Month: November 2021

Have you ever heard the phrase “He did that terrible thing, but otherwise he is a good person”? What can cause otherwise good people to do bad things?

Emotional distress could cause an otherwise good person to do something bad that causes harm to somebody else. When a person is in a state of emotional distress, whether it be anger, fear or some other strong emotion, the person can lose control and do things that that person would not normally do. For example, let us say you have been working very hard on your masterpiece Lego structure for a very long time. Just when you are almost finished with your masterpiece, someone knocks it down by some act of negligence. You lose your temper in the heat of the moment, attack him. Does that mean you are a bad person? Not necessarily. You simply acted out during a point of weakness where your emotions got the best of you. As you calm down, you may feel regret for what you did.

Manipulation and deception are other factors that can cause otherwise good people to do bad things. We have heard of religious cults that manipulate and deceive people into doing some bad things “for their god.”

Still another factor that can cause good people to do bad things is mental illness. However, a bad deed committed by a mentally ill person can still be a manifestation of his/her true character. The reason is that a mentally ill person can still have evil intentions.

To determine whether an evil act is a representation of one’s true character, ask the following questions:

1) Was the person perfectly calm when he/she committed the evil deed?
2) Was there evidence that the person was being manipulated or deceived?
3) Does the person know full well what he/she is doing?
4) Did the person feel true remorse afterwards?

Note that somebody may have influenced the person into committing the bad deed, but influence is not the same as manipulation. Also note that people can pretend to feel remorse when they do not; but if the person doesn’t show signs of remorse, then chances are that there is no remorse.

Television Examples

On television we can see examples of good people doing bad things and bad people doing bad things. When Anakin Skywalker’s mother dies in his arms, Anakin becomes very angry and heartbroken. In his anger and heartbreak, he proceeds to kill men, women and even children with his lightsaber. Is this a representation of Anakin’s true character? While Anakin does end up turning to the dark side, at the time Anakin was still good. He only committed these murders because he was intensely angry and upset. Furthermore, Anakin shows remorse afterwards, lamenting over what he had done, and recognizing how bad it was.

The terrible deeds that Anakin does as Darth Vader are a representation of his true character as Darth Vader. They happen after Anakin converts to the dark side, and is no longer a good person. Darth Vader is perfectly calm when he does evil deeds, and he does not show remorse afterwards. One could say he is under the influence of the emperor, but Darth Vader is not being manipulated or deceived. He knows full well what he is doing, and he can decide to abandon his allegiance to the emperor anytime. Of course, Darth Vader does eventually turn good again, but that is because people’s character can change over time. This is good news because it means that when someone is a bad person, it is possible for him/her to become good.

In the 1990s Merlin TV series, Merlin convinces Sir Lancelot to deceive the King of Camelot into believing that he is of noble birth when he is not so that he can become one of the king’s knights. Sir Lancelot initially rejects Merlin’s offer to help him to deceive the king, but he eventually goes along with the plan because he wants to be a knight so badly. In this scenario, we have two people—Merlin and Sir Lancelot—pulling off a deceptive scheme to deceive the king so that Sir Lancelot can get what he wants.

This deceptive scheme is a representation of Merlin’s true character. Merlin is perfectly calm when he comes up with the scheme and pushes Sir Lancelot to go along with it. Merlin certainly is not being manipulated. He came up with the scheme himself, and any regret that Merlin feels afterwards is most likely because the scheme had failed and the king found out that Sir Lancelot is not of noble birth. Sir Lancelot, however, does show genuine remorse for going along with the scheme to deceive the king. He believes that he is not worthy to be one of the king’s knights, and so he leaves. The deceptive scheme, therefore, is much less of a representation of Sir Lancelot’s true character than it is of Merlin’s character.

The one cockroach

If you see a cockroach scurrying across your kitchen floor, do you think that that one cockroach is the only one in your house? People who have had bug infestations know that when you see a member of an invasive insect species on your kitchen floor, there are going to be numerous other ones hidden somewhere.

The same applies when a person does a bad deed, and we have reason to believe that the bad deed was done out of his/her true character. The bad deed is a manifestation of evil inside of a person’s heart. If the person has proven him/herself capable of that one bad deed, then you can bet there are other bad deeds he/she is capable of doing too.

Good Person Bad Person Shades of Gray

Even when we admit that there is evil inside of the heart of someone close to us, we still want to believe that he/she is “not a bad person” and is instead “a good person overall.”

While the Bible presents a clear definition of good person and bad person (referred to in the Bible as the righteous and the wicked), outside of the Bible, the definition of the “good person” versus “bad person” is fuzzy. Rather, the definition of good person and bad person is in the form of a spectrum with good person at one end and bad person at the other end.

