Basbrow

The view from where I am considering the implications of human actions.

I have a terribly positive outlook. I give everyone an equal “perfect in my eyes” chance when I meet them, and while I am not naive and know that this is a good way to get hurt, I believe that all people can be good. If you want to get down to the nitty gritty of how I feel, I don’t think that nature is as big of a deal as nurture in the nature vs. nurture argument. I don’t think that anyone can be inherently evil, I just think that people can be misguided.

It is interesting to me that we judge people. Of course, it is impossible not to. Even I have to give myself a pep talk once in a while, “this person is going to be a challenge. They are going to take an open mind and a lot of understanding”. But honestly, what makes my morals, beliefs, and compass of right and wrong the proper one?

Even the people who people love to hate or think of as evil had reasoning for what they did. Do you really think that you could live with yourself if you were doing things polar opposite of your beliefs? Other people probably couldn’t either. So what happened to Adolph Hitler that justified to him that he should be killing Jewish people? What happened to Michael Jackson that allowed him to be okay with touching children inappropriately? What broke inside of the murderer that lets them take another life? How is that person’s perception of property shaped if they are okay stealing? Regardless of how heinous a crime someone else performed I have a hard time saying they are bad people. They did something that is outside of my moral alignment, and the alignment of the majority, but there is a good chance that at some point in history, in some place in the world, that action was performed as an acceptable thing and was supported by the majority. I am not saying that people should go out and murder others because there is someone else out there that would think

it was a great idea; I am saying that maybe we should approach everything with a little more open mind that we do.

Now for that moment of perspective that I was bragging about. My workplace was egged a week ago (seriously egging is a terrible thing to do, it can absolutely mess things up). Fortunately, it was found in time that it could be washed off but I have heard some horror stories about what happens when people are gone for the weekend and their house gets hit. What struck me about the whole thing was this:

Whoever egged the building wanted retaliation against the management who they believed had wronged them. I understand the want for revenge and while I don’t think it is the best thing to actually retaliate, I wish the person who egged the building would have thought it through. The only negative effects that egging the building had for management was an extra phone call when they found the eggs. The people who were really affected by this action were the two maintenance men who had to leave their regular duties to come power wash egg off of our building for five and a half hours. They didn’t even get paid more for this! They are just on the payroll for their regular hours and get paid a set amount regardless of the work they do.  This person created a mess that an innocent bystander had to clean up. But for the record, I don’t think they are bad people, I just think they were angry and weren’t thinking as clearly as possible.

Maybe it is stupid of me, when someone does me wrong, to step back and wonder what happened in that person’s life to make them find that to be an acceptable action. Maybe it just gets me hurt to forgive so easily. Does anyone have anything to say about this topic? How do you approach controversial situations or people?