Good and Bad People
person
Don't believe everything you thinkThe liminal space Veteran
Just a minor comment about Superman's parents being bad people kind of triggered a bit of aversion in my mind, and I reflected on why that might be. What is going on with that?
Its like there are people in the world who do harmful, unskillful actions regularly enough that it is part of their character. So I don't want to say this doesn't exist in the world. Perhaps its more a philosophical thing about what such a label means. It kind of says something metaphysical about a core identity rather than seeing people in terms of conditionality and dependent arising. Everything arises in dependence on other factors, people are complex and have an interiority that labels and judgements like good and bad erase.
I also wouldn't want to fall into the opposite view, that people are fully the product of external forces and hold no culpability for their actions.
Its not like the judgment is factually wrong, its more that it closes down real world complexity and understanding. Perhaps something related to a kind of certainty of view.
I also think of Ajahn Brahm's idea that people aren't "criminals", they're someone who has committed a crime. I think its an important distinction.
Comments
Hi. I have worked with sociopaths and, unfortunately, they do commit a lot of very unwholesome acts and tend to justify their actions and denigrate other people to the point of dehumanising them completely. Some of them even hold positions of power and have a good economic balance in the sense of properties, income, etc. All of them by the way were extremely unhappy and could not find any pleasure beyond drugging themselves, sex, and other fetishes. There are also psychopaths who are people that are born without the ability of forming any connection whatsoever and, while it is not very common for them to become vicious killers or destructive, some careers and sectors of the world which are not very...clean... have their ranks composed by them.
Going back to sociopaths or people committing bad acts purposely and knowingly do have traumatic childhoods and very adverse/poor upbringings. This, however, does not excuse them from their actions. Have you seen the series Bojack Horseman? Without spoiling it too much, it is about the life of a famous one-hit wonder series actor who deals with depression, substance abuse, and basically being a narcissist and using people (particularly women) for his own advantage. In the following scene which I attach, he is basically admitting his done wrong...but here is where his friend does say something that reminded me of your post: you are also to blame and responsible for the actions. And you need to do something to avoid this pattern of repetitive compulsion. Ah, so hard the latter to break....
Here is a thought.
Happy and contented people don't do harm to others.
You can put the blame on the poisons of greed, fear, anger and aversion that is the cause of all the "badness".
The "rich" want more because they always feel they don't have enough.
The "poor" hate the rich because they fear that what they have is going to be taken away.
Platitudes for Buddhists? Or...
Maybe we should work out who is who and what is what?
Same message, different messenger.
Trust the message, not the container.
I would say something like he's doing harm to people, he's acting selfishly and corruptly, it would be good to stop his ability to do damage. Its the collapsing down into something fundamental and irreducible, that removes complexity and humanity. Perhaps a hard ask for the extremes. But also not exactly a platitude and not as hard of an ask towards the average person or fictional characters.
Trump has done quite a lot of damage to the US governmental apparatus, he came close to turning the US into a giant banana republic.