On Morality
 

Why do good people do bad things?

This is not a pithy question. I'm looking for some thoughtful answers here. Why do we have moral lapses, where people who generally try to do good things occasionally do things that are bad?

And before we get too relativistic, I'm staying within that person's moral framework - they do things that they themselves acknowledge as bad.

-sm

There is evil in the world and no one remains untouched.

I disagree very strongly with the premise of 'evil'. It is absolute and uncompromising, and assumes a fantastical interpretation of the world that aligns with the most destructive myth of all: religion.

I do not believe a person can be inherently 'good' or 'bad'. We do not live in a movie reality of heroes and villains, clear-cut morality and happy endings. The pursuit of ultimates is perhaps the most significant human flaw - a life based on achievement (top marks), possession, and the constant (unreachable) goal of 'ultimate happiness'. Ultimates make it easier to make sense of the world - it is philosophical semantics - symbols/ideologies we adopt to break complex problems down into patterns/behaviour we understand.

On this basis, 'moral lapses' occur when there has been a difficulty forming an ultimate. Ideological confusion occurs whereby there is no or little cohesion between a situation and a pre-existing schema or belief system. A malfunction, if you like. It is necessary then to either alter an existing moral set or embark on a role within the situation that does not align. This is when 'good' people do 'bad' things - when there is a 'glitch' in their matrix.

Spirit was willing, flesh was weak.
Ends justifies the means.

People are complex and full of contradictory impulses and it's hard for some of them to keep it all straight.

There are also people who intentionally/unconsciously break their rules so that they can keep a steady supply of guilt on hand.

Some people just simply can't handle being good all of the time.

Let's leave aside for the moment the question of how we determine what is evil or bad... handed down from God, constructed by society, imposed by the patriarchal hegemony, etc. etc., take your pick.

Do you agree (or do you not) that some actions are evil or bad (we're throwing around terms that haven't been rigidly defined), even if you and I may disagree about which actions those are?

That is a very indefinite question. I understand completely what you're getting at - clearly there are atrocities committed in this world that could arguably be defined as 'bad' or 'wrong'. I don't think we need to list these actions. But to assume that 'evil' is inherent, or absolute, is implausible. We personify evil and give it a life of its own - this is my objection. A person or people can act in accordance with the principles of evil (amorally, malevolently) but to assert that they are evil, or that evil has 'taken hold of them' is pure fantasy. 'Badness' by definition is an action that contradicts agreed social values - there was once a time when slavery was not considered 'bad' - now we are happy to accept it as 'wrong' (if not evil). The fact that we may disagree on which actions are 'bad' is irrelevant - it is the point that a person can be inherently 'good' or 'bad' I object to, whether this is instinctual or nurtured.

That's precisely why I asked about bad "actions" rather than bad people.

No, you don't understand. Whether it is action or person is inconsequential. It is the personification of 'evil' as a tangible entity I disagree with. There is no such thing as an evil action. The action itself is not evil, it is just an action. The motivation (and the person) behind the action is what we consider 'good' or 'bad' (see above).

He's not asking the big picture, "Why do people do Evil?"

He's not looking to define evil.

He's asking why do people transgress against what they perceive to be a good moral code.

No, he asked:

'Why do good people do bad things?'

I felt it necessary to establish a definition of 'good' and 'bad' before I proceeded with an answer. Personally, I think the boundaries are ambiguous, and good and bad cannot be polarised in this way. If there is no such thing as a 'good' person and no such thing as a 'bad' action, then the question is redundant.

If you're going to quote, quote properly.

"I'm staying within that person's moral framework - they do things that they themselves acknowledge as bad."

If you're going to quote, quote properly:

"Why do good people do bad things?

This is not a pithy question. I'm looking for some thoughtful answers here. Why do we have moral lapses, where people who generally try to do good things occasionally do things that are bad?

And before we get too relativistic, I'm staying within that person's moral framework - they do things that they themselves acknowledge as bad."

I got the impression that sm wasn't looking for a 2-bit amateur psychology answer that summarised basic human rule-breaking patterns (attention, guilt, trauma... oh come on).

The notion that a 'generally good' person might not exist surely sheds some light on the answer?

Then let us suspend our discussion until he can clarify.

Fine. :p

Originally posted by Catwoman Why? SM asked why people do things that they think are bad not that you or I think are bad. No definition is necessary.

