person arguing his own opinion, one voice among the many, a cacophony of pigs and sheep, a din to one who had just painstakingly outlined the truth of human existence.
Infuriated, I instantly take off, faster than a jet, faster than the speed of light, so fast that the remains of the White House are sucked into a vortex by my sudden absence, reforming, oddly enough, to resemble my very likeness, a perpetual reminder to the people of Earth what they had lost.
ReplyDeleteI had become a god. The Universe was my plaything. I would create a new world, I decided, one where people actually listened to someone for once, one with endlessly flowing rivers and bountiful fields, a world beyond beauty, a world beyond morality. Mankind would lie, sobbing, in the ruins of a world soon to be broken, a world headed towards destruction, perpetually reminded by my scowling visage of the fate they had forsaken in favor of their endless squabbles and stupid debates.
Elements collide, planets shift in their orbits as I bend the very laws of space to my whim. I rocket through space, occasionally making cool jet noises or whatever comes to mind.
Oh yeah, I think. This’ll be awesome.
~ Fin
Once upon a time, I met a man named Winston. Before I met Winston, I always thought of myself as a pretty optimistic person when it comes to the world. Winston changed all of that. Winston was a pretty average guy, who had a brilliant idea. What if the world wasn’t perfect? What if the world was actually a bad place? This idea was simple, yet almost inexistent. So I thought about Winston’s idea, and thought “Is our world a bad place?” Well let’s see, the entire world is politically unstable, the planet is ravaged with famine and war, the world is run by the “corporatocracy”, and people who aren’t suffering from the toils of society fail to see anything wrong. That’s a pretty bad place if you ask me. So Winston decided to spread his idea to other people. Well, it turns out the people controlling the world didn’t like that too much. If you haven’t caught on yet, Winston isn’t really a person. Winston is actually a character from Orwell’s 1984, but he seems like a real person to me. When I was reading 1984, I fell in love with Winston (not romantically), and became so connected with his character, I felt like I actually knew him, like he was my friend. This connection to Winston sadly took its toll on me. Spoiler alert if you haven’t read 1984, Winston is captured and converted to think like normal people. When I finished 1984, I honestly thought I might cry, as pathetic as that sounds. When I finished, I remember walking to my bed and sitting there for what seemed like hours. Winston epitomized good in the world, and when I read the conclusion of 1984, I was devastated at the victory of evil over good. Ever since I met Winston, I can’t help but feel pessimistic about the world. Are there good people out there? Of course, but there are many more bad. What makes the difference between good and bad people? Well, that’s an answer I’ve been searching continually searching for, and I still don’t know. What makes the difference between good and bad people? Well, I sort of think of it as a balance. Everyone has a little good, everyone has a little bad. It all depends on what you have more of. For good people, there is no prize unfortunately. Perhaps there’s recognition, but most people don’t even receive that. Maybe people are good because they feel pleasure from being good, but that’s doubtful. Maybe that’s why there are so few good people, because there is no prize.
ReplyDeleteBut what constitutes good and bad, right and wrong? There’s not clear-cut answers. Sure, there are laws, rules, and even commandments, but they don’t really explain the difference. Honestly, the fine line lies in each and every person. Things that I see as right, you might see as wrong. If that wasn’t how it worked, there would be no politics. Actually, there would be no arguments or even opinions. There is no way to measure right and wrong. This is what Hegel means when he says “They are conflicts between two rights”. People always think there are right in an argument. That’s because they are, at least in their own mind. There is no external judge between right and wrong, the difference lines in each person.
People can be swayed of their vision of right and wrong. For some reason, it’s human nature to want everyone to think like us. This creates problems. With everyone competing to have their ideas shared, “right is determined by whoever has ‘the bigger gun’”. This is where politics and arguing comes in. Humans can never handle other people thinking differently. This struggle usually turns ugly and sometimes violent. This is why I am pessimistic about the world! Thinking about this blog, I realized that the only way that the world will be at peace is if we all “love Big Brother” with everyone having the same definitions of right and wrong. And if that happens, is the world really at peace anyway?
Life has provided me with many good reasons to believe in it, trust it, and find good in it. My parents did an excellent job of hiding me from the horrors of reality, so my childhood was a sanitized and undisturbed dream-world. My general optimism grew from the blanketed life that shaped my character… and I wouldn’t necessarily say that is a bad thing, because ignorance is bliss…right?
ReplyDeleteA maxim that adorns the less likeable parts of my personality is “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”; Cliché and charming. I am a full blown optimist, a “surrealist” so-to-speak (because I can’t seem to locate any antonyms for ‘realist’), and a glass-half-full kind of girl. I may not always see the goodness in situations, let alone the goodness in people, but I tend to make something good out of something bad, or at least, believe it isn’t as bad as it truly is. So my outlook on the world is generally positive, for I consider its shortcomings (possibly one of the most flagrant exaggerations), but I outweigh these shortcomings with any ounce of beauty or positivity that I can muster against it.
All this sanguinity must sound pretty refreshing, placed after the more negative posts before me. However, I’m forced to cross over, in a sense. As I have outgrown my dress-up clothes and pigtails, I have also begun to outgrow the ideals that seemed to define my childhood. As I become more aware, I become more hopeless. As I start to trek towards this “light” of knowledge, I begin to see that it isn’t light at all, but darkness. All that was hidden from me seemed to become reality on the same day, at the same time. And at this point in my life, it’s difficult to compare the depressing truths of poverty, desperation, and death to my petty little representations of life’s beauty.
I do not believe that people are mostly bad, but the truth is that we have an abundance of individuals who contaminate the water. People who I interact with on a daily basis justify my means of hope in the world, but perhaps it is the spoiled apples in politics that infect the rest (okay I’m done speaking metaphorically). I have no faith in politics or politicians. I’m hopeful that this spiraling self-pleasing pestilence will eventually run out of bottom-feeding support, but until then, it upsets me greatly. Goodness in people is categorized by their general accordance with morality and civility. Good people work for the betterment of others, and I just do not see the people whose job it is to uphold these standards actually upholding them. The nice guy does not always finish first, in other words, the winner is not always the most deserving individual. And rights and wrongs are all relative to ones view of ethics. Simple as that.
When I was in third grade I had a teacher who would frequently quiz us on the times tables from 1-12. She would read off each multiplication problem, one by one; “2 times 3… 2 times 4… 2 times 5” etc. Every time a student got a perfect score on a quiz, she would place a golden star sticker on a table of names, corresponding to the student and what number they had mastered. As the students began to seek the perfect scores and the appraisal which came with, they began to strategize to achieve. Some slickly pocketed a calculator to compute for them, others simply wrote, in sloppy hand, each times table on the innards of their desk. The people who got away with it were the students sitting in the far back of the classroom, clearly out of sight. They seemed to establish somewhat of a clique amongst themselves from this common bond. Though the loyal front-rowers found it unfair, the kids in the back saw nothing wrong with their actions because they were the ones benefitting, creating self-serving habits from the start. This experience exemplifies a flaw in politics; when people are getting what they want, they tend to forget about everyone else, even if the price of what they want is abandoning the consideration of those whom they serve. Also portrayed in this example is that the “winners” surely aren’t winners from fair play, but from cheating. Clearly the back-row students have contrasting opinions on what is “right”, versus the front-row kids.
ReplyDeleteSo perhaps as my blog lengthened it lost its air of optimism, yet I still uphold that I am a cheerful, and generally happy person, still hopeful for the world (which isn’t as bad as people like to make it seem). Though I cannot be indefinitely pleased with the state of our world, and I cannot revert back to the bliss of my childhood, I refuse to dub this problem unfixable and I hope that others can share my view.
It’s hard trying not to be a pessimist in today’s society. With all the cruelty and death and disease and war, a world filled with kittens and rainbows is far from reality. Needless to say, I think a lot of people on this Earth are scumbags. I don’t know where my cynical world on the view came from. My parents are the nurturing, caring type. Sometimes a little too overly nice and supportive. The foundations of my family life aren’t crumbling before my eyes. And yet, just from reading about events, or learning history, I’ve reached the conclusion that most people don’t care
ReplyDeleteWithout a doubt there are some good people, but they’re very hard to find. I’m not trying to say that everyone’s a bad person, but granted, in life you’re going to meet more bitches then you’re going to meet genuinely nice individuals. No one really determines who’s right or wrong, though our society, morals and values do have a major impact on that.
Everybody knows that “good conquers evil,” at least in comic books, but when applied to reality, this is rarely the case. The right person doesn’t always win. Often times, they lose because they’re trying to adhere to what is “ethically proper.” As a result, I don’t think that there are clear-cit answers to what’s right and wrong. Take this story for example. It may be a little bit of stretch, but bear with me.
There’s a guy, let’s call him Eric, who’s cheated and lied his way through life. His extracurricular activities don’t really fall in line with President of Student Council or a 4 year Varsity Baseball player. Instead, after school he goes out and sells drug. Not your little petty drugs. But hardcore ones. The kind that ruins people lives. Anyways, Eric does this on a daily basis. Selling drugs, engaging in transactions, and doing some of the drugs as well. Everything seems to be going good, until the person supplying him drugs, let’s call him Joe, claims he’s short on the cash, and someone down the street owes him money. No big deal right? Course not. Jim and Eric go down to this guy’s house, and bang on the door. Eric recognizes this guy. He’s sold him drugs a couple of times. But there’s more to this stranger than meets the eye. Nate, the guy at the door, has a baby daughter who he’s trying to support. He made some wrong turns in life, and has ended up addicted to crack. And even though he enjoys the fix, supporting his daughter is more important. So Joe starts harassing Nate about the money. All Nate can do is stammer telling him that he’ll get him the money. Jim gives him a couple of days. But Nate knows there’s no way he can pay the 1,000 dollars. He has his child support and rent to pay. Eric and Joe leave the house. In the car, Joe tells Eric that if Nate doesn’t get him his money, “some serious shit is about to go down.” Three days later, and Nate still hasn’t turned in the money. Joe decides to take matters into his own hands. Literally. Eric and Joe ride up to Nate’s house. Joe gets out of the car and tells Eric to keep the car running. Eric watches Joe approach to Nate’s door. When Nate opens the door, Joe shoots him twice. Dead. Fast forward a couple of months and Joe is convicted of murder. Does he go to jail? Of course not. He lives in Texas, which means he’s been sentenced to death.
ReplyDeleteHere’s where I get tripped up with what’s right and what’s wrong. Joe killed Nate. Which is wrong. Everyone can agree with that. But yet, the death penalty is doing just that. You’re killing someone for killing someone. Sounds pretty rational to me right? Not at all.
The point I’m trying to make is that it’s very difficult to determine what is exactly 100% right and what’s 100% wrong. We have morals in our society, and yet those morals are always bent. It’s bad to murder, and yet American Marines murdered Osama Bin Laden. It’s bad to lie and yet our government does it every day. So who really is at fault here? I can’t really say. But before anyone judges one another based on what they’ve done “right” or “wrong” they should begin with pointing a finger at themselves.
My world view seems to change depending on how I feel at the moment. It depends on if good things happen to me or bad thing do. I like to think that the “dreamy” view is how the world really is, but it just isn’t. If everything turned out fine for everyone in the end, why do people die? Why do people suffer? The truth is, this “dreamy” view of the world is unrealistic and is only real in fairytales. The world is unfair. It’s full of bad people that make it impossible to make it fair. A fairytale may become a reality for one person or another, but it isn’t common. Just because all the right things happens for a person doesn’t mean they win in the end. The same goes for a morally good person. There is no prize in the end for them. They did something good. Ok. Good for you. Here’s a Costal pat on the back. There isn’t any prize for anyone because, in the end, everyone dies. What does the good person have over the bad person in the end? Some praise? Money? I think I’m being a little cynical because I haven’t been in a good mood. If I was in a different mood this blog would be totally different.
ReplyDeleteSo, right or wrong. It seems like every answer is the wrong answer these days. Life is like a diabolical multiple-choice test where every answer is wrong, but it seems right at the time. I’ve noticed lately that each question doesn’t have a single correct answer. Time doesn’t stop to let me try and figure it out either. Time doesn’t slow down to let me do things when I get lazy and sleep instead of do work. Hmmm.. it seems like I’m getting into a rant about time. I think the right answer is somewhere, but it requires more time than we have to find. That choice F is somewhere. Oh, right, a story.
Once upon a time, in New York City, there was this kind man that sat at a table with a little game of chance. He was so kind that he was offering to double some stranger’s money if they picked the Jack of Spades out of the three cards on the table. If they do not pick the right one though, they just donated the money to the kind man. Every time throughout the day the strangers picked the wrong card and “donated” their money to the man. Never does he double anybody’s money. What are the chances of that? Not one person can watch this man mix up the cards and remember where the Jack of Spades is. One day, the police approached him. He became frightened and ran off. They chased him, tackled him, and arrested him. What did he do wrong? He was just collecting donations from everyone and trying to double people’s money. He lost all of his donations and lived homeless the rest of his life. HAPPILY EVER AFTER.
