And why do good people do "shitty" things? MLK Jr. was having affairs with white women while protesting for civil rights and Gahndi used to sleep next to naked teenagers.
The answer is humans are nuanced.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2026
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Ghandi used to sleep next to naked teenagers, what?
To test his will. It's fucked up.
Because people are usually quite complex and rarely fit into the neat labels people want to assign to them.
Each person has a different definition of good. On a Venn diagram, you might even overlap with Hitler or pol pot on one or two points. Humans and their ethics and morality are complex. Different people have different dealbreakers.
Take the example of "even a broken clock is right twice a day" and therein find an answer.
the world is not made up of exclusively binary good/bad characters or outcomes, and most half-decent TV shows aren't, either.
People are complicated. Their motivations and actions don’t always seem consistent.
Well for one thing, people are complicated, but citing a fictional character isn't helpful here.
Your premise assumes people are morally consistent, and that’s just not how humans work.
Someone can hold racist or classist views and still feel real anger, empathy, or a sense of justice in a specific situation. People compartmentalize constantly. Having prejudice doesn’t turn off basic emotional responses when something concrete and personal happens.
Also, it’s not true that there’s “nothing in it for them.” There are always underlying factors like personal identity, guilt, attachment, social image, or even just the need to see oneself as not completely awful.
What you’re describing isn’t a contradiction. It’s exactly what real people are like, and why well-written characters behave that way too.
One of the dumbest but best examples anyone's given me for the inconsistencies of morality. Is video game lobbies.
You can find people who do charity work actively protest for civil rights and fight for immigrants rights. Then the load into a Dota 2 match and call the Brazilians dirty f****** slurs every 3 seconds and wish they were all deported for us servers.
The only consistency in humanity is that it's inconsistent.
As others have pointed out, there's no "black-and-white" (if you'll pardon the irony) way of categorizing people. Bad or good people are fictional. Even the best of us have ugly parts to how we behave, and otherwise terrible people can show surprising compassion. Our values can conflict and in the moment we chose to do something wildly out of character, or indulge in impulses we didn't even realize we had.
In the real world there are no absolute heroes or villains. A man who gave his boots to a homeless man one moment, could beat another to death a few months later. Human beings are wildly inconsistent.
There are objective good and bad people. They are just rare. Most people are in the bell curve, and the vast majority of us hold some racist/sexist/stupid beliefs... the issue is just if those beliefs align with our peers, then they are good, and bad if they don't.
I witness people saying horrible shit all the time, but as long as it's against the 'bad people' people think it is great and you are wonderful for saying it.
There are no objectively good and bad people. Never have been, never will be. Every one of us is a grab bag of contradictions. Objectively good people are not rare, they're fictional. If you seriously look under the surface, we're all both monsters and angels on some level. Some of us just have better self-control and/or fewer opportunities to be actively transgressive.
right, so criminal psychopaths and such are sometimes good people?
and someone who never harmed anyone in their life, must also be terrible in some way? they are just 'lucky' that life never goaded them into violence or hate...
you are clinging really hard to this relativism. i notice people who do that are usually shitty folks who are trying to normalize their history of repeatedly bad actions, like cheaters, drunk drivers, and folks with who are violent or abusive. it's always people who repeated engage in destructive behaviors who want to drag everyone else down to their level, because they refuse to admit that they are terrible folks.
funny thing about my violent exes, they always took this relativist stance on ethics, because to them 'good' was only what benefited themselves and the notion there is something more important than them and their immediate feelings was considered evil to them.
Morality is not a bell curve. No one is absolutely good or bad, because what is good or bad is relative to the person doing the action and those observing it.
by that definition, as long as i asked someone to kill me, it's a morally good thing.
Yes, that's the whole argument for euthanasia. Glad I helped you to understand it.
or just manipulating people so you can murder them!
Do you really think most racist people would say “fuck yeah, a Black person died!”? Racism in contemporary society is largely covert and not explicit.
In terms of your class question, most people who are “CEOs” are not in charge of billion-dollar corporations. They have a small company where they are on a first name basis with everyone
The biggest piece of shit I know (MAGA, gun nut, religious nutcase, married his daughters off to desirable candidates) lives near the Mexican border and takes in immigrants who have illegally crossed the border, gives them food and drink and sends them on their way. No, he doesn't call ICE.
Do as many people leave his place as entered it?
Should I ask the neighbours 🤔?
Log off for real
Leave him be, for real.
it's a tv show, it was written to be that way because it's part of a copaganda machine
this is so ironic to say about The Shield, one of the rare TV shows known for portraying cops as corrupt pieces of shit
Yeah, but according to the show these pieces of shit are necessary and that makes this show copaganda shit.
People who are racist arent trying to be evil: they genuinely think that Europeans and Asians are more evolved to live in societies that require cooperation. They are wrong to attribute to color the effects of culture and education.
People who are homophobic arent trying to be evil: they genuinely think that propagating the species is honorable but hedonism is not. They are wrong to dismiss the social and intellectual benefits of cooperative sexual recreation.
If these bigots decide that violence against the other will solve their problems, they become far more dangerous.
And Asians? Over here people are just as racist towards Asians.
everyone is racist.
racism being some 'white on non-white' only thing is a figment of rich white liberal imagination. not to mention their ignorance of intra-minority racism, of which asians are particularly nasty ime.
I've lived in Asia for over a decade and it's not just anti-asian racism. Hell, as a white blond guy, I have it easy compare to black folks.
why do anti-abortion women get abortions?
I think this just shows the way socially ingrained attitudes are not total, i.e. there is lots of room for variation and breaks - exceptions exist even to people thinking in terms of stereotypes or generalized patterns.
"Oh I'm different. I had a good reason."
Humanity is shades of gray. Most people don't do 100% morally and ethically good things or 100% morally and ethically bad things. Likewise it's probably a small minority of people that are evil and strive to be as evil as possible at all times.
Why whouldn't a morally good character do good things?
When you have some time for introspection, you'll find good characteristics and bad characteristics within you. That's normal. If you dig deep enough every saint can be an asshole sometimes and the person who just bombed to death 110 girls in a school can be a caring family man. We are complicated monkeys.
"Man is a double being and can take, now the god's-eye view of things, now the brute's-eye view."
The philosophical justification for fascism is utilitarianism which essentially boils down to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is as Plato said about democracy tyrant of the majority.
Nobody believes that they are bad or evil. People come across as this as their goals are just different from your own. Muslim terrorist believe they are saving the world by doing terrorism. Israeli Zionists believe they are making heaven on earth by their actions in Gaza etc etc.
So its just a matter of what particular flavour of evil u are willing to be for your desired outcomes. U have the choices of blind religious extremism (religious terrorist or Zionist or Christan crusader), hyper rationalism separated from emotion (fasicm or communism depending on ur interpretation). Hyper emotionalism which just makes u a useful idiot to whoever can present the ideology that signals the greatest virtue.
So what do u choose?