this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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I think a mistake in thought you might be making is that people are not simply "good" or "bad." I 100% agree with @UziBobuzi that hoarding more wealth than you or your descendants could ever reasonably spend is a "bad thing." And maybe that's a "very bad thing," that would tend to cast a dark shadow on other "good" things the person might do. Still, those good things are not erased; they still exist, and should not be subtracted.
Another important concept is that, while there is a lot of overlap, a person's actions are not the entirety of who they are. We all have bad habits, and regrets, and other shortcomings that we are fully aware of and have difficulty rising above. That doesn't make us bad people, it just makes us people.
I disagree. Sometimes, due to your particular circumstances, life forces duties and responsibilities on you. If you choose to become a police officer, but you're too cowardly to protect children from getting shot, that is a bad act and you are a bad person for doing it. If you are born into wealth, you are obligated to help the less fortunate. If you don't do it, that is a bad act and makes you a bad person. It would take a LOT of other good acts to atone for that.
Thank you for disagreeing, and I will further disagree!
I don't think that it's correct to do basic addition and subtraction (as in The Good Place) to determine whether someone is a "bad person." People are complicated, and people can change, for better or worse. Of course, we need to make judgments about who people are, including ourselves, but my judgment about whether a given person is "good" or "bad" is not necessarily objective truth.
In fact, I don't think it ever can be objective truth, because I don't think there is a universal arbiter of such things. The farther away from the center line you get, the more general agreement you'll find: Fred Rogers was good, Hitler was bad. But as you get closer to the middle ground, things get fuzzier. Thomas Jefferson was ... complicated. He was clearly brilliant, and held some very progressive positions in his time. And he owned slaves. Was he good? Bad? I don't think you can boil Jefferson down quite like that. Looking at people in black and white abandons important nuances, and causes us to discard important concepts or embrace dangerous ones.
I think we differ in what we consider extreme. A billion dollars isnso much money, I consider that extreme. Not to Hitler or Stalin levels of course, but closer to that than the middle.
If you're hoarding money that could be saving lives, you didn't directly kill anyone, but you have some culpability.
That falls right into my "Mr. Rogers vs Adolf Hitler" dichotomy example. A billion dollars is so extreme that we both agree on that, and I expect a large number of other people would also agree. Ten dollars is so extreme on the other end of the spectrum that I can predict with very high confidence that we both agree there, too. And when you're somewhere in the middle, clearly more than average, clearly in the realm of luxury and surplus, then there's going to be higher levels of disagreement.
That's why it's important to have these discussions, because reasonable people can disagree, but for a properly functional society, we need to find out where we do (mostly) agree, so that we can all move forward together through thoughtful compromise.
I agree with both of you.