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Jul. 7th, 2005 12:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nockergeekOver the last couple of days, we have all been reminded that people can be very heartless, both online and offline.
I tried coming up with something profound to put here, but it ended up sounding pithy and worn; profundity has never been my strong suit. Instead, I'll just say this - we're all capable of good and evil, right and wrong, but we shouldn't lose hope in the "good" and "right" sides of the equation. Even if one person has done something terrible, it's important to try to keep faith that the next person over isn't the same. It's a hard, hard struggle sometimes, and I'm guilty of backsliding myself on many occasions, but it's a struggle that's worth fighting, I think. As a species, we tend to balance out in the end, even if we tend to hear more about the negatives.
Okay, that still sounds pithy and worn, but it's how I feel.
I tried coming up with something profound to put here, but it ended up sounding pithy and worn; profundity has never been my strong suit. Instead, I'll just say this - we're all capable of good and evil, right and wrong, but we shouldn't lose hope in the "good" and "right" sides of the equation. Even if one person has done something terrible, it's important to try to keep faith that the next person over isn't the same. It's a hard, hard struggle sometimes, and I'm guilty of backsliding myself on many occasions, but it's a struggle that's worth fighting, I think. As a species, we tend to balance out in the end, even if we tend to hear more about the negatives.
Okay, that still sounds pithy and worn, but it's how I feel.
How the world really works
on 2005-07-07 08:19 pm (UTC)But at the same time, there's countervailing evidence that people do care, that one person will think kindly of another, and that love does in fact exist.
As I mentioned--goodness and badness is not uniformly distributed. Like the stars in the sky, it's lumpy. Some people are just clusters of badness, while others are tight bundles of goodness. Think Sadam Hussein and Mother Teresa. Even in his badness, the one wants things to be the way they were when Ronald Reagan was in office, while the other, even in her saintliness, had doubts about her place in God's scheme.
Badness seems to be more attractive, because it's more interesting. Why else is it dramatic tension, conflict, struggle, that makes movies and plays interesting? Why is it the villain that actors want to play? Why is the fatally flawed protagonist the interesting character in literature? And why do so many people continue to follow after charlatans who aren't good for them, by any objective standard? We love the good, but seek after the bad, I guess.
Still, fight for the good, loath the bad--there has to be some reason to get up in the morning.
Old man