I think people go against their own code for at least two reasons: expediency and rationalization.

Its easier to trespass through the neighbor's yard (despite the fact that she asked you not to and you agreed) because its raining, its cold, you are in a hurry to get home and help your ailing mother and the neighbor is out of town and won't know the difference.

You steal a pen from the office supply cabinet with the advance justification that your raise was smaller "than you deserved."

People violate their own code when they take a superior position to the code - they temporarily (or permanently) re-write the code to assimilate the circumstance at hand.

I think there is a third that I'm having a hard time articulating but it goes something like someone giving themselves a "pass" - they knowingly violate the code and decide that a "just this once" now and again is ok and no further deliberation before or after occurs. Sort of an advance acknowledgement that we know we aren't going to finish our life with a perfect scorecard so, since I've been good lately, a minor transgression every so often is to be expected and is ok.

what the hell time in the morning do you people get up?

Steve, Cat, here's the dichotomy that I'm trying to parse. It's an internal/external question. Without trying to dance among the angels on the question of universals, there seem to be generally normative moral principles that most people hold internally - I shouldn't kill, I shouldn't sleep with my brother's wife then kill her, I shouldn't stand on the street corner and openly mock the homeless, then kill them. You know, the basics.

My question is this. Since every functional moral code is an internal "ought", is it an internal impulse or an external pressure that causes them to step outside that sense of “ought”?

The “good person” handle is just shorthand for somebody whose normal intent is to adhere to that internal moral sense.

-sm

The very nature of 'ought' is not instinctual or predisposed. It is taught, dictated. If you believe every moral code is based on 'ought' rather than instinct, then 'stepping outside' the 'ought' is actually regressing to instinctual behaviour. So the answer to your question would be 'good' people (and I take note of your meaning) are just the same as any other person but who have better control over their instinct. When this control slips, they are considered 'bad', deviant, or insane.

I'll 'stop' using inverted 'commas' now. :rolleyes:



edited to say I'm never up early but I do live in England which would explain the time difference...

He used the word internal, not instinctual.

I'm guessing that he is fishing for why we think people do things that are against what we know, as a person not an animal, are wrong.

The answer is laziness.

At least, that's the answer for me. It's usually easier to do something bad than to do the right thing. The laziness can be a physical laziness, or it can be a mental or emotional laziness too.

On some level, I want to do bad things. I recognize that they are bad things. Sometimes, my willpower is greater than my urge to do a bad thing, and sometimes the urge is greater.

I have no desire to commit murder. In addition, the risks of doing so are very high. So the willpower needed to counter comitting murder doesn't have to be very great to keep me from killing someone.

I do like to surf the web. Doing so at work is really stealing from my employer. I think it's wrong. I do it anyway. I do it because my desire to do it is greater than my willpower to stop. Basically, I'm too lazy to put forth the effort to stop myself. If my boss happened to say that I have a new project that I had to finish in an hour, I would suddenly be motivated to find the willpower to stop.

That's because you've never met my ex.:p

...

Right.

1. People are animals.

2. 'What we know' aka socialisation often conflicts with our instinct.

3. 'Badness' occurs when we reject a rule (esp. a moral rule).

4. We reject this rule because there is a conflict between the rule and our instinct.

5. Instinct is internal, as is our set of 'should's', or moral values. The entire conflict happens internally, and is manifested externally in 'good' behaviour when the two align, and 'bad' behaviour when they do not.

6. I use the internet at work. I shouldn't, because my environment dictates that this is wrong. Internally, I do not consider it to be wrong. My instinct does not align with my 'ought to'. My behaviour is bad. I know it is bad. I am bad because I have allowed my instinct to dictate my actions.

7. People allow their instinct to dominate action when the desire outweighs potential social 'punishment'.

8. Because the ratio of desire:socialisation is different for everyone we each commit different levels of 'crime'.

9. Put simply,

Instinct - Socialisation = Crime

10. Good people are able to rationalise the crime because although they know it is 'bad' in terms of their environment, they do not feel internally that it is wrong.

In that sense, good people never do bad things.

To put a small twist on the original question:

"Why do bad things happen to good people"? :confused:

Because reality does not discriminate.

It irks me when people debate whether there really is bad & good, right or wrong. Most people do know the difference but either are trying to justify their own stupid actions or are unwilling to take a stand for something. I agree with whoever said laziness is a big part of it.

