literature

Define 'Good'

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id-rather-dream's avatar
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Literature Text

Think about the classic cartoons... With the angel and the devil each sitting on one shoulder, pleading their case. In these scenarios, the positive and negative outcomes fitting of our societal conventions (outside of black butler) are greatly exaggerated. Follow the devil and fail, follow the angel and succeed. But this isn't always how society works. And just because of one bad action, a person cannot be instantly categorized. The true motivation behind the action is just as important, if not considerably more important than the action itself. This does not justify such actions, but it goes to show that even good people can do bad things in bad situations.

Two things motivate our actions, incentive and drive. Incentive satisfies drive; it's light at the end of the tunnel. Incentive is doing the homework you don't want to do in order to get a good grade. Drive is the need or want to do something. Drive is why you eat, why you drink. As long as one is high enough, the other can be low and the task will still get done. If you think of them as numbers, as long as their sum is greater than zero, the task gets done.

Now, what does that have to do with anything? You ask. Simply put, good people can do bad things for good reasons. For example, if you "borrow" a fishing pole from a local dock to catch fish to give to the hungry. If we only look at actions on a surface level, we miss so much of the truth. Maybe if you take another look at the man yelling at his subordinate. Perhaps our yelling man is scared, and his boss has threatened to fire him from the job that pays for his wife's chemotherapy. Fear can drive good people to do dark, dark things. But this doesn't define the people who do those things.

Every human is born with an inextinguishable spark of goodness deep inside. Some people will help build this up into a blazing light of warmth, light, and burning idealistic passion. And others with throw water on your spark, and try to put it out, to stifle it. When people go so far to put out your light, you are pushed into darkness that is not true to your nature. The same happened to those who tried to kill your like. None of these actions define these people. These people need to be cared for, understood. The evils that guided them do not consume them, and when they are truly ready to apologize and try to repay their actions, please do them the kindness to share your light. Don't stoop to the level of casting water onto their fire, because it'll extinguish your flame just as fast. Darkness is an epidemic. But we have the light to save humanity.
A brief look into what being "good" and "bad" really mean and the grey area between them.
© 2014 - 2024 id-rather-dream
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Zalaria's avatar
The human mind is the double-edged sword which may take years to fully master lol