Sometimes I have a sense of myself as generally Good, with occasional mistakes and weaknesses.
Sometimes I have a sense of myself as essentially Bad, and unable to create anything good in the world.
The more I examine myself and my actions, the more this Goodness and Badness break down. This is both frightening and fascinating. I am left with an almost mechanistic view of myself. I act, and my actions have effects; some are good, some are bad, some are bizarre. I can't really be quantified as good or evil, and I think that is the case for most of us. That is not to dismiss the idea of harmful and unharmful actions, but to say that I really couldn't say which I'd done more of, and that it seems fairly unpredictable, in an average person, which kind of action they're going to perform at any given time.
And of course there is the interpretation of the action and its consequences, and long-term versus short-term consequences, and the whole question of intent and whether it "counts".
I've heard your question before; and, yeah, I'm sure they do and did. I'm sure they were the heroes of their own movies. How could they not be? And all the people who made something like the Holocaust possible, through participation, through acquiesence, through inaction: I'm sure they were too. If they thought about victimization, I'm sure it was mostly in terms of feeling sorry for themselves.
And what do you do about this incredible veering from sanity? I don't know.
I heard an interview on the CBC with Chava Rosenfarb (she's an author and Holocaust survivor). She said, "I don't think people are good or evil. I think they are mostly selfish."
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timeasmymeasure
goodness is in the eye of the beholder/storm/newt
Date: 2006-07-27 07:03 pm (UTC)Sometimes I have a sense of myself as generally Good, with occasional mistakes and weaknesses.
Sometimes I have a sense of myself as essentially Bad, and unable to create anything good in the world.
The more I examine myself and my actions, the more this Goodness and Badness break down. This is both frightening and fascinating. I am left with an almost mechanistic view of myself. I act, and my actions have effects; some are good, some are bad, some are bizarre. I can't really be quantified as good or evil, and I think that is the case for most of us. That is not to dismiss the idea of harmful and unharmful actions, but to say that I really couldn't say which I'd done more of, and that it seems fairly unpredictable, in an average person, which kind of action they're going to perform at any given time.
And of course there is the interpretation of the action and its consequences, and long-term versus short-term consequences, and the whole question of intent and whether it "counts".
I've heard your question before; and, yeah, I'm sure they do and did. I'm sure they were the heroes of their own movies. How could they not be? And all the people who made something like the Holocaust possible, through participation, through acquiesence, through inaction: I'm sure they were too. If they thought about victimization, I'm sure it was mostly in terms of feeling sorry for themselves.
And what do you do about this incredible veering from sanity? I don't know.
I heard an interview on the CBC with Chava Rosenfarb (she's an author and Holocaust survivor). She said, "I don't think people are good or evil. I think they are mostly selfish."
{rf}