To quote from That 70's show:

Forman (sadly): Dad, why do bad things happen to me?

Red (seemingly sympathetically): Son, bad things happen to you.....because you're a dumbass!

This statement presumes a lot:

That there are bad things;

That there are good people;

That “things” are a controllable condition;

That the controlling agent of “things” has sufficient power to subvert and control the chain of cause and effect and natural consequence;

That the controlling agent of “things” should have sufficient moral knowledge to weigh the morality of the person affected;

That there is a prevailing sense of justice under which people should only be subject to circumstances in accordance with their morally orientation.

Given all of that, we have a world in which a supernatural controlling agent manipulates every circumstance so that no natural consequence, no series of cause and effect, ever transgresses the moral weight of the subject.

Is there any possibility that we could still have free will in a world so completely controlled? And, if there is no free will, no volition or intent, how can we call anything moral or immoral?

-sm

[btw, I don’t think this post really adds anything useful to the discussion. It’s more like just doing the philosophical version of calisthenics – stretching out a statement to its premises and conclusions. Try it! It'll give you a head rush]

Nice one, sm! :)

"Good" people do "bad" things when they are forced (or believe themselves forced) into impossible situations. To give a highly simplistic example: A person who is honest steals a loaf of bread because he has no other way of feeding his starving child. Maybe this man lives in a poor African nation that is undergoing a famine and no international relief has come to his village yet, so even though he knows it's wrong, he steals from the village store.
Desperation is one answer to your question.

I think good people do bad things also out of a sense of powerlessness or frustration. A man looks around at the world and sees his boss stealing money from the company and getting away with it; he finds out that a friend's daughter was gang-raped and the police did nothing; his wife (who could get no health insurance because of a pre-existing heart condition) has a massive heart attack and dies, leaving him with hundreds of thousands of dollars in hospital bills; he gets laid off from his job and can't find a new one because at age 60 he is too old for an employer to want to hire him (they know he'll retire in 5 years and they can get a younger worker at a lower wage). This man looks around at the world and decides that it's true that "nice guys finish last," so he goes out and robs a bank or blows up the billing office of the hospital where his wife died.

The above examples are the easy answer to your question. Now I'll give you the one that no one wants to hear: Good people make bad things happen. Every single one of us has it within ourselves to be a hero or to be the worst villian imaginable. We all have our dark side. The fact that we live in something called a society and that we have a civilization is proof that the majority of people for the majority of time keep their darker impulses under control.

However, before we are members of a society, we are individuals. That individual has an ego, a "self." Bottom line, we human beings are no different than any other animal. We come equipped with a survival instinct that drives us to meet the basic needs of food, shelter, protection or defense against injury or death, and procreation. No matter how "good" we are, if we feel threatened or our instincts become aroused in one of these areas, the survival instinct takes over.

The irony is that human beings are hard wired to be social animals. Maybe in 2004 AD, someone can say, "To hell with it, I'm becoming a hermit." But to say that in 2004 BC and all the time before from even when we still lived in trees was to commit suicide. We depend upon one another to survive. To be rejected by our group meant to die. One human alone couldn't make it against the other predators out there, couldn't put aside enough meat for the winter, couldn't bring down a woolly mamouth single handed. A woman alone couldn't bear a child all by herself, hold the baby to her breast and at the same time shoot arrows at small game animals.

A "good" person will do anything to be accepted by his fellows. A teenager will shoplift if that's what her friends are doing. An honest man will lie if he percieves that the truth would cause his friends to reject him. A woman living in Nazi Germany in 1936 will look the other way when the Gestapo comes for her Jewish neighbor because she doesn't want to be the next name on the list. A student who has never cheated on an exam will fold a crib sheet up his sleeve to take an exam to get a professional license or gain entry into a prestigous graduate school because he fears the humiliation society will give him if he fails. On and on.

Why do good people do bad things? Fear.

Welcome back =)

The other thing I feel is worth mention is people do bad things when they don't even know it.

Take for example, going on a P&O cruise, the chances are the ship is registered in Liberia and the money from that supports one of the most brutal and despotic regimes in Africa (no mean feat). The world's a moral quagmire, pick your fights carefully.

I would contend that if I do it to survive, it's not a bad thing.;)

Thanks, Jag.;) And I agree that ignorance is responsible for much of the bad things that happen in this world. As I understood SM's question, though, he was asking why good people knowingly do bad things, so I left ignorance out of my discussion.

