Can one be "good" and still think of doing bad?

Great Debates
1

I don’t know about you, but during my life I’ve met people that are just the rottenist, crummmiest SOBs on two legs. I’m talking about people that treat others like crap; people that lie in order to get what they want (usually money). People that like to intimidate; people that delight in making others feel bad.

The other day I read in the local paper that a lady saw this dirty bum crying while sitting near a pay phone. And so she asked him why he was crying and he told her that he was hungry and dirty. Thus, out of the kindess of her heart, she went and brought him a nice meal and he ate it and then asked her if he could take a shower in the hotel she was checked into. (The news article said she had returned to town to help her mother whom suffered from Alzheimer’s and, too, that she had secured a job with one of the colleges.)

So she lets the guy take a shower and he comes out naked and asked her for sex. She refused and as a result the guy attacked her and beat her to a pulp!

The article quoted her from her hospital bed (and through badly swollen eyes and lips) as saying, “I’m mad.” (It’s probably reasonable to assume she’s no longer a Liberal, as well.)

It was also stated that she did those nice things because he reminded her of her son.

What gratitude.

These days I find myself having thoughts of doing really bad things to people that I regard as being worthless scum. This fellow I mentioned here is an extreme case, for sure, but in reality there are just so many, many crummy people all around. My thoughts of harming them go from getting a CO2 pistol and damaging their cars to tossing acid in their faces … to using a shotgun on their knees. But the thing is, though, I’ve made it this far in life by being a pretty good boy, by sucking it up and letting things slide, and so I don’t wish to bring the Laws of Karma onto my puny soul as a result of getting into a mode of exacting vengeance on those that I feel deserve it.

One of my favorite Bible passages goes something like, “Vengeance is mine, sayith the Lord.” So that passage gets me off the hook for not having the guts to start harming scumbags, and yet I still have thoughts of violence. (Incidentally, I do KNOW for a personal fact that people who for no good reason do ill to others get nailed for it by The Man Upstairs at some point or time. I’ve been witness to it many times; including when I was a young fool and did things I shouldn’t have. It’s no fun at all.)

Anyway, I’d like to know if some of you decent, salt-of-the-earth types ever have thoughs (as I do) about laying serious pain on those who’ve done you wrong? And if so, what keeps you in check?

2

She did a very stupid thing. Unfortunately, people who are on the street are often so because they are addicted, mentally ill, or both. She should never have taken him home. She could have given him money, called an agency to help him get to a place where he could have a shower, or whatever.

And your feelings of wanting to wreak havoc on people whom you deem scum are horrid simply because you have no reasonable or logical way to determine if you have made a valid or fair judgement.

If you wish to use your energy to work against wrongs, join an agency that works to right wrongs and expend it there rather than planning acts of violence against others.

What keeps me in check? Everything I wrote above.

3

In answer to the thread title-of course. It’s called “being human.”

As long as you only THINK of doing it.

What keeps me in check? I guess the realization that I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me, if the situation was reversed.

4

Glomfluster –

You’re a noble person.

I do feel that I’m fair with people in my thinking and attitude towards them. Basically, I’m just sick of the SOBs of the world doing their evil and the good folks just taking it and taking it.

People like the one that did this to the lady should be made into fertilizer. No paying for their room, food, medicine – just be done with them.

5

It’s absolutely normal to get really angry at evil, injustice, and people doing really horrible things to one another. Hang around in the BBQ Pit long enough and you’ll see plenty of threads discussing something awful that someone did somewhere, with Doper after Doper describing horrible, nasty fates that they wish on the perpetrator.

Having these feelings is normal, healthy even. It shows you have a sense of right and wrong. Acting them out, however, is a different story, for several reasons. Ultimately, you’ll do more good if you let your anger motivate you toward working, in some small or not-so-small way, to making this a world in which such things are a little less likely to happen in the future.

But that’s easy for me to say, sitting here in my nice safe apartment, not having personally experienced any such evil. I could trot out the cliches, like “Don’t stoop to their level,” or “Two wrongs don’t make a right”—but who knows how I personally would respond, given enough provocation and opportunity.

How we respond to evil and injustice is one of the Big Questions, which literature and religion and philosophy and history have been weighing in on for hundreds, if not thousands, of years now.

It may be only tangentially relevant, but you may want to have a look at this thread:
Where are the rewards in being a good person?

6

Boink –

Thanks for the great comments and link. I read several and will read more later, as I’m tired right now. I will say that I liked how the lady laid things out; all so true!

7

I agree with everything Guin and Thudlow said. Whenever I get the urge to think the way you describe, I begin to go into detail about what would really be involved if I were to follow through with said plans. That’s when I always realize that there’s no way in hell that I could. Consequences like that could effect others beyond the party that’s caused offense, the treatment isn’t justified by the crime and I grasp how much that would make me worse than them, stooping (despite the cliche’ :slight_smile: ) to such a inhumane level.

So, I forego it and only fantasize about it when I can’t stand it no more and that’s my only release… daydreaming. But definitely ONLY.

8

[boondock saints voice]Connor: You know what I think is psycho, Roc? It’s decent men with loving families. They come home every day after work and they turn on the news. You know what they see? They see rapists, and murderers and child molesters. They’re all getting out of prison.
Murphy: Mafiosos. Getting caught with twenty kilos. Getting out on bail the same fucking day.
Connor: And everywhere, everyone thinks the same thing: that someone should just go kill those motherfuckers. [/bdsv]

so basically, you’re at least not the only person thinking about it.

