Shelby Amato- Assignment 3

I don't believe in the absolutes of good or evil. I think that it is difficult for any one person or thing to be entirely evil or good because your character or the character of any idea/thing/animal/person is comprised of behavior, which is changeable.

If a mass murderer confesses, does community service, gets treated for mental health issues, makes public apologies, and serves their time, are they still entirely an evil person or did they just do one evil thing? I believe it's the latter. Even if they never did anything but deny, deny, deny they have still only demonstrated that their behavior tends towards the destructive- not that they are inherently destructive.

So-called evil people did not burst out of the womb guns blazing and curse words spewing out of their infant mouths. So-called evil people learned their first words, were considered adorable, wore cute baby clothes, and probably did some really sweet things as a kid like the rest of us.
This doesn't make them good people, but it shows that they aren't bad people- they're just people. As wildly unpredictable and hard to define as anyone else.

The concepts of good and evil are completely dependent on how you see the world and what you were taught. Would you condemn yourself for something that you perceive as good but your neighbor sees as bad? Would you ever see yourself as anything but the protagonist of your own storyline? Probably not. This struggle to define ourselves and test our own values is how we strive to improve as humans, and I don't believe it is wrong.