Tall person and short person also are on a spectrum where at one end of the spectrum are people who are definitely tall, on the other end are people who are definitely short, and in between are people who are, for example, considered tall in some circles of people and considered average height in other circles of people.

Many people would say that you are a good person if there is a lot of good in you and not too much bad. Perhaps we are a good person as long as we are more the 50% good and less than 50% bad.

Some people do not want to believe that one of their loved ones is bad. For example, a mother may not want to believe that her son is a bad person even if he does a lot of bad things and with bad intentions. As long as she sees at least some good in him, she will tell herself that he is a good person, even if there may be more bad in him than good. The problem is that if we define someone as good as long as there is at least some good in him/her, then the “good person” label does not mean much anymore. After all, pretty much everybody has at least some good in him/her—even cold-blooded killers.

In my opinion, the definition of a good person is one who, on a consistent basis, makes an honest attempt to do what is right. At points of weakness, a good person may give into the temptation to do something wrong; but he/she would then feel some remorse afterwards and try to do better next time.

Forgiveness is a return to a state of inner peace after one has perceived a wrong done against him/her. When we forgive another person who has wronged us, we no longer feel negative emotions towards that person. We are no longer upset about what he/she has done to us. We have accepted what has happened, and we are ready to move on.

When we forgive somebody, it does not necessarily mean we continue to have a relationship with the person. Sometimes someone’s bad deed is a representation of his/her true character. In other words, the bad deed may indicate something about the person’s true character that we did not know before. This new information about the person’s true character may give us reason to permanently terminate our relationship with this person.

What forgiveness also does not mean is ceasing to recognize the other person’s actions as wrong. As long as the other person’s actions are wrong, you should always recognize those actions as wrong no matter how long ago those actions took place. Time does not make a wrong less wrong. What time can do is heal. While you should always recognize the wrongdoing as wrong, you still can emotionally heal, stop feeling angry and resentful, and return to a state of inner peace.

Sometimes the other person we are forgiving does not feel remorse for the bad deed that he/she has done. Not only may there be no remorse, but also he/she may have tendencies to repeat the same destructive behavior. In such a context, there would be reason to set boundaries that are necessary to prevent us from continuing incur harm. Setting boundaries that were not there before does not mean you are being unforgiving.

Let us say you have a family friend babysitting your children, and then you find out that the family friend sexually molested them. Such a heinous act would give one good reason to be shocked and quite upset, but it is forgivable. In other words, it is possible to return to a state of inner peace about what happened and move on. What forgiveness does not involve is forgetting what happened, and then letting the person babysit your children again. One could say it would be wrong to remain in a relationship with this person at all. You also would still press charges and have the person arrested and prosecuted.

The Evildoer’s Definition of Forgiveness

An evildoer may define forgiveness as water under the bridge, forget it ever happened, and continue having the same relationship with the other person as you had before. This definition of forgiveness does not consider whether the person, who has wronged you, has tendencies to continue repeating the same destructive behaviors in the future.

Forgiveness in its true form is more for the sake of the one doing the forgiving than for the one being forgiven. However, the evildoer may pervert the definition of forgiveness so that it now benefits the one being forgiven, and leaves the one doing the forgiving vulnerable to being harmed again. Indeed, the evildoer’s definition of forgiveness more closely resembles the definition of tolerance. Evildoers want us to tolerate their destructive behaviors; and when we refuse to tolerate their behaviors by dissociating from them, we may be called “unforgiving” even though we may have returned to an inner peace about what happened.

The definition of forgiveness can have different meanings in different contexts. In a legal context, forgiveness refers to exemption from punishment for an offense. In some contexts, someone may be called “forgiving” when he/she decides to be friends with people whom other people would not be friends with. These different contexts can cause confusion regarding what forgiveness is.

No matter how we define forgiveness, certain relationships are meant to be terminated.

Forgiveness in Television

Television most often features the evildoer’s definition of forgiveness, which involves making up, forgetting what happened, and continuing the relationship with the perpetrator as if nothing happened, no matter how heinous the wrong that was done. In his article Why TV friendships are unrealistic – people forgive each other, Dan Barrett brings up logistical issues that would occur if characters in sitcoms terminated relationships that in real life should be terminated.

If indeed a relationship is terminated or changed between two characters in a sitcom, ratings could go down, some viewers may stop watching and all successive episodes would need to be modified to accommodate this change in the status quo. Producers will probably find it to be simpler and safer to just have the characters make up and continue their relationship exactly as it was before so that writers do not have to take into account a change in, or termination of, a relationship between two characters when writing new episodes.

