My grandson, about 5 years old, often talks about bad guys. There are robbers and pirates and zombies and Decepticons, all bad guys. It's a convenient concept. Bad guys cause our problems. Bad guys give us someone to despise, to fight, There are two kinds of people: good guys and bad guys.
We know better, but we don't let go of the notion of bad guys.
I'm a bad guy, I've been told. I'm a radical left liberal who longs to destroy America. My natural reaction is to view those who tell me this as deluded despicable liars, beyond hope.
The line between good and evil runs through every human heart, says Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. We are all bad guys. And we are all good guys. Somehow, we filter out the bad when we look in the mirror and we filter out the good when we evaluate those who disagree with us. The plank in my eye doesn't so much block my view of the speck in yours as highlight it. That speck is all I see.
In politics and religion, bad-guy thinking often generates passionate support, and what is more gratifying? The support validates our views; the passion extends them. The circle starts to spin, to get meaner. It feels good to be so right, so sure of what's wrong. It gives us purpose, perhaps worth dying for.
One wishes we would grow up.
The other day I was playing along with the bad-guy worldview. Those nasty zombies, I said. My grandson corrected me: "No, Grandpa, they are helping protect us from the Decepticons."
It's still a bad-guy world, but occasionally we see progress. We can have allies, make treaties, be more accepting. Sometimes, we even accept correction.
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Your thoughts are welcome! I'll try not to flinch if there are nasty ones, which I understand are fairly common nowadays.