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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 158944" data-attributes="member: 2067">Yar.About Bad and Good....I've never met anyone who would describe themselves as "the bad guy," and literally mean it. I mean, even Rebel Chic is done with good intent, and the belief that what you're rebelling against is inherently wrong.Everybody persues the best life they can for themselves and those they love. This is, as far as I can tell, the only thing that is truly universally good.A powerful king takes people from his kingdom and sacrifices them to deities who demand it. Evil? Hey, it keeps the world ticking one more day...Of course, those dudes at the gas-n-gulp didn't seem to really *have* to do what they did. But perhaps they, themselves were venting after they were given crappy directions by a well-meaning gas-station clerk themselves....or...well, it's kinda hard to think of things that would justify it...It's just that, too often, we take the Disney version of reality. There are Good Guys and there are Bad Guys...only problem is, everyone's a Good Guy. Even the Bad Guys are just roguish Han Solo types, or at least that's how they think of themselves.Reality is much more complex. Whenever somebody does something that seems, to me, to be unequivicolly wicked, I always want to ask them: "why?"Usually, it's a lot more constructive targeting the cause of the malicious act, rather than the malicious act itself.And me, not being a Buddhist, have no compunctions about seeming preachy.There are jerks. But jerkiness does not exist in a vaccuum. Don't hate the jerk. They're just doing what they think is best for themselves and those they love -- the human insctinc. Hate the reason they are a jerk, which often relates far enough back to some truly wicked act that defies sanity or basic human instinctual morality.Not always....some people are jerks for rather trivial reasons. But then, work to improve them. They're obviously not born-and-bred bad guys. They didn't shoot red lazers from birth. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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