Do you know what makes someone 'bad'?

In an increasingly chaotic (and dystopian) world, we can comfort ourselves in knowing the difference between good and bad. Or can we?

In this post, I want to explore the difficulty, and even fault, in trying to assign binary notions of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to people or actions, because, often, it is way more complex than that. But we needn’t despair, because while there is uncertainty, there can also be a beauty in accepting that nothing is a given, because that means bad can become good.

We find comfort in knowing where we stand, in knowing which way our moral compass points. By categorising other people and their actions, we position ourselves along the moral scale.

But 2020 has shown how, often, these efforts to know good and bad have been insulated by our own subjective experience and perspective. Thanks to the Black Lives Matter protests, millions of white people became aware of our own complicity in reinforcing racist structures, from our consumption of problematic media, to our own previously ‘harmless’ remarks, the glorification of problematic historical figures, and lack of engagement. The COVID-19 crisis has also led everyone to take a step back and consider how our actions may trigger a chain reaction of potential harm; one slip-up, one harmless rule break, can cost another’s life.

Humans have historically grappled with these ideas of morality and human nature, but the internet has more recently made them mainstream fodder (whether we have been aware of it or not). But this may have come at a cost. While the internet first seemed to open up endless streams of connection, the condensed, reactive nature of internet interactions appears to have now polarized us and threatens debate and nuance.

Our ideas of good and bad are increasingly stubborn and unmoving, but also increasingly subjective. We sit encased in our own ideas of morality, positioning everyone in relation to ourselves, but often failing to recognise the ever-moving goalposts.

I want to use a few examples to explore the nuance needed to discuss these ideas:

1. Winston Churchill. He led Great Britain from the brink of defeat to victory in WWII. He played a vital role in Britain’s defence against fascism and ending the genocide of Jewish people in Europe. He was also a devout imperialist, who held overtly racist views. His cabinet decisions contributed to the 1943 Bengal famine, which killed 5 million people. He bragged about personally shooting three ‘savages’ in Sudan. He oversaw the torture and murder of Kenyans (including Barack Obama’s grandfather) in the country’s push for independence from brutal colonial rule. So was he good or bad? Do his life-saving actions in Europe balance out his brutal genocide elsewhere?

2. Ellen DeGeneres. Ellen is well-known for her warm television personality presence. She gives huge amounts of money to ordinary people in great need. Her show reunites long-lost family members. But she also manipulates celebrity interviewees into giving information that they are clearly uncomfortable sharing on TV. Her show is also currently under investigation for fostering a working environment characterised by ‘racism, fear and intimidation’. There are many reports online (probably of varying validity) of her ‘meanness’. So is Ellen, who spreads simultaneously so much positivity and so much hate, good or bad? Can we justify the treatment of her workers by acknowledging the good that she does to the ordinary people who come on her show?

3. A fictional (but realistic) scenario. A person breaks into an independently-owned corner shop/convenience store. They punch the shopkeeper, before holding them at gunpoint. The robber breaks into the till and leaves with all the money, before being shot and killed by the police who have just arrived on scene. It is later discovered that the robber has two children at home, who were starving and living in poverty, and are now parentless. Who is the criminal here? The robber? The police? Both? Neither? Our understanding of morality changes as we acknowledge and discover different contexts. Our first reaction to an event may not be the correct one. In addition, often scenarios such as these also have racial and gendered aspects which can further skew our view of their morality (in either direction, depending on who is evaluating the situation).

I included these examples on purpose, to show how complex it can be to decide the morality of a person or a situation. There are no definitive answers to a lot of the questions I posed above. People who do good can be equally destructive in other realms of their life. I want to suggest that we can condemn someone's actions as completely immoral without relegating them to a subhuman category of evil. They may be more like us than we realise, doing what they think is right in the specific context that they inhabit. Layers of history, however, such as misogyny and racism, make this more complex. This is why we must examine before we categorise.

It could also be said that, (in theory) if we label someone as 'bad', they are more likely to dig their heels in and defend their behaviour and character, and also to retaliate, than to change or learn. It is hard to talk around this topic because every situation is so specific and so context-based, sometimes with details that we do not and cannot know. I suppose what I want to emphasise in writing this is that we should treat it as such, and resist the binary.

Sometimes it is easier than these examples. Often, it is not. We have an innate tendency to categorise, to know, to position. By categorising other people, we reinforce our idea of our own moral compass. But, I think, we should resist this, especially in the face of social media’s encouragement of moral, social and political polarisation. Morality is a sliding, blurry scale and concept, and we must move and slide and blur along with it.

If we do away with the binaries of good and bad, maybe we can engage in a nuanced debate about morality and human action. No action or person is made in a vacuum; we are influenced by socio-economic contexts, race, gender, past trauma and current life experience. So are our reactions to others. Obviously people should be punished and held accountable for their wrongdoings. But we should not always take punishment or conviction (or on the other side, glorification) at face value.

Perhaps what makes us human is the tendency for both good and bad, and the battle between them both, within us. If we resist our tendency to categorise and brand people with no further thought, maybe we can stop reacting, and begin investigating, producing a more nuanced view of the world around us.