The leap from doing good to doing evil is often no more than a tiny step. Those of us who try to be ‘good’ might want to think that we are almost immune from the ‘dark side’ unless we make a mistake – but the reality is that (at least in my eyes) in many aspects of our lives there is a continuum stretching from ‘perfectly good’ at one end to ‘perfectly evil’ at the other – and the nature of continuums is that somewhere along the line we step over from one side to the other!
This is another of those topics that seemingly has come up a number of times recently for me. Part of it came to me when I was thinking about how you compare two different types of ‘bad’ behaviour – how do you decide which one is worse? Part of it came to me on consideration of using drugs as medicine as against drugs for ‘recreational’ purposes.
In both of these and in lots of other examples it is hard, if not impossible, to draw the line (as it were) where the ‘good’ side of the continuum becomes the ‘bad’ side of the continuum.
We have in the UK had a rash of accusations of child abuse appear in the media over recent weeks. Personally, I find those cases where someone with ‘responsibility’ for the child has carried out the abuse – be it a parent or teacher or other figure of authority – much more unsavoury than when it is someone to whom the child is a complete stranger. I say that, not to suggest that the latter cases are anything other than abhorrent, but the former are, in my eyes at least, even less understandable and despicable.
On such an emotive issue it is difficult to step back and think – but even here there are instances of “is it or isn’t it” child abuse. There will always be some things that fall on or close to the boundary of ‘acceptable’ – although society will inevitably change its view of what is acceptable through time.
Of course, its not confined to one type of behaviour – the media are also hot on reporting the anti social behaviour that many indulge in on the streets around the country most nights – again – what is ‘acceptable’ varies over time
In general, the acceptability factor tightens – i.e. behaviour that was once acceptable becomes unacceptable – it is rarer for it to change the other way – although I can think of examples, mostly where the ‘rules’ were initially very strict and over time they have become much looser. Of course that means that there will be instances of people behaving in a certain way and finding out years later that it is no longer acceptable to have done so.
For me, I find that if anything I err on the side of being too acceptable – I try to avoid anything that is ‘close’ to the boundary. However, that does not stop the boundary shifting far enough that I could still be ‘guilty’ of behaviour that falls foul of the law. This is also a danger created by the ‘politically correct’ lobby who will try to push the boundary as far as the possibly can in one direction. Sometimes for good reason, but sometimes it results in a loss of freedom – there are plenty of instances in the news of PC gone wild. Although the UK is far from the litigious society that the US seems to have become, it is still not uncommon to find people doing things to “cover their backs” – or worse, not doing things that would be beneficial because of the risks involved if it goes wrong.
This is a first pass at this subject – as I said – there are some specific things that have caused me to start thinking about this more closely, and I am sure that as I sort them out in my head it will result in more blog writing.