Let’s look at the real story. There was a scam artist who was scamming people on the streets of New York City. He was at a table with three bent cards. One was the Jack of Spades, and the other two were different. He would show the strangers the cards, flip them over, and mix them up. They would watch really closely and choose the card they were certain was the Jack of Spades. Nope. It was the ten of diamonds. The other two weren’t the Jack of Spades either. The Queen of Hearts wasn’t there before. What happened to the Jack of Spades? Oh, well it’s just up his sleeve, hidden from being picked. That’s how this “kind man” won the money every single time.
My question is, who is the bad person, the strangers that give in to greed and the police or the man who exploited this for their money?
I like to think of Earth and life as the night sky. There’s a lot of darkness in it, and it seems never-ending, but there are bright stars that light up bits and pieces of it. There are going to be a lot of crappy things that happen to you in life, and in the world, but there are bright moments too. The stars of life give people some hope, and a little happiness along the way. The stars are very small compared to the dark sky, but they are very bright. The stars balance the sky out a little more. There are a lot of sucky things in this world, but there are still beautiful things that try to balance everything out.
ReplyDeleteI’ve definitely been fed up with people on many occasions, and on those days, I would say that people are more bad than good. However, I can’t say if people are more good than bad. There are both good and bad people, but do the bad ones really outnumber the good ones? I’m not sure. A person can do a million nice and heartfelt things, and then if that person does one thing wrong, society immediately label them as a bad person. So as I write this blog, I can’t help but wonder, are people really more bad than good, or does society just pay more attention to the bad things? Does one bad thing erase all of the good things a person has done? One good thing never fixes all of the bad things, so why do people tend to label a person bad for doing one bad thing? I’m not talking anything major like murder or something along those lines, but lately, it seems to me that if a person does one bad thing, they are labeled as a bad person for eternity. Let’s say someone cheats on their significant other, and gets caught. A lot of people tend to start labeling that person all of the things in the mean handbook. All of these things start to unfold because of one mistake that person made. (I’m not endorsing cheating here by the way.) People start to forget that the cheater also volunteers their time at the food bank and helps abused puppies. People start to alienate the cheater, even though, for the most part, they do good things. I guess what I’m trying to say is that people always pay more attention and always remember the bad things over the good ones. So then I guess I couldn’t say if I think the world is more bad than good. I get very annoyed with people, and there are so many terrible things in this world, but do a lot of people see the world as being bad because the good things don’t get enough publicity? I’m not sure, and for the first time I’m questioning this as I write my blog. On any other day I would have been quick to answer that people are generally bad. The other day Amber and I were talking about the bad things that are put on the news. As I listen to the news in the morning, it is cluttered with horrid things, and rarely is there ever something nice. And then I thought, well there are good things in life, so why do all of the bad things get the attention and there is no credit given to the good things?
Okay enough ranting. There are good and bad people in this world. I’ve come to the conclusion that everyone has a little evil born into them. However, you become evil if you choose to follow the level of evilness that is in everyone. Everyone has the capability of doing something wrong, but bad people happen due to choices. You choose to either shove that evil innate thirst away, or drink it up. Sure, where you come from and the people around you have a great influence on if you do in fact become bad or good, but in the end, everyone has a choice.
ReplyDeleteThe person who does the right thing doesn’t always win; in fact, sometimes he comes in dead last. Okay so in my classes, the tests can be pretty difficult, especially for someone who doesn’t study. On numerous occasions (so many I can’t even count) people cheat on tests all the time. I mean every single test! It bothers the crap out of me! I study hours for my tests and I work really hard to earn my grades, and it really upsets me that people who have no regards towards the idea of studying get the same grades as I do. I try to work hard and earn what I get, but some people just copy off of someone else’s paper and then end up getting the same A as the person he/she cheated off of. I just don’t think it’s right that people can get the same grades (or sometimes even better) as the people who work hard, just because they are lazy and don’t study. It’s understandable if there is a test here and there that you don’t study for, but really, does it have to be every single test? At least attempt to do something about it. Because in the end, that person looks just as good to colleges as I do, and that’s just not fair.
There aren’t ever clear-cut answers in life. Everything has multiple sides of the story, so no, good and bad isn’t cut and dry. Right and wrong is determined within. Everyone has their own scale they follow. I may not agree with some of them, I may even get upset and angry over what people see as right, but everyone is different from the next. This reminds me of last year in Costal’s class when we had morality week. At the beginning of the week we went to the library and all forty of us stood on one side of the library. Costal then began to make statements concerning each person’s morality. If we strongly agreed with the question we stayed on one side of the library, if we strongly disagreed we went to the other side, and if we were somewhere in between we would walk to where we believed our own morals landed on the morality scale. The statements included things such as, “It is okay to cheat on a significant other,” “It is okay to cheat on homework,” “It is never okay to murder,” “It is okay to murder if the person I am murdering killed the person I love the most,” and “If I saw a hundred dollars on the ground, I would pick it up.” Questions such as these went on for about two periods, I believe, and they all ranged in intensity. He began to give conditions and variables for each of the things we were agreeing or disagreeing to, such as the amount of money, why we were committing a crime, etc. He would then ask a different person after each question why he/she was standing where they were. It really opened my eyes as to how many different views people have, even on little things, like picking a quarter off of the ground.
Schuyler: I really have to say I enjoy reading your blog posts. Every week you add some humor into your posts and your style has really developed over the weeks and shines through. Kudos! (:
ReplyDeleteNyamekye: I really liked your ending paragraph; it really brought all of your points together. The example about Bin Laden and the government were both very good. However I was kind of confused about your story. Who is Jim? I’m just not sure who he is and I guess it’s kind of throwing me off. Maybe I’m just missing something.
Mikey Black: My view of the world tends to shift as my mood shifts as well. Sometimes I’m all loveydovey with gumdrops, glitter, and sunshine and I tend to think there is still hope for this world. Then there are times that I’m all doom and gloom while I get annoyed with everyone. I know exactly what you mean about that. My post probably would have been much more depressing if I were in a worse mood.
Ask me these questions in the beginning of the year and I would have told a beautiful story of a nice man who does nothing but good for others and in return has a fortunate life. I would have told you there are mostly good people in this world and they are rewarded with happiness of their good deeds. I don’t know what specifically happened in these past couple months to change my view of the world but it drastically has. My hopeless romantic, overly idealistic way of thinking, though still there, has reached its nadir. Now, as the idea of good and evil tosses back and forth in my head, I found myself unusually pessimistic. I believe the world is filled with greed and selfishness—mostly bad people. People who are incessantly in this battle for first place and people who will do anything to get there; lie, cheat, steal etc. And unfortunately it is these people who succeed, because the few good ones that are left are too passive to try and push ahead of anyone else. Thus they are caught in the dust. And with every gasp for air or wipe of the eye they remain forgotten and suddenly every good deed has become irrelevant. Only those who grow sick of the depreciation will speak up and boast until they’ve reached their own definition of success, however then they wind up like the rest as they quickly loose their selves in the real world.
ReplyDeleteIt’s like that girl who studies her ass off for the big test and gets that B-/C+ when the boy to the right cheats his little ass off to an A+. An AP class doesn’t come easy to all people, some have to work hard at it (like this girl—I’ll call her Haley.). Haley pushes herself everyday to stay on top of her schoolwork she is incessantly taking notes in class, studying them every night, and turning every assignment in on time always with her greatest effort. However, as hard as she tries, and as good of a student she is, it doesn’t show through a test, which really brings her grade average down. She’s stuck with these “C+”s and “B-”s and must be content. Her neighboring student (Seth I’ll call him) is the complete opposite. Seth does almost nothing towards school work and when test time comes around he has the scribbles on his left hand and forearm and the cheat sheet under his test paper. And when the test gets handed back his A+ is never surprising. Haley sees this and is forced to remain mute as she continues to struggle.
This is life. This is the world we live in today. A world made up of 95% Seth and 5% Haley. A world where nice guys finish last. It doesn’t matter how hard you may try sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much honesty you may use, it doesn’t matter how nice you are, and it certainly doesn’t matter how much good is in a person. At the end, the one holding the trophy seems to always be the one who has hoodwinked his way through, which understandably proves to be immensely frustrating to every Haley.
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ReplyDeleteDominique(Nikki:p): "I like to think of Earth and life as the night sky. There’s a lot of darkness in it, and it seems never-ending, but there are bright stars that light up bits and pieces of it." Girl, i love you. This was so you, so adorable, and so true. I think i might write it up and hang it on my wall! Sometimes we focus so much on that big, dark empty space that we negate the bright stars. But its people like you that help me rememeber them.
ReplyDeleteMikey: My opinion of the world seems to shift along with my current mood of the day too. I think that's why it is so hard for me to answer these kinds of questions, sometimes i really don't know. I don't know if i truly believe the world is made up of mostly bad, or if i'm just having a bad day.
Connie: "This experience exemplifies a flaw in politics; when people are getting what they want, they tend to forget about everyone else, even if the price of what they want is abandoning the consideration of those whom they serve. Also portrayed in this example is that the “winners” surely aren’t winners from fair play, but from cheating." I quote you on this because it has matched my beliefs so perfectly. People are too selffish, their main concern is what can benefit them. Also that the majority of "winners" that we see today have cheated their way there.
In response to Kendall: That was such a sweet compliment! I really appreciate it. I put things on my wall too, and there has to be something special about the thing I'm putting up to make it to actually being on my wall. So I really do appreciate it. THANK YOU! (:
ReplyDeleteDominique: Typo. It's supposed to be Joe, wow sorry completely threw off the story. Also, I disagree that everyone has a little bit of evil in them. I do believe that heinous people are sometimes born with cruel personalities, but the places they grow up definitely have an impact on how they come out. Anyways, going back to the phrase that everyone has some evil in them, is quite the generalization. As individuals, I truly believe that you have a choice. But then again, that's just me.
ReplyDeleteKendall: I agree with depending on what's going on in your life, makes you have a different perspective on what kind of people are in the world. When I meet truly genuinely good and nice people that make me completely happy, I think the world is all sunshine and rainbows. But once their true colors begin to show, I realize that, sometimes their good demeanor, isn't true. With your story, I think Seth will get his eventually. Sure, his cheating tactics may work now, but someday his plan will be foiled.
Mikey B: I often find myself envisioning the world in a "dreamy" way. When I'm particularly in a bad mood, I try to focus on the good things in life, the beautiful things out there. But once faced reality, I can't help but notice how the bad overshadows the good. You made a good point about morality. It's great to try and be a good person, but in the end I don't really think it will serve justice in this life, because in the end, we do die, and people rarely remember what you did, whether it be right or wrong.
In response to Nyamekye: I think you misinterpretted what I'm saying. I'm not saying everyone has pure evilness in them. I'm not saying little babies want to murder or steal. I realize people have choices and those choices are ultimately where they will end up. I stated that in my post. However, I do believe that everyone has some sort of badness born into them. It's human nature to do things that aren't always the smartest or morally best things. Taking a penny off the street is still stealing. But people don't consider it to be a bad thing, some people even believe it to be good luck. The dictionary defines stealing as "taking something that belongs to somebody else without the owner's permission." And people take little things all of the time! Even though it's technically stealing. Isn't stealing a bad thing? Isn't it something that is frowned upon? Isn't murder a bad thing? Yet people kill little gnats and flies all of the time! I have never, ever met one person who hasn't done something morally wrong or something they are ashamed of. Even the people who haven't done these tiny bad things have at least thought about them. It's human nature. Ultimately it's a choice to be good and do the right thing, (as I said in my post) but people are born with a sense of bad into them. People commit these bad things everyday because there is a sense of it in their system. It's just the choice of what level a person takes their evilness to. In my post I talked about how everyone can be born with evil in them, it's just their choice on how far they take it. If no one was born evil, then how would evilness even start? If everyone was born pure and good, then how would the world ever know evil? It's not because the people around them influenced him/her to become evil because the people around them wouldn't ever evilness either. The cycle continues. Therefore, people have the choice to follow or not follow the bad born into them.
ReplyDeleteCommenting on Connie’s tale of back row cheaters, what constitutes these kids as “bad”? Sure, they’re misbehaved, and they cheat, but do those attributes make someone bad? Cheating is wrong, but it’s not necessarily bad. Well, actually it is, but more so for the cheaters. When it comes to cheaters, they tend to finish last. So maybe good guys do finish first.
ReplyDeleteKendall, your response was so well written, it made me feel pretty pessimistic myself. You used a very relatable story that we can all identify with. It happens all the time, and we all feel Haley’s struggle. By the end of your response, I could not help but feel pessimistic about the attitude of other people.
Dominique, I think you captured a very important issue in your response. I was thinking the same thing, but I didn’t develop the idea to the extent that you did. Everyone has some bad and everyone has some good. It’s like a spectrum, not a black and white answer. Like you said, sometimes even a little bad can overshadow many good deeds. Unfortuantly, that seems to just be the way the world works.
My world view is optimistic, but in the most cynical way possible, that's difficult to explain, but hopefully it will become clear as I answer the other questions.
