I found the first lesson of “Being Bad” very interesting. The teacher gave us a little introduction about the issues of the subject during this semester. I think that it is very interesting to know how people want be bad. In my opinion, society needs certain rules to run in the right way but people usually want to break these rules and be bad. For this reason, I think that the fact of being bad can be understood as a kind of freedom or liberation that breaks the “jail” that social rules has created. This does not justify all the bad actions, but I have no doubt that being bad is, in many cases, associated to this idea of rebellion and freedom.
Moreover, I found the attemps to exteriorize evil behaviour in external figures very interesting: Religion did so by creating the devil and some literary works create evil characters (like Sauron in "The Lord of the Rings") to exteriorize the most despicable acts of human behaviour. But everybody knows that bad and evil things are inside human beings and not in any external figures.
I hope to know more things about being bad in relation to the topics of this subject. It can be very interesting and it can also help us to understand our own mind in a better way.
Hi Antonio! I find your blog very interesting! dealing with the question of being bad, do you think we are always responsible for our actions or that there is not bad in us but we are influenced by external factors that make us behave in a certain way or other?
ReplyDeleteHi! In my opinion, human beings are responsible of their actions in the majority of cases, but not always. You have to analize many circumpstances to label an action as "bad". For example, we can say that the compsuntion of drugs is bad because our society rules consider it as a bad action. However in certain tribal societies, drug compsuntion is seeing as a way to comunicate with gods and nature. Consequently, the action is considered as good and sacred.
ReplyDeleteIn both cases, we can see how not only the human beings are responsible of their acts but also how social, moral and religious rules influence them.
of course it depends wether you are bad in one country you can be good in another, because different countries may have different rules. But, being aware of those rules, and if you brake one you are guilty of it and labeled as bad...in which cases would you say that someone is bad without being influenced by external factors?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, the idea of "bad" is always conditioned by social, moral and religious values that can changed from one place to another.
ReplyDeleteI think that we have to make a difference between the bad (whose notion can change depending of circumpstances) and the evil (that is universally agreed as despicable actions).