I would say, in direct answer to your OP, NO, thinking that kind of thing is a natural result of the rage you feel toward these people’s violation of human decency. Carrying it out takes it to a whole different level, of course. It’s like sinking to their level. Consider it a moral victory over them every time you DON’T take a shotgun to their knees when they might do the same to you. In the long run, the benefits of people thinking you’re a nice guy will outweigh the gratification of wiping out a few thugs. In that example, the benefits of continuing to be a functioning, non-imprisoned member of society certainly outweighs thugs crawling sadly down the street with the their knees all shot up.

9

Just thought some of you might like to know that I happened upon a newspaper from this past Friday while at work last night, and it had the story about the ingrate in it. His name is David Shannon Barker.

I haven’t figured out how to add links to posts yet, BUT, should you care to Google “David Shannon Barker” and then scroll down to about the bottom 1/3rd of the page, you can read the story for yourself as well as see a pic of the scumbag in question. (If you do, you’ll find that while I wasn’t 100% right about everything I said in my opening post, I did at least get the gist of things.)

The guy is the type of person that, well, I guess I’ll not say it, as it’s not a very kind thing to say.

10

For starters, here’s a link to a newspaper-related blog on the event under discussion. (You do this, Benny, by clicking on the icon on the compose screen that looks like a little ball with a sideways-figure-8 in front of it; mouse-over and it’ll say “Insert Hyperlink.”)

Notice that, as in many cases of heinous crimes (Charles Manson comes to mind), this guy’s life has been seriously fucked up. So, yeah, this ain’t anyone I want walking around, but my response isn’t so much anger at the perp as sympathy for the victim. As for wanting to cause him physical harm, I guess I’m missing that gene. What I really would like is for him to understand lucidly the harm he has caused. Of which I have little hope.

11

If that’s your favourite Bible quotation, I’m guessing you aren’t too much into that soppy New Testament stuff about forgiveness and such, no? I hope you don’t consider yourself a Christian. What is it with the drive for vigilante violence in retribution for violent crimes? I can possibly sympathise with a close relation of this victim, say, having thoughts of vengeance, but reacting to a news story about violent assault by fantasising about inflicting shotgun wounds and acid burns like some unpaid ultraviolent copper seems grimly ironic.

12

You guys could give me some credit for my restraint, I should think, instead of getting after me for being a guy that admits to having such thoughts. I guess neither of you can see that society at large is held hostage to these kinds of scumbags, and that if we’re honest about things we need not look too deeply to see that to a very large extent it’s the “give-'em-milk-and-cookies” folks among us that has played a major role in allowing this god-awful mess to develope to the degree that it has. (Sorry if that sounds a little harsh, just being honest is all.)

I think it’s a shame that little children, old ladies, young ladies, dogs, etc., are so often given only a small mention in the middle of newspapers every day all around the country in which they had their innards cut out of them by these kinds of low-life scumbags, and who more often than not get “punished” (when they do get caught) with free room and board and colored TVs for a few years before they’re let out by the “experts” to get another crack at it.

Life in the world is a tough, tough place to be even under the best conditions; and everyone eventually dies one way or another at some point in time. Therefore, what’s the big deal about disposing of these monsters among us? And regarding whether or not if I’m a Christian goes, the Bible makes it CLEAR that Jesus intends to “cast into fire” many-a souls for all of eternity; so let’s not be silly and make it seem like being a Christian means one has to be wimpy and void of VENGEANCE when it comes to dealing with such two-legged vomit.

And, too, I’d bet that if you were to talk with the beautiful woman that crossed paths with the monster mentioned in the news article, the woman that bought a meal for a guy down on his luck, a woman guilty of permitting the scum of the scum to use her shower, she’d probably say that she used to think just like you guys – but NO MORE!

One thing I’ve never understood about people that think like you guys do is why is it that one NEVER hears about any of you using your great political might to arrange to take these violent types of scumbags into YOUR homes and reabilitate them with your love? (Please don’t say that that’s what prison guards are for, because they don’t deserve to have to make a living by risking their lives with these kinds of creatures being near them … when they could just as easily be chained in the middle of your livingrooms instead.)

Sure, in this cockeyed world it sounds so noble to shoot down (with words) people such as myself that see all the crap for what it is, making us out to be something we’re not; but deep inside your God-given common sense you know that your arguments don’t hold water.

Thanks PBear42 for taking the time to explain how to do links (and please know that my “gruff” comments are meant more for all the many ultra Liberals that might peer in here than they are for you, or even Staggerlee:-).

13

I don’t know how to tell you this… but we even have Mega-Liberals on this message board. :frowning: Let’s hope they don’t peer in here as well.

14

I don’t know if I count as “salt of the earth”, but I like to think I’m at least a fairly decent person. I have revenge fantasies like that all the time. I don’t carry them out because I like really extreme revenge fantasies, generally involving at least something like the Tsar Bomba, or an asteroid the size of the one that killed the dinosaurs, and I can’t realistically do those things.

15

Can we just clarify something? It’s sounding to me like you’re talking about wanting to kill the homeless.

16

Okay, so the problem is that conditions in prison is too good, plus the sentences aren’t long enough. Is it like the restaurant where the food is so awful it’s like deadly poison, plus the portions are too small?

17

Only homeless people who attack someone who is trying to help them. Presumably also non-homeless people who do evil things like this.

18

Sorry I was asking the OP

19

Oooh! Cold bust!

20

Are you looking for someone to answer your question, or rather for someone to agree with you that “these kids of scumbags” do in fact deserve the punishments you describe? Why if vengeance is the purview of the Lord is it so important to so many conservatives to mete out said vengeance here on Earth? Do we think that God is somehow lacking in this area of His omnipotence?