ReplyDeleteThis one is easy, people are innately good. Then they're born. Each of us is corrupted by the generations before us from the minute we exit our mother's bodies to the minute electricity ceases to course through our brains. The best illustration of this corruption is in the human tendency to lie, which is usually developed in children by the age of four-and-a-half. Four-and-a-half! Now, another point of clarification is that the ability of humanity to stray from morality here and there is closely related to our ability to reason beyond the capacity of animals. I'll take the trade off.
Morality is very subjective, not that I'm a moral relativist. The fact is, a lot morality is determined by social norms rather than what I believe the real sense of morality comes from, which is common sense? Why is it immoral to kill someone? Because it is a waste of energy; the man you killed is not a source of energy, and even if he had something valuable to you, you are now more likely to be killed by one of his friends. There are no real benefits. Lapses in morality are caused by short-sightedness and selfishness.
Again with my cynical optimism, the person who does the right thing always wins. But it's only a moral victory. There is no guarantee of eternal life for the moral man, that's just something humanity created because they feared death. The person who does the right thing will hardly ever win in his lifetime, unless he is vindicated by the law or some other mode of human justice. What's saddest, though, is that there is no guarantee that the person who did the right thing will even be vindicated by history, many are not. Which leads us into our relevant story...
Two of the most important scientists in recent history, Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison, were arch rivals. Both were brilliant, but Tesla would consistently best Edison. In fact, some of the things Tesla figured are beyond modern science. But wait? Why don't we have Tesla's work to learn all of these things? Oh, Tesla's lab burnt down. Who could have done that? Certainly not his arch rival. No one can prove that Edison burnt Tesla's lab, but it wouldn't be the first time that Edison used any means to thwart Tesla. When Tesla supported alternating current, and Edison supported direct current, Edison mounted a huge public opinion campaign where he electrocuted animals in order to show the “dangers of alternating current.” Just so you know, we use alternating current today.
What we can take from this story is that, Edison, despite being a total jerkface, is remembered as the glorified inventor of the light bulb (even though he invented the incandescent lamp). Whereas Tesla is forgotten, relegated to the world of bands that use Tesla coils to make music (that's actually really cool). History has never really vindicated Tesla, and the fact is, even though he always won the moral battle, he lost the battle of not having his lab burnt down.
In all of this rambling, I hope you have come to understand how I am optimistically cynical. Cynically optimistic? Who knows. Despite being morally bankrupt by the age of four, the human race has managed not to plunge itself into total darkness yet, so I'm pretty confident for the future.
Schuyler- So a real story? I expected you to make one up, man Freshman year, we had some crazy times. The president was all like, “Nooo I have a family!” Hehehe. Anyway, what I think can be learned from mob mentality. (You kind of brushed on that, I think, but I want to talk about it anyway) is that more than they are good or evil, people are stupid. Even the smartest people are stupid. Subjective morality is often confused by those who have enough rhetorical skills to turn the stupid masses to a new viewpoint, that's why mob decisions aren't always good, because the idea of good is so easily subverted.
ReplyDeleteKendall- I think the really disturbing part is, what creates Seth (nice name!), is Seth inherently immoral? Or does Seth merely perceive the weakness in the social fabric that surrounds him, and exploit it? What bothers me more than the willingness of people to cheat, steal, and lie their way into success is that they are consistently allowed to do it. The fact is that what society wants, more than morality, is results. Grades are results, money is a result, power is a result; people who have these things are perceived as role models, regardless of these methods. I'm not defending Seth, (he sounds like an ass) I'm indicting the society that creates Seth as a co-conspirator to Seth's immorality.
Cole- I'm starting to feel stupid for not mentioning politics, because of its presence in your post and many others. Maybe I'm just non-conformist. Anyway, there's a view of morality, what's it called (googles it) utilitarianism, which holds that the action which increases the overall “happiness” (I think well-being is a better word) of society is the moral action. I think this fits well into your questioning of the establishment of rules, because I think utilitarianism is an interesting alternative to set rules for morality. Just thought I'd mention it.
I tend to think of myself as an optimistic person, however in this case my optimism falls short. Before this year, I would have said without a doubt that everybody is good on the inside, good triumphs over evil, light overpowers dark, and good things happen to good people. Now, after seeing what truly goes on behind closed doors and after-hours working, I can’t see how this can be true all the time.
ReplyDeleteOh. This has to be a story? Fine. I’ll make it a story.
So, once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a young boy by the name of Sir ShrimpBoat XXXVIII. He was a great warrior. He was intelligent. He was trusted. He was honest. He was handsome. He was modest. Everything that a great man could be, Sir ShirmpBoat XXXVIII was.
During a venture to save a homeless orphan home for the handicapped, Sir ShrimpBoat XXVIII (We’ll just call him ShrimpBoat) came across a man on the side of the path. The man had very little money and obviously had not eaten in days. So, with the power of the gods, ShrimpBoat conjured a feast fit for a king before the mendicant (while using every ounce of his strength), and continued on his way (Yes ShrimpBoat can do that because he is awesome).
Just as he arrived at the homeless orphan home for the handicapped, another man appeared, this time a familiar face. Instead of a poor, helpless peddler, this man was a man from school. After casual greetings, the man stabbed ShrimpBoat, revealing that he was a man that ShrimpBoat forgot to say hello to in the hallway with a vendetta against ShrimpBoat. ShrimpBoat dies immediately, the next day. After a tedious search for the killer, one is never found, never to be looked for again.
Indeed, a good man died that day. Why would that happen? How could God, the Almighty Goodness from heaven, let that happen to us? Why did the killer get away? Unfortunately, these questions will go unanswered, and ShrimpBoat’s killer will forever be unnamed.
What does this story tell you about my idea of world view? Absolutely nothing, until I explain it.
To begin, my opinion of people’s traits in general is really broad and fence-sitter-y. I believe that all people choose their own path of goodness and evilness. Whether one does good for others or bad to others is entirely up to them because everybody is their own person and nobody controls them but them. Faith cannot affect a person’s goodness or evilness because a person only believes in a faith if they already have specific ideals in their mind. For example, ShrimpBoat would not be a Satanist nor a Catholic for the same reason: helping the world is more important than establishing a place for him in heaven. The way to determine a person’s goodness or badness is to look into their intentions for doing certain things. Obviously, nobody but the person in question will ever know why he does something, but if everyone did, then everybody could determine how good a person is. ShrimpBoat was a good person because gave his life to helping others. Of course, since everybody makes mistakes, ShrimpBoat didn’t say hello to a guy in school, which eventually led to his demise. Mistakes do not make a person good or bad because they are what they are: mistakes. Making mistakes means a person is human, rather than a robot person. Whether one is good or bad, there are no rewards—just the satisfaction of living life and leaving a mark on society.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I don’t believe that good people win in the end, just like ShrimpBoat, except more often less dramatic. Another example of this comes from you, my fellow langers (I say this solemnly). Recently (I don’t know if it was last time or a little earlier), we had a blog about the worst things ever said to us. I was extremely upset to read some of the things that have been said to really really good people, to say the least. So, in a non-death-related way, good did not win for you guys, even though you guys try your best to be good people. This is one of the many reasons that I feel that good gets trumped by evil.
Personally, anything that does not benefit a single person (including you) is not right. I’m not saying that if you twiddle your thumbs for an hour, you are a bad person; it just means that you are very boring/bored and need a good person to talk to you. Conversely, if you do something to harm someone in any way, it is bad, and you should stop doing it. Of course, there is a sort of scale to determine how “bad” something is, but that changes from person to person.
For all of you that wanted a happy ending to my story, ShrimpBoat rises from the dead and saves the homeless orphan home for the handicapped and then adopts them all in his happiness to be alive. For the rest of his life, the world seems to emit a jovial glow, and he is happy forever. THE END.
To Dominique: I pretty much agreed with your post. It seems like whenever I work hard and stay up all night doing something, another person comes into school, say "Oh... we have blah blah blah due today? I'll just do it in study hall and get a 100." It really makes me disappointed in the system, but (although this goes against what I said in my post) later on in college, you will study for a test and get a 82 and they will cheat and get a 0 (and fail the class) because of a no-tolerance rule. In school, it pays off to work hard and do your work earlier than you need to because in the end, you will always be better than a procrastinator.
ReplyDeleteTo Cole: I didn't want to be the first to comment on yours because I know my comment will be pretty lame, but I don't feel like waiting to do it. So, I liked your post because it was funny and informative about you. Don't be judging the quality of my comments; it's 1 o'clock in the morning.
ReplyDeleteMy view of the world is fickle; it changes depending on my mood. I’m not speaking about my daily mood, but about my overall mood. For example, if the stars have all aligned and everything seems to be going good for me, I’ll be in my “good” mood. But if every horrible thing imaginable happens in rapid succession, I’ll be in my “bad” mood. These moods usually last from as little as a week to as long as a few months, even years. I don’t know if there’s a word for this longevity of attitude, but I’ll just stick with mood.
ReplyDeleteOn the off chance that I’m feeling unnaturally bubbly, I tend to lean towards the positive, optimistic, life-is-beautiful end of the spectrum. I live by the words of Relient K: “Isn’t it nice to know that the lining is silver? Isn’t it nice to know that we’re golden?” I’m chipper and always grinning from ear-to-ear, it’s almost impossible to bring me down in the early stages of this mood. My philosophy always seems to be to enjoy life when I’m feeling this way, and I love when I am like this because well, who actually enjoys being upset? The last time I was actually in one of these moods was a few months ago which is why the background of my laptop says, “Be an Optimist Prime, not a Negatron!” accompanied with a cute little Optimus Prime and Megatron from Transformers. When I was in my “good” mood but having a rather rotten day, looking at this picture always seemed to make me giggle and remind me that what I’m feeling will pass because hey, life’s great! I can’t let stupid things bring me down.
But, this state of mind is only temporary. More often than not, I’m in my “bad” mood where the pessimism always overwhelms me. I tend to look at the glass half-empty and every move I make seems to be the wrong one. I’ve been in this kind of mood since my grandmom went to the hospital after having mini-strokes and had to have her entire corroded artery removed, cleaned, and put back in her neck. She forgot the whole family. My grandpop, all four of her kids, their spouses, and the grandkids were all just strangers crowding around the hospital bed. For weeks, she couldn’t even speak simple English. It all came out as gibberish. My Aunt Diane visited her several times a week (more often than anyone else could because this was over the summer and my aunt is a teacher, everyone else had to work) and she made a booklet of everyone in the immediate family. That backfired because everyone that looked grandmom’s way was “Diane.” Things slowly started to progress and now, she can speak perfectly fine, she can call us all by name, and she’s driving again. But, that feeling of pure despondency has stuck with me through the months and is worse now that I have to get used to calling my “boyfriend” my “ex.”
So, since I am in such an immutably horrid mood, I’m going to answer these questions with that in mind. When it comes to people, I think most of them suck. There’s a select few who I tolerate, and an even more select few whose company I genuinely enjoy, but the vast majority suck. I have no better description. They just suck. They’re greedy and selfish and insensitive and obnoxious and I wonder if they even have parents sometimes, because they act as if they were raised by orangutans. For those that I like, they’re modest and kindhearted and truthful. They’re the type of person I aspire to be, but I always seem to fall short. These people are the ones who do things for the better good, not because they’ll gain anything from it. I wish I could say that this type of person always wins in the end, like in the movies, but they don’t. Some of them are beaten down so much and deal with so much bullshit; they end up becoming world-hating cynics like me.
ReplyDeleteAs for what’s right and what’s wrong, sometimes there are sticky situations in which there is no obvious answer. Like, if there are two elevators plummeting to their demise with one filled with the two most important people in the world to you and the other with a thousand strangers (it’s a really big elevator), it’s nearly impossible for one (at least, for ME) to choose which one I’d save. But for the most part, one’s morals are what determine what’s right and what’s wrong and usually, it’s the selfless choice that’s for the better good. So, the elevator with a thousand strangers would be the “right” choice.
In short, the world is what you make of it and for me, the world is ever-changing.
The world is a cruel and dark place, or so I’ve been told. My whole life people have told me that there is no good in the world. The only goodness that is shown is a fake mask worn by some to make themselves look amiable. In general I think I agree with this ideology. People are interested in two things: (a) money and (b) themselves. The majority of people couldn’t care less about their wives or the Salvation Army guy at Acme.
ReplyDeleteBut this isn’t what people want me… us to think. Movies, music, friends, it’s a huge scheme. Like I was told so many times before, goodness is a mask. Are there people that are nice? Yes. Are there people that are good? Yes. But the real question is: Where are they? I sure as hell don’t know. Every person I have ever met in my life has done something, said something that would prove uneventful for someone else. To me, that’s the complete opposite of what being good is.
This is another one of those topics that can be malleable based on the viewer. Of course, good and bad have parallel connotations around the world. It’s the depth that changes. To my mother, giving a dollar to the Salvation Army is good. To me, that’s feeling bad for a guy that most likely is a recipient of the SA and giving him a dollar so he says “Thank You! Merry Christmas!” This is also the same woman that is a completely different person at home and outside. I am not.
I’m not trying to glorify myself. I am not good. I am not bad. I am in the middle. One aspect of a good person that I happen to hold true is how I act in front of people. You could be the president or my sister, I treat pretty much everyone the same. This has gotten me into numerous fights with my parents. Does that make me a bad person? In my opinion no, but other things I do and have done make me a bad person.