Even if the dispute between two characters lasts a long time, viewers would find it difficult to watch, and ratings could go down. Therefore, to keep ratings up, not only do characters need to make up, but also they need to make up quickly. This, however, creates an unrealistic environment where humans’ negative emotional responses to a terrible wrong done against them is short-lived and quickly forgotten.

In her article on 20 Things Wrong with Friends, Sara Sanderson discusses a number of reasons that nobody in his/her right mind would be friends with some of the characters on the popular 1990s hit series Friends. She asks “How many times were the so-called friends in Friends the exact opposite of a friend?” For example, Rachel sabotages the love lives of her friends just so that she can benefit her own. Ross is prone to treating women badly, which would give women reasons to not want to be his friend, or girlfriend. Furthermore, when the laugh track is removed, Ross sounds like a psychopath, as shown in multiple videos posted on youtube. Chandler uses and mistreats Janice despite how nice of a person Janice is. Phoebe is unreliable and sabotaging.

Friends, like many sitcoms and movies, shows destructive behaviors being tolerated among friends that nobody in his/her right mind would tolerate in a friend. Yet when someone terminates a friendship with such a person, he/she is, according to the land of television, “unforgiving.” But regardless of what the definition of forgiveness may be in different circles of people, people should not be allowing themselves to be treated badly by someone who is choosing to behave that way out of his/her own free will. People can modify their behaviors, but they often will not stop behaving in a destructive way unless other people say something and/or burn bridges with them.

Summary

By continuing a relationship with a toxic person, you are not only hurting yourself, but you are also potentially hurting others. The reason is that you are sending a message to the other person that his/her behavior is okay when it is not, and he/she will be encouraged to continue hurting not only you, but also others.

Rules of politeness exist for the purpose of showing respect, and for preventing people from getting offended or feeling uncomfortable. Rules of politeness can even serve to make people around us feel better about themselves. They are meant to make people enjoy our company. Sometimes they even play a critical role in forming diplomatic relations between nations.

The problem comes in scenarios where people are supposed to be offended, uncomfortable or disturbed. For example, if there is a case of animal abuse at an animal shelter, and someone is showing people graphic images of the abuse, another individual may say that these graphic images may disturb people and should not be shown to anybody. Such a mindset demands that the whisleblowers downplay the atrocity to something more benign and “less offensive” than it actually is, which can have the affect of reducing the motivation to stop it.

Evildoers have reasons to favor rules of politeness. Politeness provides evildoers with an easy way to put on the facade of goodness while still causing trouble on the side. Even the evilest people in the world know how to say “please” and “thank you.” Another way that certain rules of politeness can benefit evildoers is by creating an environment where anyone who attempts to condemn an evildoer’s actions is viewed as “rude” or “mean.”

For example, a toxic person you are in a relationship with may condemn you for being rude unless you act as if nothing is wrong with his/her behavior despite how destructive his/her behavior is. Such a rule of politeness goes against what is right. Some will even say that there are two kinds of evil in the world: those who actively do evil and those who stand by and do nothing. Hence, a rule of politeness that calls for people to always act as if nothing is wrong with someone’s behavior is essentially calling for people to become like a secondary form of evil.

Many people who exhibit harmful behaviors live in the delusion that they are regular good decent people. When we condemn their harmful behaviors, they may say we are being “mean”, and certainly we don’t want to be mean. What they are really doing is enticing us to play along with their delusions while they leave a path of destruction and suffering behind them wherever they go. When someone is living in misery because of them, they may go into denial that they are the cause of the misery and tell themselves that the person is in misery because he/she is human or because that is just the way life is.

Sometimes rules of politeness go against morality. They can make us only tell people what they want to hear, and not what they need to hear. Sometimes following rules of politeness can involve harmful deception. Even when we try to “bring it to them gently”, we are running the risk of downplaying the severity of the problem, which can lead to less action taken to rectify the problem than is necessary.

In my observations, I have found that young women in particular can get too preoccupied with being polite and nice to the point that they sometimes hold back from saying things that need to be said. One time I was sitting at McDonald’s with two women about the age of 20. One of them was abstaining from animal products (meat, dairy and egg) for lent. She bought a salad because it was one of the only vegan items she could find, and she was putting Italian dressing on it. I informed her that Italian dressing sometimes has cheese in it.

Immediately, the other young woman present said “Don’t tell her that!” I was a little surprised. After all, does this young woman want to abstain from animal products for lent? or think she was abstaining from animal products for lent? In the end, she did find that there was indeed romano cheese in the dressing, and only after she had put it on the salad.

