Do Bad People Exist?
Taken November 22, 2022
Some people with toxic behaviors may not be aware that they are being toxic. This sentiment is an extremely hard concept to grasp because individuals usually need to be on the receiving end of such an experience to begin contemplating what happens when somebody bothers or upsets them. Most people who aren’t sadistic seem to end up hurting others because they are usually acting in their own self-interest. Here’s the conundrum: most of the time, they don’t even know that they are acting in their own self-interest; they think it's just how things work.
I have friends who argue that there is no altruistic cause, but I don’t think that’s true at all. The idea of being selfless is to sacrifice something to help someone else. Subsequently, after having such a thought, an individual will bring up the fact that people do selfless things to make themselves feel good. The idea that you must suffer to be truly selfless is point-blank stupid, and society would not be able to progress if that were the case. Also, people who don’t feel good after helping others are usually, in plain terms, considered bad people. That’s right; there is such a thing as a bad person. I feel like defining a person as bad has become demonized; it’s just part of life.
This abstract age of art has made people confused. When you start to frame everything as being subjective, it kind of ruins the whole purpose of giving meaning to anything in society. This framing has led to people deluding themselves into believing that it’s impossible to hurt other people. Imagine if you burn yourself, and someone tells you that pain is a response your body must heat because of some cells being damaged, you really aren’t hurt, it’s just a construct in your head. I just walked you through how a person could potentially delude themselves out of validating their physical pain response. It might seem ridiculous, but I have personally had this type of thinking in other aspects of my life, with respect to relationships, food, and entertainment. “He’s not being mean to me, he’s just joking”, “there are only 300 calories in these McDonald’s fries even though it seems to be filled to the brim”, “watching eight seasons of a television show in one go is totally okay”. It’s a mistake everyone makes, but it’s important to realize that it is a mistake.
Circling back to people doing bad things and not realizing it's bad, delusion is the cause of most of it. They think that everyone is acting in their own self-interest, so they operate accordingly. They probably just had temporary exposure to people who were behaving in their own self-interest, and they have accepted that as the reality of most people. Humans are amazingly simple; the idea that “Monkey see, monkey do” applies to us way more than we would like. Just look to celebrities in society who garner attention for their ability to capture the essence of humanity; they become out of touch. That’s right, because why would success, attention, and drug use keep you grounded? Once you’ve become elevated, your perspective will change, and there will be people who will accept you, and there will be people who hate you. In the end, your perspective will reflect your environment.
Are there bad people? Yes, and it’s fine. What’s really important is that people also change over time. They get better or worse, depending on what experiences they have along the way. All you can do is hope that they are influenced to become better people. If they don’t get better, you have every right to just not like that person. It’s a beautiful thing. The entire spectrum of human emotion, ranging from love to hate, is important because it makes life a poetic adventure; it makes everything interesting and important.