This holds true for most people. Good people do bad things and bad people do good things. It’s finding a good person that’s the issue. There isn’t any special surprise for being good. There isn’t any special punishment for being bad. I have come to learn that the type of person you are shows itself when you sleep. A good person doesn’t have trouble sleeping. A bad person does.
James: I love how you say that people are innately good. It's such a hopeful and pure thought; that one's environment is what corrupts him/her and creates serial killers and dictators. People are screwed up in the head because of chemical imbalances, that's not their fault. It made me smile on the inside that you're so optimistic about human nature.
ReplyDeleteKendall: Reading your post makes me so sad, but I can't help but agree with every word. Life is so unfair and movies give us false hope because the protagonist is always the one who ends up on top when in reality, the antagonist is usually the victor. It's absolutely deplorable that this is a truth of life, but as you said, that's the world we live in. It's unfortunate, but it's a sad, sad fact of life. OH, and just a side note, your voice is so strong, I could tell how much you believe what you're saying. :)
Nyamekye: Your scenario made me think. I've never really entertained the idea of the morality of the death sentence, but I can't help but agree with you. We kill people for killing. We bomb to stop war. It's all very hypocritical and unfair, but that's life, isn't it? Life is never fair and doesn't adhere to the morals that people all fervently try to uphold. That just... sucks.
"And he was walking home from work like he did every night, except this night when he crossed the street a half a mile away from home, a drunk driver struck him. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
ReplyDeleteHis left behind a wife, a daughter, and a son. This man who had so many talents and who was, even through all his faults was at the end of the day a caring husband and father, now dead.
His wife is one of the most kind hearted and genuinely thoughtful people I know even to today. She finds the good in everyone and will listen to you for hours if your feeling down. I was always told that her kindness did not appear because of the loss of her husband, but that is was always there. From what I know of this particular person, there is no way that her kindness is a result of her husbands tragic death."
This is how my grandfather died. On one unsuspecting night he lost his life in a car accident, and my mom mom and mother and uncle were caught completely off guard and were left in complete shock. It was so difficult to comprehend how someone could not see their father crossing the road, in truth he was a huge man close to three hundred pounds and more than six foot tall. But I can't really speak on behalf of my grand father considering I have never met him, I can however say that it wasn't fair that he lost his life and my grand mother certainly did not deserve to loose her husband like that.
But life doesn't consider what is fair or unfair. Life doesn't look at a situation and say, no I dont think I'll make life harder for this person because they already have so much going on. No, life will throw you a hard ball in your most vulnerable moment and that probably laugh when you miss it. Life will poke and prod you just to see how much you can take and then doesn't care if he breaks you.
To date I have known four people who have had cancer, one of them is dead, she passed away two years ago I think, on of them is a fifth grade boy who is in the hospital right now, and thankfully the other two to have recovered after chemo. The women who died was the mother of one of my brothers friends in kindergarten, she was one of those people who's smile lit up a room and could talk to anyone. What blows my mind is the fact that it always seems the people who get terminal illnesses like cancer or who tragically loose their lives in accidents are the nicest people you know. Sometimes I feel like asking Life why this is, but then I realize that Life can't answer.
ReplyDeleteIt probably seems like I am a complete pessimist and have a very grim out look of the world, and you would probably be right, but even though life has a way of kicking us when we are down, I have found that people have a way of turning it around.
After my grandfather died my grand mother opened her home to several foster children, she loved (almost, (and I only say this because a lot other foster kids were teenage boys who had very troubled pasts)) every minute of it.The families of the two kids recovering from cancer are from what I can tell have not let it break their spirits and have nothing but high hopes for their children.
I really believe that at the end of the day most everyone is good inside, even if their actions depict something different. And the core of human beings is to help each other out. They show they care in their actions, and I'm not saying that everyone is nice to everyone else all the time, but even the person who seems to have it out for everyone has someone that they care about.
Unfortunately there is absolutely not clear cut right or wrong, that is something that has to be decided by every individual. Because every persons circumstances will cause them to feel one way or another about things and for me to say that one thing is right would of course only apply to me, also because my opinions change all the time so what I say now could be different from what I might say in a week. And as far as measuring good and bad I think that's kind of a ridiculous idea, I mean i that most people would describe themselves as "good except for _______".
To Dom: I love your analogy connecting good/evil to the night sky. In every dark situation there is light that will lead you out. To me, life is what you make it. If you are happy and make yourself “good” then you are one of the stars shining bright. Unfortunately all the bad in the world is coming together sucking all the good out of people, like a black hole.
ReplyDeleteTo Mike B: It seems like a lot of people’s views change depending on their moods. I don’t feel this way. Since I was born my family has engraved this notion of evil stepping on good into my brain. I know that there is good I just have to find it. And that story was enjoyable!
To Kendall: Nice guys finish last. I don’t know what I think about this statement, that’s why I didn’t put it in my blog post. If you’re good you know it. If you’re bad you don’t necessarily know it. A lot of people that have crappy lives think they are good but they really aren’t. As for the cheating bastard, they are played out to be on top. But are they really?
A young politician (age 34) by the name of Matthew Anderson gets elected to the State Senate in Texas. Mr. Anderson was excited and enthralled at the chance to shape the state for the better. Oh, but how naïve Mr. Anderson was at the time he was elected to the Senate. Enter antagonist. Bruce Flenderson is the CEO of a powerful Oil magnate in Texas. He has at his dispense, a legion of special interest lobbyists. At 11:00 PM one night, there is a loud and boisterous knock resonating from the front door of none other than Mr. Anderson’s modest homestead. Mr. Anderson waywardly meander’s to his front door and unveils a ghastly trio of three sleazy men dressed entirely in black attire. One of them suggests in a raspy and uninviting voice that they should all sit down. The conversation is quick but damaging to Mr. Anderson’s morale. The lobbyists persuaded Mr. Anderson to extend rights to Mr. Flenderson’s oil company to dump hazardous wastes into a specified and undisclosed nature reservation. The move came as a shock; the act passing by the one lone vote of Mr. Anderson. You see, Mr. Anderson has a young daughter named Alexis that is struggling with an acute form of cancer. The three men explained that if Mr. Anderson complied; his daughter would receive extraordinary health care and medical care; the finest around. And if he refused; well, let’s just say Mr. Flenderson communicated a clear message that Mr. Anderson and all his efforts would be ruined. Now, the right for an oil company to dump waste in a preservation doesn’t sound like the worst offense. But consider this, Mr. Anderson shows incredible poise as a politician; so much that Mr. Flenderson decides to back Mr. Anderson in his race to the U.S. senate, before you know it, Mr. Anderson is now the President of the United States. Alas, Mr. Anderson is not the same Mr. Anderson that he was as a budding young State Senator. He has become a drone of special interest groups; one after another, questionable acts of legislation are unloaded until eventually; the large corporations and oil companies are at the head of nearly all decisions made. Putting things in the kindest of perspectives; the country takes a turn for the worst.
ReplyDeleteNow, this is all a grossly dramatized scenario, but the fact that this is essentially true in some cases says enough about how I view society. The central problem I’ve identified in society is the susceptibility of people to negative influences and the conventional evils that lurk around every corner in these modern times. The worst part is that anytime somebody wants to speak out or declare something as wrong; they are sure to be stifled by those in command of the most power. As humans we have a tendency to manipulate others against their weaknesses. It is a basic strategy that applies in every situation. As dramatized above; our young politician was trapped in a web of corruption that grew out of one party playing another party’s disadvantages against him. This is essentially how the world works, and I suppose I would acknowledge many actions of individuals as “evil”; but are people inherently evil? I have to believe every individual has the capability of being “evil”; genetics must allow for the brain to develop negative patterns of thinking. I would also make the conjecture that the environment one is subjected to drastically affects an individual’s thinking and mindset. So it is very possible that one’s natural capacity for evil is fueled by the environment and circumstances that one endures.
The idea that “good triumphs evil every time” is laughable. If that were true than I suppose that the ideologies of groups such as the KKK are in some sense good. No. This is not true. If good always triumphed than these people would be detained and executed for these atrocious beliefs. If good always triumphs evil, we would not have participated in any war; innocent people would never have been killed by malicious murderers and killers. Evil will always persist, because the capacity for evil will always be a part of human nature. Humans will continue to be ignorant, we will never learn to listen, and we will never learn to establish love for everyone. Humans are forever doomed by their sheer incompetence to live purely. We will never be perfect.
ReplyDeleteThis is not to say that people are all bad. If we have a capacity for evil, we surely have a capacity for good. But again, this all boils down to environment and genetics. A person’s attitude will always be determined by these two things; environment affecting on the genetic aspect. So when we decide to be good and have the tendency to do nice things, one would figure that this person would likely always win out. Sadly, this is not true. The only way that this pays off is f the person has the belief of reward in the afterlife or something. Or it could just be self gratifying to do good things. Regardless, there will always be those who do the right thing but end up with “the shit end of the stick” at the end. It’s really even difficult to weigh what “good” or “right” is in the first place. I tend to believe that “right” and “good” are the simple tendencies of people to do what is just and humane. But again, we have people that twist these ideas of what is right and good into terrible ideologies. (See: Hitler, Stalin, etc) So I guess overall; good, evil, right, and wrong are all decided by human tendency. And if that is correct; brace for many more atrocities and horrible acts of inhumanity. We are all human, and humans are fallible.
So I would suppose that my view of our society as a whole is negative for the most part; though I consider myself a realist rather than a pessimist. I look at the world and decide what is right and wrong; what constitutes an atrocity or an act of kindness. And perhaps this is the reason behind evil: conflict of beliefs. Where do these beliefs come from? Sometimes it is hard to say, probably something genetic. Regardless, we will keep asking these questions for as long as we exist until the point comes where we all kill ourselves out of greed, insanity, or conflict of beliefs. We can only hope that reasonable and relatively pure hearted individuals can eventually rise to power. Until the day when pigs fly, we will continue to be led by corrupt and grotesque individuals. This is how society works.
Connie- I must say, I really love your voice. Along with Coles I really enjoy reading your posts even though I don't always agree. But I do agree with this one, I feel like a lot of people are in the same situation as you are, they are raised optimists and as the become aware of the world they glide ever closer to pessimism.
ReplyDeleteBecca- "When it comes to people, most of them suck." it may have been entirely innnapprriate but I chuckled slightly when I read this, but I would have to say that I think the opposite, I think most people are good and only some of them suck, and even then I thi k they still have some good but just like the way you describe yourself they are afflicted with life's unsuspecting hardships and I feel like we often just catches them at the wrong time. I think your a nice person,
Nyamekye- I feel like I've heard the story you told before but I honestly can't remember where.
To Ted: For some reason your story reminded me of Mr. Smith goes to Washington. I don't know if that was your intention, but I realized that in that movie, good does not triumph over evil and the Taylor Machine gets away with passing the dam bill, at the expense of the boys camp. So yeah, once again, your matter-of-fact and didactic tone came out during your blog.
ReplyDeleteI panic as I kick out helplessly, trying to reach the surface of the water. My lungs feel like they’re about to explode with impatience. As my head finally bursts into the cold air of the night, I rub my eyes frantically so I can begin to analyze my surroundings. There’s fire on the surface of the water surrounding me, and I feel the heat licking at my skin. The plane sunk through the quiet depths of the ocean, and I am the sole survivor. I see a small opening in the ubiquitous flames, and I make haste to swim through it.
ReplyDeleteAs I leave the fiery nightmare behind me, I see a small island in the distance. I approach the coast wearily, as my senses are stimulated by adrenaline. Just as I crawl ashore, a small group of old men in brown robes greets meet with their hands clasped together and their bodies bent forward. Despite their foreign appearance, they speak perfect English. They ask me for my name, and I answer hesitantly. They all gasp and begin to whisper among themselves. “Could it be?” I hear one of them cry. They all fall silent as they turn to me. One of the men steps forward from the small crowd, and I admire his wizened yet strong posture. Then he exclaims “You are the Chosen One! Come with us at once!”
I follow these elderly monks to a beautiful and gigantic monastery, where they lead me through doors of an impossible height. Inside the library are stacks of religious texts, including the Bible, Tura, and Quran, and there are several other monks flipping through dusty pages. As we come to a halt, all of the other monks stop what they’re doing, fall silent, and stare at me. Then the elder monk instructs me to stand upon a scaffold, and then asks me with unsettled eyes, “On the matter of good and evil, what must we conclude about the human race?” I look about the room, witnessing the uncertain and disconcerting countenances of the monks. I answer sternly, “Good and evil will always coexist. There is nothing we can do to end the torments of evil. But have hope, my friends, for the human race as a whole will continue to seek out the good.” Some of the monks gaze upon their religious texts, realizing the moral codes that great men have bestowed upon mankind. Society has always attempted to define moral codes, and is therefore always striving for good despite the flaws of human error. The differences in these moral codes, however, deliver evidence that there is no definite right and wrong because there will never be unanimous agreement.