In some circles of people, it is considered “wrong” to say anything bad about anybody at all, even when it is true. This mindset can allow repeat victimizations to occur. I was once in a social group where a woman named Krystina was victimizing one person in the group after the other by asking to live in someone’s home, taking advantage of the person she was living with, and then refusing to leave. One guy that she victimized said that he had to pay a lawyer $1000 to get her to sign herself off of his lease, and he had to pay $150 to get the locks on his door replaced because otherwise she would try to make her way back into his home. Yet he never warned me about what she was really like until after she had already been living with me for awhile.

When Krystina lived with me, she was emotionally abusive, she wore some of my clothes without asking, used my floss and laundry detergent without asking, ate food out of my food pantry without asking, and never offered to help pay the rent. When I told her to leave, I had to call the police because she refused to leave. Then the police would not come because the state had a law saying that if you have a guest in your home for more than two weeks, that guest becomes a permanent resident. Somehow I still got her to leave, though.

The leader of this social group, Steve, did not help with the situation. He sent out an email to the entire listserve that described Krystina in flowery metaphors as if she were one of the most wonderful people around. The email said she needed a temporary place to live while she tries to look for a permanent place. I explained to Steve what she was really like, and Steve said that multiple other people were denouncing her as well. I decided to post a message to the listserve describing what she had been doing to people, but Steve blocked my message and told me that the listserve is not meant for gossip or trash-talk. Later, he resent the same misleading message about her as before, which was just false information that would make it easier for Krystina to collect another victim. At this point, I left the group.

The leader of this group believed it is wrong to say something bad about somebody, and that warning people about somebody is unnecessary. He did not believe in people looking out for each other. He chose a rule of politeness over what is right.

Sometimes rules of politeness seem to make sense at first, but then are destructive in certain situations. For example, when there is a social event where people are bringing food to share with each other, it can be considered rude to bring food and not share it; but what if the person has food allergies that make him/her unable to eat the other food without running the risk of a dangerous reaction? If this person were to share food with others, there may not be enough for him/her to eat. Others would be able to eat his/her food, but he/she would not be able to eat their food.

What we can observe in real life is that rules of politeness, like subjectivity, sometimes protect evil and allow evil to thrive unchecked. Furthermore, when we are too preoccupied with fear of hurting another person’s feelings, we can make ourselves easier to manipulate. Rules of politeness go too far when, for example, we remain friends with someone — not because we want to be friends with him/her, but because we are afraid of hurting him/her if we terminate the friendship.

Meanwhile, the person may be exhibiting toxic behaviors that are not meant to be tolerated. By continuing with the friendship, we could be sending the false message that the toxic behaviors are okay when they are not. Continuing in such a friendship and/or tolerating bad behaviors does not benefit you or the other person. Furthermore, if the other person is a good person at heart, he/she would want you to bring to his/her attention any behaviors that are hurting you or others.

Also importantly, politeness does not replace compassion and empathy. Politeness is a set of outward observable actions that both good and bad people can do.

We are tend to believe that love is this beautiful thing that is opposing to evil. It should be evil that aims to destroy, not love, right? Wrong. In reality, love, like any emotion, can drive one to do acts of evil, and with evil intentions.

When someone loves us, does that mean he/she is always going to be on our side? Not necessarily so. Unfortunately, the English language word love has a wide cross section of meanings. The word love can refer to a food that happens to taste good in our mouth or our feelings for our one and only child that we cherish.

We know there are different kinds of love. There is romantic love, companionate love, parent-child love and love for a food; but there is another broader categorization of love that many people do not know about: love as an emotional attachment versus love as in caring and acting in the better interests of another. These two categories of love do not go together as much as one may think. You can act in the better interests of a stranger without expecting anything in return, but that does not mean you have an emotional attachment to the stranger. Conversely, you can have an emotional attachment to someone, but that does not mean you will act in his/her better interests. Some will even say that it is our loved ones that we treat the worst while we tend to be on our best behavior around strangers and acquaintances.

Below are some acts of evil that have been done and with love for another person as the motivating force:

–> committing adultery
–> abandoning duties and responsibilities
–> stealing
–> stalking
–> favoritism
–> Anakin Skywalker’s conversion to the dark side, motivated by his love for Padme. The dark side promises Anakin that it could prevent Padme from dying in childbirth. After Anakin converts to the dark side, Padme still dies and Anakin becomes the infamous Darth Vader

When someone says he/she is acting “out of love” or “in the name of love”, we are expected to believe that what he/she is doing must be good, but such a notion is far from reality. In my opinion, acting “out of love” does not drive one to do good any more than acting out of other emotions like anger or fear.

