The author references a trend in our society wherein there’s less ‘black and white’ thinking about a person’s character, that there is less of a mindset that somebody is either totally good or totally evil. They pointed to the play “Wicked” as one example of how that story sheds an empathic light on the backstory of Elphaba, aka the "wicked" witch of the west. How her history influenced who she becomes. Another book of theirs, “All the Ever Afters”, tells the fictional story of Cinderella's stepmother, also from the perspective of what led her to the place and position from which the story we know begins. What influenced her personality to the point she became what we call ‘evil’?
I don’t know if I fully agree that our society is moving in this direction, especially when I look about at the discourse of our current political environment. But I would like to think it is. I often, perhaps to a fault, try to understand, rationalized and justify the actions or beliefs of others that don’t fall into my own ‘world view’. I’ve done this throughout my life. In fact, I recall having watched “Sling Blade” and thinking about how quickly we might rush to judge a ‘crazy’ person’s actions without fully understanding their background and how they reached the point they did. And what might have been beyond their control on their way there.
It’s a fine line to walk, and like a tightrope, difficult to maintain one's balance on. It’s hard to rationalize away the clear lines of our society which are considered abhorrent to cross. The recent story of a man who brutally murdered his wife and children being one example. I find it hard to comprehend the abundance of unsafe drivers or the rap-blasting window-tinted Scion driving alongside beside me, or seeing the passenger window of a neighbor's car smashed out by somebody who felt they had the right to steal their property. I can’t make sense of any of that, let alone somebody that has no consideration for the sanctity of life and the innocence of children.
I occasionally try to imagine that the reckless driver who unsafely wove past me in traffic had some urgent family emergency at hand, as I myself have had on more than one occasion. Or that the painfully slow driver ahead of me might be an older person driving in fear and terror due to their slowed reaction time or diminishing vision, which something I have witnessed, too, and am starting to experience myself.
I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. I want to give people the slack I’d want afforded me. I’d like to think that few people are truly pure evil or pure good. The “asshole” that doesn’t let me merge or jumps in the freshly opened checkout line when I was ahead of them in our current queue, for example, might be somebody I’d have a great conversation with while waiting for coffee at Philz, or somebody that would stop and wave me across the street with a smile while walking my dog. Same person, different place, different timing, different conclusions. I say this because I know I've been that asshole in my own past. I've driven poorly, line-jumped, taken more samples than I should, and otherwise bent rules to my own whim without being conscious or considerate about it.
I watched the movie “Boogie Nights” recently and was very impacted by the family dynamic between the main character, his mother and his father. It really hit home. The father was removed, and the mother was clearly deeply dissatisfied with how her life and turned out. There are only two scenes with them, very brief, but intensely layered with a range of emotion that I fear many people might identify with. And in a tense moment between them, I recognized fragments of my own relationship with my ex and with my son. I worry still about what I believe is likely an unhealthy dynamic between them today.
In the eyes of my ex, her family and friends, I am likely considered the embodiment evil. Unforgivable evil. I “left” her, I “shacked up” with her brother’s ex-wife, and I “made her go to court” and accept less support than what she felt she deserved. Yet from my ‘side’ of the story, I attended counseling at first, gracefully backed out of the home routines over the span of a year or two, moved nearby, then moved into a home where the kids have space of their own. I share this home not with a stranger but with somebody they’ve known their entire lives and who they feel positive about being around, and the rapport they see between us is a positive and healthy dynamic. The court battles were necessary when she was unwilling to accept reasonable legal guideline support and my continued generosity along with the need to compromise in order to keep the house with what amounts to my income alone. Regardless, I continue to live with disdain and admonition from her and her negative or dismissive reflections of me to our kids. All based on her own points of view of right and wrong, of good and evil.
Am I evil? Am I good? Am I both? I guess it boils down to a judgment call, but one that should be based not solely on what you have been told, but also with an open mind to what you don’t know. I think judgment calls are mostly made based on limited information and often, how it impacts your world view, needs and expectations at the time.
As I said at the outset, I struggle with managing judgment and with being judged. I absolutely believe we have a set of ethics and a code of conduct that our society must enforce and abide to. And I believe that there are absolutely acts that can not be forgiven, regardless of the backstory of those who transgress these core principals and agreements. While there are also ranges of transgressions that any judgment of requires a deeper understanding of intention and a broader perspective of the circumstances too.
That man that murdered his wife and children, frankly, is taking up valuable space and tax dollars living out his life in prison. It makes me sick to think that the consequence of his actions prevents the use of these funds for something that benefits our society. I don’t see how his incarceration does, at all. Yet, although my recent observation of a broken car window brings about an absolute desire that the offender be found and promptly removed from our society, I recognize that the ‘why’ of any action plays a role, too, in making judgments in good conscious, and perhaps they do deserve a shot at redemption in some manner.
On a recent NPR segment, the reporter discussed the current broadway version of “To Kill A Mockingbird”. I consider that book to be a great example of this judgment paradox. In this NPR segment they mentioned that the producers struggled with the Atticus Finch character and his tolerance of the ‘grey areas’ too. They said they did not want the character to be so neutral that he’d appear “tolerant of intolerance”. I found that to be a powerful observation and it's stuck with me since I heard it. To draw a line at being tolerant of intolerance.
Perhaps I’m not alone in this, and perhaps our society is becoming increasingly conscious of the need to balance judgment with intention after all.
Quoting from the play... "Conscience can be exhausting, It'll keep you up at night."
Yes. Yes it does.