“Before we send you back to your home town,” the elder presses, “tell us WHY you had not defeated the ninja while on the airplane.” I hesitate to answer, embarrassed of my dishonorable defeat. I decide that it would be for the better of humanity if I explained my tragedy: “Luckily I had read a few books on advanced-level piloting, so when the ninja killed the pilot before fleeing, I was able to take over the controls. I kept the plane in the air long enough for the co-pilot to recover from mild shock. Unfortunately, the ninja placed satchel charges in the rear of the plane before I could leave the pilot’s seat, and detonated the charges upon his jump out of the plane. The charges destroyed the entire plane and incinerated all of the passengers except for me.” After I answer the elder’s demand, I realize that he was asking for more than the story, so I continue: “I failed to stop the evil ninja because evil sometimes wins. But as long as the fight for good continues with our existence, good will triumph more than evil.” And after this note, I wake up in my bed in my home, reflecting what I had experienced. I can still feel the heat of the fire on my neck and recall the faces of the monks. Whether it the experience was real or not, I decide to take advantage of my miniscule optimism and make myself some French toast for breakfast.
To Cole: I like how you mentioned the whole “pizza is a vegetable” problem. Congress is a great example to use because they attempt to create laws and propagate morals, but they make stupid bills like SOPA and NDAA. And your reference to me was caked with sarcasm, and to answer your question, yes, I am going to do something about it: mention it in my comment. Finally, I thought your story was very CHEESEY indeed, but it was undoubtedly entertaining.
ReplyDeleteTo Schuyler: Oh man. This is probably THE best blog post I’ve ever read. You are a fantastic writer and I’m glad to call you my friend. I enjoyed the parts where the guy’s head explodes and the president burns to death, and I appreciated your reference to the Washington Momonumorial. I can be pessimistic at times but I’m normally optimistic. Also, I do believe that the feeling of doing good deeds is a reward in itself.
To Connie: Like you, Connie, I consider myself to be an optimist. Unfortunately, I have a good amount of pessimism to go along with it. I agree that politicians are mainly in office to benefit themselves instead of their country. Many of the problems in this country could have been or can be fixed if the bickering and arguing in Congress would end. I did have the same sort of childhood bliss as you, and I think many of the AP students can agree. But some good things must come to an end as the wave of realization overwhelms us in an instant.
George: I feel like, out of all the people I know who’ve read 1984, you’ve taken the most seriously. Of course, with good reason. But it’s definitely had more impact on you than I let it have on me. I mean, I only made a fleeting reference to it, which was appropriately out of context. But you did your entire story on it. Huh. Well, 1984 has certainly made its way into the hearts and minds of readers everywhere today for being such a prophetic book. Also, thanks for another blog post. I think I’d enjoyed all of them.
ReplyDeleteNyamekye: I was surprised to find the death penalty in your blog. Just because of the topic, is all. But it does actually cover a lot of the topic we’re discussing. The paradoxes of our moral system are very apparent, and yet they prevail for whatever reason. Strange, seeing that some of the moral codes we break are broken for no good reason.
Kendall: I’m surprised to know you didn’t think so pessimistically before, even if that’s a really terrible thing to say. After a few years of seeing this world as it truly is, cynicism starts looking like a very warm coat in the winter. Many take this coat, and start seeing the human race as an untrustworthy presence on Earth. I really wish it didn’t have to be that way though.
I like to call myself an optimist, and I try to see the best in everyone. So no surprise here.. I think people are mostly good. I see a bad person as someone who intentionally harms others, often for their own selfish gain. I know, there are definitely many of those people out there. But I think most people aren’t like that. I think about the people around me. Most people just seem good.
ReplyDeleteDoes the person who does right always win? I’m kind of optimistic, as said before, but there’s no way for me to answer this in a positive way. Good-doers are not always winners, and evil-doers are not always losers. I don’t believe in karma, even though I’d like to. I’ve see people do wrong many times, and often nothing bad happens to them.
Months ago, something happened that really pissed me off. It was not long after the horrible tsunami and earthquake happened in Japan. Someone I knew told me that he and his friends had gone around and collected a ton of donations to help out Japan. He then told me that he and his friends divided up the money they received, and kept it for themselves. So basically, he was stealing money from people who were struggling just to find clean water to drink, after a disaster that killed thousands of people had occurred. I was speechless, and just stood there and stared at him. (I think about it now, and kind of regret not strangling him.) My friend yelled at him, and he said he would donate the money. I could tell he was lying. Right now, I know this kid is going on with his life just fine. He probably blew the money he stole on video games. Good for him.. He won, even though he obviously did wrong.
If you do right, you feel good about yourself. So I guess you always win a little bit. But it’s not very significant. Just because you do the right thing, doesn’t mean grand things will happen to you. Bad things might even happen to you. Life is unfair that way.
What is right and what is wrong is loosely defined. That’s why people debate on things like abortion. Right and wrong depends on and is measured by opinion. However, something can be labeled as “right” or “wrong” if it’s popularly agreed on. Killing is wrong, because everyone agrees it is wrong. Embezzling and stealing, as done by the jerk in my story, is also wrong for the same reason.
Wow, my post got pretty depressing after the first paragraph. Despite all this, I’m still a rather positive person. Yeah, life is unfair and all that. It’s a given. There’s no reason why people shouldn’t get over it and see things positively.
Connie: Although you probably won’t revert back to child-self in terms of optimism (kids are crazy optimistic), you can still bring yourself closer to it. When I was a kid, I was all happy and optimistic and stuff, just like everyone else. But by the time I was in middle school, I was pretty darn pessimistic. But now, I’m optimistic again. It’s weird. But the point is, things can still get better. (Rather optimistic of me to say that.) Even though I’ve learned more about how crappy the world is, I’ve also learned to appreciate things and be more positive. You can too.
ReplyDeleteOlivia: “I really believe that at the end of the day most everyone is good inside, even if their actions depict something different.” I completely agree with this. It must sound really cheesy to all the pessimists out there. It even sounds cheesy to me. But deep inside, I believe pretty much everyone is good on the inside. I don’t know why, but I can’t bring myself to believe anything but this.
Kendall: The cheating situation illustrates perfectly how right-doers don’t always win. I was originally thinking of talking about that in my post. It’s just so true. I’ve seen it happen so many times, and the “Seth” pretty much always wins, sadly.
Becca - This is such a disillusionment because i always feel like you are in the brightest of moods! Just know i'm in a similar situation with the grandparent thing, so chin up! I honestly thought you'd have a much more positive blog and after reading blogs from all the 'negatrons' I looked for comfort in yours... However, I totally understand how your mood when writing the blog could really make the topic split either way, moods are so powerful in that way!
ReplyDeleteSchuyler - So you'd kind of lost me at the point where the president burns to death...but I became more understanding by your second post :P. I promise you I wasn't an optimist running to the nearest cliff to hurl myself off of after reading your post, now wouldn't that contradict optimism? :PP. But anyway, you made a lot of valid arguments. I'm not about to advise you to give your trust to any outstretched hand, but I believe that you should give more people the benefit of the doubt- and by doing so you might find life to be a little less stressful!
George - I enjoyed how you kind of pinpointed the source of your pessimism, because that's often a cloudy mist of uncertainty for most. I was ALSO pretty moved to read how much 1984 effected you, I hope Bunje was serious when she said we would be reading it (she told our class that we would). In response to your response on my blog, I wasn't necessarily calling the cheaters "bad" people. In fact, when I wrote the little story I forgot to incorporate the question of good/bad people so I answered that as a little side-note.
One of the most prevalent memories from my childhood involved me sitting by the pool, Mick Jagger’s voice echoed from the radio, “Just as every cop is a criminal, and all the sinners, saints. As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer.” At the age of seven, I was contemplating what was right and what was wrong while listening to the Rolling Stones.
ReplyDeleteNow, I lay here and contemplate the same question. “Sympathy for the Devil” reverberates and bounces from every surface. I start to look back on my life so far, everything that has shaped who I am, and my outlook on life. I’m a hippy of sorts, I care for my fellow man more than capital gains. However, my experiences have proven that some people are just bad people, and those people tend to win. I keep hope that the good win in the long run, but no one has seemed to confirm that dreamy ideal.
I once had a friend, we’ll call him Abe, and he single-handedly altered my perception of human nature. I never thought Abe as being a mercurial man, he was tall, slender, and had an athletic build. He was a only a decent student, though he was gifted with a knack for machinery. Abe hated drugs; he resented many of the people we were surrounded by because half of them were habitual marijuana smokers. However, Abe started to change when he began to hang out with another friend, we’ll call him Karl. Abe sold his soul to Karl. Abe got into pot, cigarettes, and loose women. He became despondent and depressed constantly. I couldn’t hang out with him without him trying to get some weed, or go get drunk. It hurts to give up on someone who was so great to you for so long. I tried and tried to bring Abe out of this hell, I thought it might have been a phase he was going through. It wasn’t. I completely broke off my friendship with him. After all the pleading and convincing I went through to try and bring him back, it seemed he had reached the dark side. The disturbing thing about Abe is, to this day, he believes he is bettering himself. He is a bad person. He has done things to me, and others that I can’t even describe in this forum.
The moral of Abe’s story is, the wrong person is not always the victor. Abe was wrong, he hurt me in a million ways, but I walk away knowing that I am the bigger man. Abe has no drive, no motivation to accomplish his once flourishing goals. I sympathize with Abe, just as Jagger sympathizes with the devil. Bad did not win in this case though. All in all, right and wrong are objective, Abe thinks that I’m wrong. He hates everything I am, just as I hate everything he has become.
People don’t depress me because people are bad; people depress me because they think people are bad. Everybody seems so negative all the time and I am constantly barraged by floods of complaints. People are dying, children are crying, homework is compiling an army to commit mutiny and kill you, I get it, I do. I’m not pretending I don’t complain, but I don’t think I do quite to the same degree, but I would if I saw everything on the same scale as everybody else.
ReplyDeleteIt’s none too original, but I envision good and bad to be a lot like light and dark, hot and cold. There is no such thing as dark or cold, in science. Dark is just the description of the absence of light. There is no physical darkness in a shadow; it’s merely what happens when light is blocked off. Cold does not seep into your house, in fact, it does quite the opposite. Heat leeches out of your house. Cold is just what happens when particles slow down, and is the absence of heat. This is much the same way I view good and bad, bad being simply the absence of good. I like to think that there are no bad actions, no evil ones either. As a starting point, I view the worst imaginable, the actions without even the prospect of good, at the foot of a mountain. Each morsel of good adds a little to the height of the good. There is no measure of bad because it doesn’t exist. There’s only a measure of how good something is. It’s hard to climb up the mountain, to sacrifice what you want for the better good, but to reach even halfway to the peak of altruism is a great compliment. And that’s what doing good is supposed to feel like, like you just climbed a mountain and are looking over at the world for miles upon miles, like the world is yours.
Unfortunately, from my observation, people generally view the world in a much different manner. It would seem that as a general rule, people already sit upon this mountain. The peak is perfection, and anything less is a step down. Unlike how hard it is to climb up to good, it is increasingly easy to crash and to slide down to “bad.” People are so quick to point out every flaw something has, to drop it down further and further. How can anything seem good to a person who only ever notices the reasons why something isn’t perfect? When the occasion comes where a person openly acknowledges that a teacher did something well it has the strangest vibe to it. I’m likely to tune people who are complaining out, but when somebody is genuinely appreciative, it rings like a bell, almost shocking me. Even the news is constantly droning on about every single place in the world that is corrupt. Americans constantly whine about corruption, about debt, about recession, so much so that it’s sickening. Everybody is convinced that to be a politician is to be bad. There is no good in politics. There is no hope for the United States. Insert more negative bullshit. I can count the times people talked the government up on my fingers. I just don’t understand how we can live in possibly the best country with the best opportunities in the world and yet be so ungrateful and so whiney that we don’t have perfection. We’re humans running a government; it’s ridiculous to try to sit atop of a mountain and look down at the flaws that keep America from reaching the perfect “good” at the top with a scowl.
A person stands at the bottom of the mountain, pick in hand, backpack in tow, neck craned to see the top of the mountain. It’s pure beauty, and their heart swims at the thought of what it must look like up there. A lot of sacrifices have to be made to get up there. It will take every ounce of strength to leave selfishness behind. At some points the decreased air pressure with kill their ears. At some point the lack of oxygen will nearly asphyxiate them. At other points, their legs will begin to give out. Put they live for that thought of being on top, if only just for a second. They might slip in their resolve and give into resting for too long or gluttonizing. Put man, when they reach that top… Nobody is waiting up there for them to give them a pat on the back. Nobody is waiting to honor them with the mountain in their name. Nobody is cheering them on at the bottom. But in that moment, that moment when the pick hits the top, that moment when the foot aches to the last step, that moment when they look out on everything, they get a high in the most literal sense. They are rewarded with nothing more than the intoxicating and overwhelming knowledge or their accomplishment. It will be the most beautiful moment of their lives, knowing all the sacrifice that they traded over for just this brief high, so high they can barely keep breathing. The lack of oxygen impairs them from being able to sit there for hours. They’ll be back at the bottom before long. But that moment, that moment where they were rewarded by nobody except the pride they felt swelling within themselves, that’s where the beauty lies.