Romantic love in particular can be very shallow or very deep. It may refer to a schoolgirl/schoolboy crush or a deep connection between two people who have been married for 50 years. A man stalking a woman can say that he is stalking the woman because he loves her, and he may be telling the truth. He may indeed have a romantic attraction towards the woman that could fall under one of the many definitions of the word love, but that does not mean that the man cares about the woman’s better interests. In his evil heart, he believes he is entitled to have her, wield control over her and maybe even abuse her.

Love as a rationalization for evil behaviors

Sometimes evildoers will use love to rationalize their evil behaviors. In one Dr. Phil show I saw, an abusive male partner and his female victim were seated. The man had been stalking this woman and making her feel like she was a horrible person. He was telling Dr. Phil how terrible she was. In response, Dr. Phil asked him why he would bother being in a relationship with her if he thought she was so terrible. “Because I love her” he said. Here, the man is using his “love” for this woman to justify his stalking her and abusing her. Not only was he in denial that he was the bad guy, he thought that she was the bad one, but because he is “so loving”, he wanted to be with her anyway. How sickening is that?

Romantic relationships are not the only kind of relationship where love is used to justify evil. Sometimes an adult will touch a child in an inappropriate manner. The child may make it obvious that the touching is unwelcome by flinching in response, but the adult continues with the unsolicited touching anyway. The adult may caress the child along the face and neck, run his/her fingers through the child’s hair, wrap his/her hands and arms around the child’s waist. If the adult is a woman, the adult may do a line of kisses all along the child’s neck, without care about whether all of this kissing is okay with the child. The adult believes that this is okay, because all he/she is doing is expressing his/her love and affection for the child. The adult says that he/she just loves the child so much that he/she cannot help but express his/her immense affection for the child, and we are to believe that this is a beautiful thing.

This so-called expression of love and affection for a child, in physical form, may be a manifestation of pedophilic tendencies on the part of the adult. Children are generally easy targets for unsolicited touching because they are smaller and therefore easy to overpower. They also are taught to be obedient and respectful to adults, and not talk back at them. Though this unsolicited touching is not exactly traumatizing, it can do mental damage to a child because it teaches the child that he/she is not worthy to have his/her own space, and for that space to not be invaded by another person. Of course if a child is about to step in front of a moving vehicle, the adult must grab the child and pull the child out of the way even if the child does not want to be touched. However, putting one’s hands on a child in an unsolicited manner just for the sake of expressing one’s “affection” for the child is not only unnecessary, but arguably abusive.

Sometimes evildoers try to wield control over another person and call it love. Generally, evildoers gravitate towards positions of power. More power means they can get their way. Even when the evildoer does not aim to do harm, the evildoer can still try to do what it takes to get his/her way regardless of the harm may befall someone else. Power over others also gives the evildoer a sense of superiority, which can help the evildoer with his/her own insecurities.

Love is one of the things that evildoers will use to justify their harmful controlling behaviors over others where they may manipulate the victims into accepting the control over their lives as being “for their own good”. Controlling behaviors can be harmful to the victim because they can involve mental abuse, invasion of physical space, manipulation and invasion of the victim’s life. The victim can suffer from diminished psychological health because of the resulting lack of control over his/her own life. When the victim tries to take back control over his/her life, the evildoer may accuse the victim of being the one who likes to always be in control and make the victim feel guilty.

“I am worried about you…I am doing this because I love you so much…” the evildoer may say to the victim. Here, the evildoer is using the concept of love as a rationalization to wield oppressive control over the victim, and establish his/her position of superiority over the victim. If the victim objects, the evildoer may attempt to accuse the victim of being “insolent” and “ungrateful that somebody cares about him/her”. These forms of manipulation are meant to keep the victim in a state of submission so that the evildoer can continue to have his/her way.

I personally do not think it is normal to have such a strong desire to control another person’s life. I think such a desire is pathological. If you really cared about the person, you would respect his/her autonomy and only forcibly intervene if you really had reason to believe that the other person was continually harming him/herself, as is the case with eating disorders, drug abuse and other forms of self harm.

When is love good?

What if we care about someone’s better interests? Could this kind of love drive us to do evil? The answer is yes. For example, if we care about someone who needs a liver transplant, and we go out and kill someone else so that we can harvest his/her liver, then we did act out of love, and we did perhaps act in the better interests of the one we care about who needs a liver transplant, but that does not mean that what we did was not evil. The reason is that acting in the better interests of one person may be to the detriment of another person.

The only kind of love I can think of that would NOT motivate one to do evil is caring and acting in the better interests of ALL. True, someone who cares about the better interests of all may still do something stupid with bad unintended consequences, but at least the intentions would not be evil intentions.