Still, its a highly interesting point. After WWII the average German would tell anybody who bothered to ask that the German people didn't really understand that Hitler was busily killing 6 million people right out in the front yard. Its hard to believe that someone wouldn't have noticed this going on, but Germans at the time mostly swore that they had no idea.

I think they were actually telling the truth - on one level, anyhow. Ignorance really was bliss for the average citizen in Nazi Germany. If you were a person of integrity and you looked around you at what was going on, you were left with two nasty choices: Turn traitor to your own country and most likely be killed for your efforts, or accept the understanding and be quiet about it - keep your nightmares to yourself and go throw up in private. It was better to just "take the blue pill" and avoid the entire issue.

Morality
 

A person's morals unfortunately is influenced by society. It is not the one person that needs to change his morals, it is Society as a whole....Society definitely needs some help with a lot of issues.

Re: Morality
 

Well, it's a question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, isn't it? What is society but a collection of individuals? The individual members of a society form its structure and belief system. On the other hand, its very difficult for a single individual to change something he sees wrong with the society around him. There were Germans who voted against Hitler; I'm sure many Arabs abhorred the 9/11 incident; many white southerners were against the institution of slavery, but the society around them had in effect tied their hands. In this you are correct.

But then again look at the individual acts of conscience and courage which occurred in all these situations: the white southerner who was a member of the underground railroad, the German citizen who hid a single Jew or an entire family in his attic, the Arabs who fought on the side of the allies with T.E. Lawrence in WWI. There are still plenty of hero's among us, no matter what society we may happen to live in.

Originally posted by ladysycamore
To put a small twist on the original question:
"Why do bad things happen to good people"?

Hm...yes, I would venture to say that is true. At least, for certain "things" but not "all" things.

*sniparooney*

Argh, too...complex...for me. :p

I'd just chalk it up to "life sucks" and God has a bad sense of humor (juuuust kidding...a bit). :D

reply from marichiko
 

That's exactly what I'm talking about!

my whole take on 'why people do bad things' has more to do with the biological hardwiring versus the sociological mold into which we are 'forced'...

case in point (and where i have done some of my worst work) is along the sexual lines, you are hardwired to reproduce.. the desire is at the core of the being (like food... like shelter.. it's there) however in society at large (atleast around here) sex is considered 'unclean' or 'unholy' etc etc. (which in my opinion there is little that is further from the 'truth'..)

I don't think it has to do with the definition of 'evil' persay.. but why do you do something that you KNOW is wrong?

so I'm coping out with the biology agruement :))

Thank you!

Cowhead, if I was on the jury, with that defense, your client would burn. :biggrin:
Oh BTW, sex is only dirty/unholy, if you're doing it right. ;)

In my opinion, sex between two consulting adults who have been honest with one another - like no lies about "love" if that emotion is not felt, no lies about an unsuspecting S.O. hidden away somewhere, etc. - has absolutely nothing wrong with it. Its only when the act of sex somehow brings harm to oneself or the other partner or a third, unsuspecting party like a betrayed spouse or an unwanted child - THEN it becomes wrong.

I see at least two levels that right/wrong can stand on.

First, there's societal perception of right/wrong. A society functions because if guidelines and rules that it imposes on itself. Bear in mind, these can be ANY rule or guideline. Second, there's the individual perception of right/wrong. A personal morality functions because if the guidelines and rules one imposes on oneself. Again, these can be ANY rule or guideline.

This being the case, the whole what is good/what is bad issue becomes largely subjective. And in THAT case, the reason why good people do bad things is because that's how its perceived by someone looking on, based on his/her morals which are influenced by (not necessarily molded after) the person's society's morals.

Let's say Mr. Generic here is a 'good' person; he's a fine philanthropist, attends church regulary and often, loves his mother, dotes on his wife and kids, is a favorite among his coworkers, etc... What if Mr. Generic does 63 in 55 mph highway zone? Is this a bad thing? Yes, because it's clearly stated the legal speed limit is 55 and he's going faster than that, a lawbreaker. Breaking the law is 'bad'. No, because the traffic is moving at 60-65 and he isn't posing a hazard by blocking a lane on the highway. Helping to reduce congestion on the highway is 'good' (can I get an AMEN, No. VA residents!). It's all how you (or the person next to you) look at it.