ReplyDeleteGood people win. Bad people win too. But there’s a difference. Good people win when they don’t care for the acknowledgement of others. If you’re good and reward yourself with happiness for the deeds you do, you win. If you don’t cheat, lie, and steal, and remain above all of that pettiness, the reward should be in knowing you did well. People too often need a physical representation, a prize, for their good deeds. If you don’t get the job because you were honest, but can’t feel happy in that you were good, then I have no pity. If you don’t steal and barely manage to get by, but are always angry with the world, I have no pity. Don’t do good to be recognized. The world doesn’t work that way. You want to know why? How can anybody recognize a good deed when the all is focused on the bad deeds? If people just looked beyond the bad things, they would have time to see the good. Let’s say 100 people were murdered today in The United States, and I have no idea how accurate that is because I don’t pay too much attention to negatives like that. What about the other 31,000,000? It’s awful that one hundred people died. But there’s so much beyond the terror, beyond the evil. The sacrifice people make every day is constantly overshadowed by the people sacrificed. And really, there seems to be no definitive right and wrong, but people seemed to have agreed there is a whole lot more than wrong than there is right. That’s easy to say, because it’s hard to do, to be right. But it’s worth it if you’ll accept self-gratification.
Dominique: First of all, I loved your entire blog post, and I couldn’t agree with it more. I was thinking about our news conversation in gym that we had the other day too as I was writing this, but that’s honestly what I believe. We focus all on the bad, and that’s where we’re all flawed. I obviously do too if I spent my blog post ranting about how people are so negative. And I’m so grateful we did that in Costal’s. It really opened my eyes too. It made me realized that I’m such an extremist. Those whole two periods I don’t think I stayed in the middle for more than 10 minutes. As far as the cheating thing goes, as much as that sucks I think it does even out eventually. Besides, if a person gets caught, it’s usually ten times worse than if they had just not studied and not cheated, so that’s always comforting!
ReplyDeleteKendall: You’re completely right in that nice guys finish last, but really only in a material sense. When you said Haley, “must be content,” that’s what I’m getting out. The prize of being nice isn’t tangible. It’s not a grade or a job. You only finish last in a race for the most possessions and money. As far as I’m concerned, that’s hardly a respectable race at all. I like nice stuff, but I wouldn’t want to have things that I didn’t feel that I worked hard for. The important race is one of morals and well-doing, and that’s a race where the nice guy always finishes first. That’s not the race that they televise, but it shouldn’t be televised, because good deeds aren’t so good when they’re still done out of selfishness. You should do good things to help others or remain honest. To get recognition would encourage kindness for recognition, which although isn’t as bad as “bad deeds,” isn’t the goal. I’m sure you finish first all the time in the race not televised.
Emily: Ah, the old “get over it.” YES. Cool, bad stuff happens, it doesn’t make people as a whole bad. Good stuff happens to. I mean really though, why didn’t you strangle him exactly? In Costal’s morality thing, I was on the extreme side of the library for the whole killing thing. I think killing in any possible situation is morally wrong, but it doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it. Honestly, I’m far too much of a wimp to every do it, but I don’t know if I wouldn’t have at least slapped this guy. You seemed pretty shocked though, so I GUESS that’s an excuse why you didn’t give him his karma. I guess bad people get away with stuff because good people let them. I never thought of that before. “Bad” people aren’t punished because good people are too good to hurt them…
Bad people are geniuses.
Ahh yet another time for me to use a Mac Miller reference. Ok here goes nothing.
ReplyDeleteJust as George met Winston from 1984, I met Mac Miller from the album "the high life." See after listening to Mac Miller for about three years now, I can understand his philosophies and I have come to have them as my own. Mac Miller had a song on "the high life" that changed my life forever. The song was entitled, Live Free. Mac Miller has a simple perspective on life, just as winston did, but his was the opposite. Everyone says the world is so bad, but does it have to be? Does the world have to be a place where everyone is fighting and everyone is upset and no one is happy? You only live once, why bring that pain and suffering onto yourself? Be happy; live free. I have come to realize, Mac Miller is right. Why is everything so bad? Because everyone makes it so bad. I love life the way it is and I would never have it any other way. I have found that this life HAS to be good, and you have to MAKE it good, because as far as we know, this is the only one we have. I understand that some people are starving and some people are fighting and we cant all get along, but I feel that it doesn't make the world a bad place, it just makes it not perfect. And quite obviously, nothing is perfect, but this is all we have so we might as well make it great.
Making life great is what I try to do every day. I try to make people laugh, and I always try to wear a smile. I think the more you smile, the more everyone else smiles, which in turn will make the world a better place. If I make one person smile, I win. I feel I've done my job and put someone in a better mood. I don't think the question should be, "what's right and what's wrong? what's good and what's bad?" I think the question should be, "Life is good, it could be worse, so how do I make it better?" Because life isn't about winning, or being right or wrong in my opinion. It's about having fun, and enjoying every second.
So I apologize for not really answering the question, but I don't agree with the question itself. Like I said, we shouldn't worry about who wins, or what's right or what's wrong, because everyone has their own definition of that stuff. However, I think everyone can agree that the world seems better when you smile. So I challenge you, langers, go make someone smile tomorrow, and maybe they'll make someone else smile. Hopefully, I wish to make the world smile. I want to change the world, and make it brighter with a smile. Maybe I'm being a little overly (insert word that describes the way I feel here because I can't think of one) but that's the way it goes.
Life is, as is often stated, unfair. However at the same time I
ReplyDeletecan’t stop myself from hoping that the good things in us-in humanity-are true.
I still believe in this, even after knowing all the horrible things that go on
in the world. A question often pondered over is “Are people mostly good or bad?”
Good question-it’s something I’ve asked myself a few times throughout my life.
I guess it depends on your opinion about what “good” and “bad” mean. I like to
think that most people are mostly good. I like to think that, given the chance,
people would do the “right thing”. There are points where this is a hard
viewpoint to have, as various people throughout the world continue to prove it
wrong as they kill, maim, threaten, kidnap, and spread hate. But if you think
about it, it is only a small percentage of people doing these things-as
otherwise we’d likely all be dead by now. I think the best way to describe how
I determine whether someone is mostly good or bad is a quote that I’ve heard
numerous times throughout my 17 years of life “how do you act when no one’s
watching?” However I also think it is important to take into consideration the
circumstances of the person. What is their definition of good and bad? Do they act in a way they consider to be good? What
are their motivations behind their actions? These are all important points to
consider.
Tony sat in his room, staring at his hands as he agonized over
right and wrong, and what exactly the difference was between them. He wonders
if people are all born good, then go bad, or if some people are just born
“bad”. He struggles to maintain his optimistic viewpoint taught to him by every
movie, TV show, and book he’s ever seen or read. Good is Good and Bad is Bad
and that is that…right?
Personally, I am not so innocent or naive to think that good
always triumphs over evil and that good people only get good things in life.
That sounds like the perspective of someone who has had a pretty good life and
considers themselves a good person. I can tell you right now that there are a
lot of good people out there in this big wide world that just get handed a bad
deal. It was nothing they did, just the fate of the world.
That doesn’t stop me from wondering the same thoughts Tony is
wondering.
Now the reason Tony is wondering these things at this very
moment, is that Tony did something bad. At least, by society’s standards. He
had stolen medicine from a pharmacy. The thing is, Tony didn’t steal these
drugs to sell them. He didn’t even steal them for his own benefit. He stole
them because his younger brother would have died without that medication, and
they didn’t have the money to pay for a hospital or doctor’s visit. So,
panicked, he did what he had to, and tried not to think about it.
Is Tony a bad person? Well, to answer that, you’d have to look
ReplyDeleteat what exactly qualifies as a bad person.
We did an exercise with Costal and Sera last year called ethics
alley. I think that that demonstrated the answer to this question better than
anything else I’ve witnessed in my life, which is that there is never a clear
cut answer about what’s right and what’s wrong. There are always conditions,
there are always motivations, there are always circumstances that make the
answer about whether something is good or bad fall into a gray area.
There is never a real way to answer how right and wrong is
measured. Each person sees different reasons to acceptably break the
fundamental views of society. Each person has their own limit of what is good
and bad, and often judges others based on that scale. However there is no way
to set a scale that can be universally used to measure what is good and what is
bad-leave that to Karma.
As far as whether a person who always does right wins, it
honestly depends on a person’s personality type. If you are the type of person
who feels rewarded without necessarily being awknowleged, then you are probably
a good candidate for being someone who always does right. Because while you may
always do right, chances are others won’t, or they will take advantage of your nature
to always do the right thing. I know people like this, and while they are
viewed as “good” people who “always do right” I can see that they are also
people who are stepped all over and taken advantage of, as they try to
constantly live up to the reputation they want from themselves, and the
reputation that other people know them for.
Cole: very entertaining. I found that this blog reminded me
a lot of your occasional paper. I, too, started to write my blog in regular
form before remembering it had to be a story (oh well). I like your irrelevant reference
to Animals-always appreciated.
Schulyer: I found myself completely unsurprised while
reading your blog. I found your story entertaining as well, although, I usually
find you entertaining, so I guess that isn’t a surprise either. Anyways, I completely
understand where you are coming from as far as your point about genetics, but
at the same time I want to clarify. Are you saying that a murderer is destined
to be a murderer, and no matter what happens in his life, that is who he’ll
be-all because of his genetics? Are you saying that our personalities are
formed before anything in life even happens to us? Just curious.
George: I always find your blogs to be really insightful. I
completely agree with pretty much everything in your second to last
paragraph-well said! I was thinking something similar while I was writing this
blog, but I don’t think I conveyed it as well as you did in this paragraph, so,
Kudos!
George: for as much as i completely disagreed with your post, I respected it. I'm glad I finally understand why you seem so pessimistic all the time. But it's weird, because the more I get to know you, the less pessimistic you really are. So it makes me wonder what you actually feel. Either way I respected your post and you gave me the idea on how to start mine so thank you sir.
ReplyDeleteMatt: I loved your story about Abe. It was a good way to interpret what is good and what is bad. I enjoyed reading your entire blog, and I believe you presented your information well. And I completely agree with you about right and wrong being objective. Because they are. Wrong to you is different from wrong to me. In the words of you, well done.
Connie: First off, I'm happy to see a fellow optimist. I also enjoyed your analogy from your class. However, I think some of those guys in the back did find what they were doing wrong. In fact, maybe all of them did. Because i know I at one point or another have been that kid in the back, and when I was, I felt awful afterwards. So maybe they do have a similar view as you, but dont have similar strength. But that would go against my whole blog.....So you're right!
Ashley: Well, murder isn't normal. This much is true. But sometimes crazy people show up, mental disorders are, most definitely, are in many cases something genetic. I suppose, basically, that some people can have a predisposition to murder in the same way that others have a predisposition to alcoholism, or something of that ilk. Can a normal person become a murderer after something traumatic has happened to them? Sure. Anyone can kill someone else. But are there certain people who have this predisposition to psychopathy or schizophrenia or all that good stuff because of genetics? Most definitely.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, I'd agree that a large part of our personality is determined at birth. Nature vs. nurture, kind of thing.
Comments:
ReplyDeleteTo Cole: Humorous as always Cole. I enjoyed the ridiculousness of the story you crafted that let you explain your ideas on the subject. I enjoyed the pauses for reflection; it added humor. Also the stabs you took against Congress in terms of the pizza-vegetable thing and the SOPA and NDAA. That brought a smile to my face. In terms of the intellectual aspect of your post; I feel similarly that “good/bad and right/wrong” are not clear cut and depend on various circumstances.
To Schuyler: Beautiful job Schuyler. It was truly a magnificent post in terms of your imagery and flow. I haven’t read something this good in a while actually. Anyway, what I really enjoyed was the unusual mode from which you told the story—acting as a all-knowing God. The story you crafted about human fallibility and society’s ignorant tendencies in the context of the whole “burning capital” and “God visiting Earth” scenarios was brilliant and adequately allowed you to display your thought explicitly and implicitly. It must be in your Genes.
To George: You took a more political approach to this question of good and bad, which I enjoyed. Your reference to 1984 I thought was well done in terms of displaying your views and beliefs. The things you said about people trying to speak up being suppressed is very accurate in our modern society. The example I think of is the situation with Julian Assange with Wikileaks and his house arrest. Is what he doing right? Well, that’s for the individual to decide, and unfortunately those with the most power decide such fates. Overall, your blog post was enjoyable and relatable to my views.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Kristen. She had two best friends, Kevin and Ryan. They were juniors in high school. All of them were great students, participated in many activities, and well liked by everyone. Kristen’s dad is a rock climber. One day, in a terrible accident, Kristen’s dad fell 200 feet off a mountain. He was in the hospital and needed surgery to make a full recovery. However, the surgery cost $200,000 and Kristen’s family did not have the money. Kristen thought long and hard about this and decided she would rob a bank to pay for her dad’s surgery. After much convincing, Kevin and Ryan went along with her elaborate plan. They robbed the bank successfully and Kristen was able to pay for her dad’s surgery. Is Kristen a bad person for robbing the bank and stealing other people’s money? And are Kevin and Ryan as well?
