Good or Bad

[Context: listening to Smiley and West Podcast]

Isn’t it interesting how we bloat our own positive characteristics? I heard Nelson Mandela described as graceful and thought to myself that no one and I mean no one, would describe me as graceful. And that fits. But then the inner monologue immediately begins to defend not being graceful; “but what I lack in gracefulness I make up for with x, y, and z.”

[Extrapolation]

Well if we want to be all Leo Buscaglia about it, we can say that every person has some positive characteristics. (What would it mean to have just 1 positive characteristic?) But who is going to step up and laud the positive characteristics of Hitler or Jeffrey Dahmer, or Kirstie Alley. Kid, I kid. Kirstie was great in Woody Allen’s ‘Deconstructing Harry.’ The question remains: does every person have positive characteristics?

Or do we want to be all atomistic about it and say that some people, you know who you are, are pure evil? Not one ounce of good in these folks. Mayhem, murder, genocide, and 80’s music are left in their wake.

Is this really a grey area? Are we going to say it’s nuanced, ooooh it’s nuanced, it needs to be fleshed out as they say. It depends, you say, it’s contingent upon many, many relevant factors you say.

Oh c’mon! There are two kinds of people aren’t there? Good and bad? What is this nuance crap? Are you going to tell me people are good and sometimes do bad things? Are you going to tell me “to err is human?” Erring is one thing but making hats out of skin is another.  Again I ask, aren’t some people pure evil?

How else can you account for clogs, golf, and fox news? Kid, I kid. I love golfing in clogs.