Assignment 3- Thomas

Personally, I do not believe in absolute good or absolute evil. Sure, in books and movies you have the perfect character that always makes the ethical choice pitted against the brutal villain with no conscience, but in reality this clash just doesn’t exist. Human nature doesn’t allow for it; seemingly perfect people mess up and the menaces to society will do some good every once in awhile. I believe most people strive to be good, but situational factors lead them to do immoral things. For example, Leah Kleppinger has a family, a house, and is able to put food on the table every night. For her, the temptation to take money from the wallet might not have been as strong as, say, a single mother with 3 kids working multiple jobs to stay out of debt and pay her bills on time. The latter woman would probably have taken money, but does this make her an evil person? While it is obviously the wrong thing to do, I don’t think it makes her evil because people are put in tough situations sometimes and act desperately as a result. I want to end by saying that 'good' and 'evil' are some of the most vague and hardest to define words in the English language. If I say, “Sally is good,” does this mean she has done many virtuous deeds, or is she a friendly person? How much good does one have to do in their life in order to become a ‘good’ person? It is impossible to know, and all we as humans can do is try to do the right thing for the situations we are given. We are going to make some good decisions and some bad, but this doesn’t make us absolute good or absolute evil people.