ReplyDeleteI don’t think so. Good people do bad things. In Kristen’s case, she had reasonable intention to rob a bank. It wasn’t for her own personal gain, but for a family member in need. However, the process of robbing a bank gives requires people to steal money from other people. And stealing is considered “bad” in today’s society. People’s morals can be broken or twisted sometimes. Kristen probably knew stealing from other people was a bad thing to do, but she justified it in her own mind and believed it was the right thing to do.
What I’m trying to say is, people have different views on what’s right and what’s wrong. Everyone makes decisions based on what they believe what’s right and wrong. People may see stealing a harmless pack of gum from Wal-Mart as not a big deal, but I don’t have the same view. But if I was starving to death and I could probably get away with it, things might be a little different. Circumstances are everything.
With all of the terrible people in the world and terrible things happening, it’s hard not to be pessimistic. However, I find time in my schedule to be optimistic as much as I can. I can’t live my life thinking about all the depressing stuff that goes on in the world. Of course, bad stuff happens, and I find myself back in the “disgusted at the world” state of mind. I really try to believe that “Good guys finish first.” But bad things happen to good people. I really don’t know why this works and I can’t change anything about it. But who says good things don’t happen to good people as well? I like to focus on the positives. Good guys don’t always finish last.
Mikey B: Yeah I agree, my view of the world changes depending upon my mood. Whenever I’m pissed off or depressed, I have no hope for the world or my own well being. But I try to be as optimistic as possible. I’m not going to be in a bad mood forever.
ReplyDeleteAshley: I told a similar story in my post. Tony’s probably a good person who did a bad thing. People don’t always have bad intentions in my mind. It’s just that whatever the circumstances are, morals can be put aside for a second. This is why I believe there can’t be a straightforward explanation of what’s right or wrong. People have different views.
Olivia: I like your last statement. I don’t believe most people are truly good people, even if they think of themselves as good people. They have flaws and can make bad decisions every once in a while.
Good always wins in the battle against evil. Tell me the last Disney movie you saw where the bad guy was triumphant in the end. Yeah, you're having the same trouble i was. There aren't any. The world is so optimistic in displaying how good always trumps evil. But in reality, this never happens. Those bad guys USUALLY will come out on top. I hate that it is that way and i wish it wasn't that way, but most of the time it is. These people have more money, more power, less heart, less sympathy; all a perfect concoction for a villain.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks ago, me and my mom were driving out of Walmart and a man asked for us to stop as we talk the back way out past the left of Toys R Us. This man asked for us to roll down the window and requested some money. He said his car had broken down and his wife was with him and he needed about eight dollars for gas. He very well could've been lying and could've went and bought drugs or alcohol with that money, but my mom happily gave him money and asked if he needed more. The man continued to thank her and thank her and bless her, it showed how grateful this man was. As we drove away, my mom told me, I hope that man was sincere and truthful because if he was, something good will come back around for us. She said who knows when, where or why but it'll go back around.
This optimism is beautiful and i believe it's present in everyone, now if it shows, well that's up to them.
Bobby- This may only make sense to a select few in this cohort, but what you said about me today on the swim page was awesome, i was so excited to see how proud everyone was of me, but especially you, and i even read my mom what you said. You might not be making the whole world smile, but you got a few over here.
ReplyDeleteConnie- As I read your post and got to the part where you started to explain your story, even before you described the "cheaters" i remembered how i used to write the table on the inside of the desk. When i read a few lines later that you talked about it, i was cracking up! I guess you weren't so fond of me for that though.
George-It's strange i don't envision you as someone who would get emotionally attached to anything, let alone a fictional character.
Hi, i'm Hira and i am a pessimist. I haven't always thought this way, i used to think about how beautiful the world was and how amazing the people in it were too. But let's be honest, the world sucks and a great amount of people who live in it are terrible. They are cruel and mean and just horrible. Sure there are some people out there that are amazing and always do the right thing. But there is no grand prize for that. You don't get rewarded for being a good person. No, instead other people who don't deserve it usually do. Like Kendall said, All the Kyle's of the world usually get rewarded. I hope my story can help explain.
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time in a place far far away there was a man named....(let's call him Adam) Adam. He never lived for himself, only for others from the minute he was born. (not really the exact minute) When he was a child he did everything to please his family. He thought that if he kept his family happy, life would be good to him. (He thought wrong) He soon became a lawyer because his father always dreamed of having a son that was a lawyer. Quickly after, he met a woman that he thought was the "perfect" woman for so many reasons. He married her and had two kids...that was just the start. He wanted to provide a great life full of freedom for this woman and his children so he moved all the way from (hmmmm let's say France) France to America. He always thought about the needs of others because he strongly thought that if he treated people well, he would receive the same treatment. When he came to America he obviously couldn't be a lawyer anymore without going to college once again. He thought about it, but to him supporting his family was more important. So get got two jobs at two different restaurants. People there treated him terribly because he was from a different country. His boss shot him dirty looks on a daily basis. He also treated his other workers better because of their race. So Adam's coworker, John (another man who treated Adam terribly) got promoted while Adam stayed at the same position for years. But Adam still took all of the insults with nothing but a gentle and innocent smile. His goodness didn't stop there. This man also gave to charity regularly. He worked fourteen hours a day to make sure his family had everything they needed and to make sure he some for the people back home. He didn't care that by the end of the day he would have blisters on his feet and sharp pain all over his body, he always came home with a smile on his face to make sure no one saw the pain underneath his mask. His pain didn't end there, he had a few more challenges. His wife was an epileptic who was also undergoing depression. He also dealt with that with nothing but a smile even if it was killing him. Fast forward a few years. Now life had thrown him a new challenge. His fourth child was born mentally challenged. Do you want to guess how he took that? You guessed it, with a smile. Even 6 years later after this child was born, Adam (who is now at a very old age) is still working two jobs while taking care of his mentally challenged daughter and 3 other children. Well four, if you count his wife.
What i am trying to say is that, it doesn't matter how much good you do, life is still going to treat you like shit. Adam devoted his entire life to doing good by the people near him, but nothing ever went right. Yes, i truly do believe that there are some really good people out there like Adam who are one-in-a-million. But life does not reward those people, instead rewards are given to people like John. Life is unfair, and we can't change that.
Garrett: That's really nice of your mom, honestly i would be too afraid to roll down the window for anyone. But i am just paranoid about that kind of stuff. I think it's really sweet that your mom has influenced the way that you think.
ReplyDeleteNyamekaye: I like how your blog pointed out the fact that life is not full of rainbows and kittens. I understand what your story was trying to say and i actually wonder the same thing about the whole death penalty thing. It doesn't make sense to me either.
Connie: I think it is really great that you can look at life and see the good in it. I wish i could be like that sometimes. But there is just so much bad at times and it just outweighs the good.
Since last night was the first night of Hanukkah and all, I’ll tell everyone here my version of a story I once read as a script.
ReplyDelete100 or so years ago, there was a grumpy man named Scroogemacher. He was so grumpy that every year when Hanukkah came around, he would not let his workers leave early to light the menorah with their kids, nor did he ever give holiday bonuses. On one particular Hanukkah his life would change forever.
That night he was visited by 3 people, the Rabbi of Hanukkah past, present, and future. The Rabbi of Hanukkah past brought him back in time to when the great Maccabees fought the Romans to drive them away from the Temple. The Rabbi of Hanukkah present brought Scroogemacher to the home of Goldstein, one of Scroogemacher’s employees. Poor Goldstein is trying to support a family through the holidays who all have post nasal drip or allergies, the family was poor as could be, but Scroogemacher never knew about the tragedy that beset them before. The Rabbi of Hanukkah future brought Scroogemacher forward in time to see his funeral, to Scroogemacher’s surprise there was nobody there. The Rabbi that was supposed to lead the ceremony didn’t even show up.
You’re probably wondering what happened to Scroogemacher. Well, he went back to his own house once Rabbi of Hanukkah future was done and wept. He never realized how self-centered he was. Scroogemacher decided that the only thing there was to do was to make amends with everyone. So where does this end our hero? No, he doesn’t get a wife to call him Buppalah, nor does he start a family of his own. However, he begins to build family relationships with all of the people whom he used to care less for.
I guess it doesn’t take much to figure out where I fall within the spectrum of how terrible the world is. Everyone knows me for my optimism and for the most part can tell that I would believe that the world is filled with goodness. Obviously there are people out there who are exceptions to the rule. These type of people are the ones who’s outlooks are so negative that they form obstacles for everyone else. However, I’m not in the mindset that the world is “out to get me.” Whoever sticks with that mindset will live life miserably and with the incapabilities of enjoyment. People like me who are positive attract positive people to them and experience what I consider to be the best life they can possibly have.
Isn’t that how people become “good” or “bad?” Think about it for a second. If you consider yourself a good person (which I believe almost every person in this class is), then look around at the people that you hang out with. Aren’t they all half decent people? If you associate yourself with people who are bad, who do not think out their own actions, and who don’t care about the destruction that they cause, then won’t you eventually end up doing one foul act after another? Heck, that’s the reason why I surrounded myself with the greatest people that I possibly could. I may not be extremely popular or “cool,” but I definitely have set myself up to be successful in life and I’ve found friends who I know will let me lean on them if I need it.
ReplyDeleteNow here’s the thing, Green Day got it right when they said that “Nice Guys Finish Last.” Half-right, that is. The person who is so nice that they allow others to take advantage of him is the one who finishes last. However, if a person is good to others and are wise enough to know how to help themselves as well, then that person will be successful in life.
I can’t really say what is right and what is wrong. There are so many ethical bridges to cross when different circumstances are created. I can, however state the one rule that I give myself whenever I do something. Do not stand in the way of another person’s success. I strongly believe that “bad” people are those who spend their life creating obstacles for others and that everyone should be able to strive for whatever goal it is they want to achieve. In the process of abiding by this rule I end up helping others to achieve their goals and other’s typically return the favor. This being said, there may not be a measurement of good and bad, but there is definitely a time in which one person crosses a border that will then affect the lives of others.
~Michael Giovinco
P.S. I would just like to make sure that everyone knows that even though I have a positive outlook on life I also understand the reality of the world. To offset the negative aspects of life I just simply surround myself with good things that will always leave me in a positive circumstance, no matter how negative the opposing circumstances are.
To George: Well I guess that if you want to be able to understand what good and bad is, you must figure out if you consider yourself to be a good or a bad person. I also believe that there are not necessarily more bad people out there. You may see more bad people because they tend to be more vociferous. I guess my advice to you is to look a bit harder for those who are “good,” they are a lot more common than you think.
ReplyDeleteTo Kendall: I hope that by the end of the year I can show you the reasons as to why you should go back to your optimistic self. I’ll just start here for now. The story of Haley may seem to be a harsh truth. I think that if Haley would reach out to a group of friends who are good at heart like her, then she can work towards that A+ that Seth has and remain with the amazing feeling of hard work and dedication that Seth will never know. I’m also sure that in the future when the tasks get harder, Haley will be used to working hard and will prosper, but Seth will fall helplessly.
To Mikey: I know that your answer would be different on a different day, but I have to disagree with your current one. The world is fair. Nothing is handed to anyone, no matter how nice they are. In order to get wherever you want in the world you just need to put a lot of hard work into it and to find others who support you. There are plenty of good people to help you fight your battles against the bad ones. I would also like to say that the fault lies within those who gambled in your story because they supported the bad deed of the con. The con was of course at fault for devising the trick, but to be fooled by it many times shifts the fault onto the gamblers.
When it comes right down to it, people are mostly bad. I hate to say it, but it’s true! We’re born with purely bad qualities – if by bad you mean greedy, selfish, self-serving, and purposefully deleterious. Child psychologists, at the very least, can confirm this as fact; our evolutionary instincts tell us to lie, cheat, and steal. Haven’t you ever wondered why, in our youth, we have to be TAUGHT to always tell the truth, always share, and always try to emulate the ways of the Lord Jesus (assuming everyone else went to Bible school like I did)?
ReplyDeleteNo human being has ever molded every single one of their actions PURELY out of respect for others (although some, for the record, have tried really, really hard). Surely, there currently exist multitudes of philanthropists, humanitarians, and government officials (ha!) that attempt to act in the way that their peers would expect them to act. However, for every Bill Gates (a billionaire who built an empire on creativity and donates a huge amount of his money to charity regularly) there’s a Pat Robertson (a millionaire who built an empire on deceit and ignorance and donates exactly zero percent of his money to charity). On the other hand, there are some things Bill Gates has done that can be considered “bad” (Windows Vista, anyone?) and some things Pat Robertson has done that can be considered “good” (like … er … making people feel better, I guess). There’s some bad in all of us, and while we eventually learn to be good, the badness is what frames our individual growth.
As far as the concept of the goodness of the universe cancelling out the badness, I’ll have to disagree. There’s no Law of Thermodynamics when it comes to karma. Good won’t always prevail over evil – and when it does, there’s no telling when evil will regain its hold. There’s no “prize” for being right, only for being strong (mentally and physically). The matter of whether goodness and badness are objectively quantifiable serves no purpose in a world in which we can at least be sure that evil EXISTS in some way, shape, or form.
