Question: #36

If you're not familiar with this series of posts, and you want to catch up, the introduction is here.

Question #36: Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?

I try not to buy into absolutes, particularly Judeo-Christian labels like "good" and "evil".  In college I took two separate classes, one literature and one history, both challenging me to look the other side of our monsters, heroes, and villains.  JP sold us Joan of Arc and Jesus as villains in their times.  DoctorC asked us to consider the zombies in Mathis' novel victims; afterall, they were being hunted by a loan human different than everyone else.

I've always lived in a sea of gray, but those two classes secured my desire to look at all sides of the story before deciding what the right answer is, particularly when judging someone or something as "good", "not good", "bad, "evil", etc.

On the other hand, I believe most people are generally decent.  We almost always make decisions motivated by fear, grief, love, desire, lust.  Is that good?  Does that make us all good?  I don't think so --- but it adds some sort of baseline human experience to our existences.  It's something we can all identify with. And that makes us all want to say "maybe <that person> is good afterall."

But then there are people who do unfathable, unspeakable, inhumane things.  Those people, people who rape, kill, torture, and imprison other humans-I would absolutely argue that they are evil. And that's without a doubt.

So the answer?  Can I know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?  I think almost everything is gray, and I don't know what is an absolute "good"; but I know evil when I see it.