Sorry about all the capitalization; I’m feeling rather emphasis-oriented and Blogger doesn’t support italics.
"So I think tonight is the last time we will hang out. Have fun at Shawn's. Deuces."
ReplyDeleteShe stared at the text message, not knowing whether to be upset or angry or what the appropriate action was. What just happened?
Asking herself that, the anger came rolling in hard. What had just happened was she had forgiven someone for a rather despicable offense. She at one point trusted said someone with her personal life, but when she needed them most, they deserted her. Now, months later, after accepting this person back into her life, he calls her a bad person and then comes to the conclusion he never wants to see her again. After the hurt that he put her through, and her finding the goodness to forgive him, he didn't appreciate any of it.
So she's sitting on her boyfriend's bed, complaining about how unfair the entire situation is and what a douchebag this guy is and how upset and angry and completely astonished she is that he could turn out be even more of a jerk than she originally thought. And her boyfriend is staring at the TV, pretending to be sympathetic but really just wondering when she's going to shut up, and if it will coincide with a commercial break, because that would be the ideal time to try and "get it in".
Of course, she's oblivious to her boyfriend's thought process, and when she does eventually calm down, she accepts his gestures of what she perceives as romance. She thinks to herself "At least I have Shawn. Someone to prove to me that not everyone is as bad as they seem on the outside. Someone who can change. Someone who is proof that people make mistakes, but they learn and grow."
Because, just as she had given her friend a second chance, she had given Shawn many second chances (and third, fourth, fifth chances), always believing that there was something else he had to offer. One single action can't define a person, right? Multiple actions of a distasteful nature can't define a person, right?
...Right?
Month's later, after hundreds of second chances to a handfull of people, the realization hits her. Rushes up and tackles her, knocking her breath and everything she once knew right out of her. She's wrong. Not all people are genuinely good on the inside. People don't always have good intentions. People don't mean what they say. Actions CAN define a person.
Of course, she doesn't have this epiphany until she finds herself in this dark abyss, no light to guide her, and even if there was... where is there to go from here? But out in the real world, full of laughter and life and color are the people who caused her so much pain. Those who threw her down here without care for how or where she might land. They are out there. On top. On top of the world.
In this dark hole, there isn't a whole lot to do. She reflects a lot. On everything. After all, her only company is her mind. And her conscience. They have a decent relationship, she starts to wonder though, is having any relationship with it good? Because it seems a characteristic of those out on top of the world don't have a conscience at all.
And so she curls in a ball, comforted by the blanket of darkness. She knows this is where she belongs. It's what she gets for being wrong for so long, for not learning sooner that everything she once perceived as good, is actually the opposite. Being nice is being stupid. Compassion is wasted energy. Time on others is time that should be spent on yourself. Because what is "good" will not be good for YOU in the end. Remember, a conscience is a characteristic of the abyss.
People have motives behind every one of their actions. This goes back to a previous blog post we did and I stated that when an a cashier, for example, says, "Have a nice day," he/she usually isn't doing so to be considered a nice guy. He/she usually does so to try and gain ground on their coworkers and look like a better employee.
ReplyDeleteCommunity service is a great example for that point. As a high school student, I know a numerous amount of people who need to complete hours of community service for whatever club/activity they're doing. How many of these people are philanthropists because they enjoy doing so?(As far as high school students go) I don't believe that 10% of them honestly like community service. Very few adults volunteer nowadays. Being a lazy student that enjoys laying in bed and watching TV after school, I can unfortunately say that I wasn't a fan of volunteering for NJHS at Davies. I'm not saying that the majority of people who don't volunteer should be labeled as "bad" people. However, it goes back to my opening sentence. People have motives. If I am accepted into NHS in a few months, I'm hoping I can see what community service actually is: helping people because you want to, and not because you have to.
I am a huge pessimist. There will always be war in the world and there will always be hatred in the world. People are always letdown because they were "too" optimistic in situations. In my opinion, you can't go on living life hoping that in the end, every thing will be perfect and just how you want it to be. It's okay to think this every once in awhile to have a feeling of hope. But living every day of life sets people up for failure and the feeling of being let down.
I can't say whether people are "mostly" good or bad because I feel it's such a vague question. People are influenced by their surrounding as a child and who they grow up around. If someone grows up surrounded by alcohol/drugs, there's a good chance that this person may be around those things as they become adults. It all depends on where you grow up because every part of the world has a different outlook on life.
Dan the Mann: I loved your post and wish I were as great a writer as you. I sometimes wish that I was a bit more optimistic. I just don't feel as if in the end, everything will work out, because it doesn't.
Kendall: Your example was perfect for this blog. It happens everyday in school, and being in the classes we are, goals are of up-most importance. It's funny that we were just talking about your example in study hall this week, and here you are writing it as your blog!
Garret: I think your comment relating to Disney movies isn't quite true. In theory, I see where you're coming from. In reality, Disney is company that wants to appeal to children. Why would they make movies that have the bad guy coming out on top in the end. For the matter, it's not just Disney. I can't recall a movie in which the "evil" guy ends up winning. I don't think this is a view of optimism in the world, rather, just appealing to what people want to see.
Nick: See, I feel like all those qualities that you say, the bad ones, are in everyone individually, but people as a race aren't that bad. Does that make sense? I mean, greed is evolutionarily instilled, but so is altruism. I guess I think you're being a bit too pessimistic.
ReplyDeleteCole: Gosh, I feel bad for always commenting on yours. Stop getting cocky. I know you are right now. SO MANY COMMENTS ALL FOR YOU.
ReplyDeleteOkay, anyway, this was great. I loved the abstract thought process and how you made the discontinuous topics all mesh and flow together. It was fun to read, but better yet, interesting to read into.
Amber: The relation of good and evil and hot and cold is excellent. That's just a really great way to look at life I think, that evil only exists in the absence of good.
Mike G: I went through a phase where I didn't hang out with the best people. Actually, I don't want to call it a phase. It wasn't a phase. It was a part of my life. Anyway. Those people participated in some unfavorable actions more often than not, however, they are still some of the greatest people I have ever met or spent time with. Also, the entire time we hung out, I never engaged in the actions myself, and never felt inclined to, and I think that's why I try to put more stock in who people are on the outside versus whatever they may do outwardly, because people who do stupid things don't have to be stupid people, and they don't have to cause those around them to do the same.
George: Love the 1984 reference. I do relate to the feeling you had after reading the book. Like Cole said, it did not have as profound of an impact on me. But I do remember the intense feeling of disconnection.
ReplyDeleteMikey B: I'll take the liberty of answering your question. The police are the bad guys for not allowing either man to continue their innocent game of chance. The cheating man is not evil, just ingenious.
Schuyler: I laughed, I cried. You win. Good day sir.
Let me begin by boldly stating that the words “good” and “bad” can never accurately be applied to human beings. I won’t pretend I know all that much about the world, given that I’ve lived here for only a measly seventeen years, but of two things I am certain: there is no good, and there is no bad. People are far too complex to fall into either of these two categories.
ReplyDeleteSo-called bad people are capable of benevolence, while so-called good people occasionally commit the most heinous of actions. I wouldn’t say that there aren’t people in this world who possess not an ounce of magnanimity, but these rare cases of black and white are the exception, not the rule.
“Right” and “wrong” make up another pair of virtually meaningless words. Take me, for example. When asked the question of whether or not killing animals for meat is okay, my moral compass firmly points to no. But this is MY belief. However unyieldingly I may stand in this conviction, I recognize that this isn’t something I share with most people. I both recognize and respect that most others do not see anything wrong with killing animals for the purpose of making yummy food. As long as their bacon cheeseburger comes with extra cheese and no pickles, most of the people around me have no problem with the meat industry. Because of my morals, for me to eat animals would be wrong, but according to most other people’s morals, there is absolutely nothing wrong with eating animals.
Everyone has a different set of beliefs that, as a whole, is unique to them. So how can anyone condemn someone else as “wrong”? Maybe the one you see as immoral is perfectly moral in his or her own eyes. This is why we should never try to paint the world in black and white when so many colors inevitably exist. Our judgments of the righteousness of others’ actions and decisions will always, to some other perspective, be inaccurate. For this reason, in the midst of standing firmly in our own convictions, we should acknowledge that people around us are also standing firmly in their own convictions. While you’re patting yourself on the back for being so morally conscious and “right”, everyone around you is doing the same, but with a different set of beliefs.
Exaggerated pessimism irks me, but exaggerated optimism leaves me skeptical. If I had to choose, I’d say that my ideals are slightly more on the optimistic side of the spectrum. But this is often only because I choose to be optimistic. I tend to associate pessimism with despair and optimism with blithe. Since people are never really “right”, why not be wrong and happy, rather than wrong and depressed?
One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone refers to themselves as “not an optimist, not a pessimist, but a realist.” There are no realists. Every point of view is just that: a POINT of view, meaning there is an infinite number of points of view that make up the spectrum of what is real. There can be no realists simply because there can be no “right” opinion. Perceiving oneself as realistic only proves how unrealistic their perception of realism really is. Really.
If somebody would of asked me these questions about two years ago, my answers would be completely different. The world is a dark place filled with jerks, assholes, cheaters, and liars. Honestly I'm starting to truly believe that the world is heartless. Yes, there are a few genuinely nice and sweet people who have good hearts, but there's not enough. The bad definitiely outweighs the good; sad to say. I wish I could say that I knew tons of kind people who are just nice for no reason, but I don't. I also think that the answer to any of these questions sort of depends on where you yourself fall in the spectrum of the world. The people I interact with and even those I do not interact with make this clear to me everyday. I wish I could be less pessimistic, but nope until a bunch of sweethearts change my opinion, that's not going to happen. The person that does right doesn't always win, it sucks but it's the truth. Maybe they will be repaid in the future, but in my eyes the good guy doesn't always win, the good guy always gets hurt in the process. There's also no clear cut answers about what is right and what is wrong. I think part of it comes from individual interpretation, and the rest comes from a sense of morality and good judgement or character. And like I said early, not many people have genuinely good character.
ReplyDeleteI showed my mother the blog for tonight and she actually told me the perfect story that describes my ideal reference to a good person. She told me that my dad and herself were watching the news last night together, true story. One day, a young woman and her daughter travel to K-Mart to pay off all their fees from leaving gifts on lay-away. The young woman worked very hard to get the money in order to pay for all of her items. Let's remember it is Christmas time, a hectic time for everyone out there rushing around from the busy road ways to the the several busy stores. The young woman arrives to the counter with her money in her hands. The cashier friendly smiles and asks, "How can I help you?" The woman tells her that she would like to pick up her gifts. The cashier looks up her name in the computer and all of her gifts and presents were already completely paid for. The woman was shocked and did not understand, but left the store with all of her belongings thankfully. Her and her daughter were ecstatic and filled with joy. Little did they know that some random kindhearted person has been going to local stores and paying off people's fees in lay-away debt. This man was later known as one of many of the "secret santas."
I found this story amazing. I personally think that is the most generous and kind thing anyone could do for someone else, and at that a complete stranger. This story completely explains my view on the world and its people. The world is mostly dark, but there are a few bright people who out shine the darkness and evil. I love these people. They make living worth while. Help people, make people happy, and never be selfish. I may not do all these things successfully although I try, but these so-called "secret santas" that are out there helping and relieving several families are doing good deeds that deserve to be apprieciated. That was something that truly touched and warmed my heart tonight, so I hope it could warm some of you as well. :)
KENDALL: I find it so interesting that your view of the world changed too, and I can definitely see it in your personality. I loved your Hailey and Seth examples too, I can relate to that.
ReplyDeleteMIMI: hahaa! I absolutely cracked up at your drug dealer story. I always find your posts insightful and they make me think about your message after reading it.
HIRA: Hi, my name is Chelsi and I am also a pessimist. I think we should start a club! :) lol Hira, I think you, me, and Kendall should get together and have a talk about the view of the world. I completely agree that the people who usually get rewarded are the wrong ones, but I enjoyed your story.
Dom: I, too, am enraged by the idea of someone with no regard for hard work achieving the same academic success as someone who cares deeply about their work and proves it every day. But it's not the people who do this that make me sick. Rather, it's the system itself. After all, we all want to succeed. We all do what we can to get ahead. Everyone's morals are different, and maybe some people don't see cheating as immoral.
ReplyDeleteOlivia: I love your post this week. It's true that life doesn't care about us sometimes. We receive hardship on top of hardship, adversity on top of adversity. Bad things often happen to good people. That's just the way it is, and the way it always will be. On a lighter note, you're right about flipping a tragedy around to see the positive. One of the most vital skills a person can have is the ability to stand up from such a fall, and to regain their vision of the beauty in the world.
Mikey: I liked how you say your perspective changes. I mean, I think that's how everyone feels, but they just choose to categorize themselves as optimist or pessimist. Your story about the man is interesting, too. Meh, the police were wrong to step in, I suppose. People should be less gullible. Besides, what's wrong with charity?
ReplyDelete