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Do you think that bad people exist?

Or there are only healthy people and the ones with some kind of mental issue/disorder/illness?

I have pondered this a lot.  The lies, cheating and bad behavior of my ex could be considered just very bad behavior of a bad person.  But I have to believe it was the mental illness, and not that he was a bad person.  I have to believe that.

Everybody has done and is capable of doing bad things. What's the definition of a "bad" person you're talking about?

I think good and bad exist in everyone and it's a matter of choice which one gets fed and which one gets starved.  Someone who's in pain all the time is going to gravitate to what could be considered 'bad', since we need to take care of ourselves first to then favor 'good'.  And then there are folks who are wired so differently from what we call 'normal' that what they consider good or bad is very different from 'the norm'.

So are you trying to differentiate your ex from the disorder BBS?

We are humans capable of what humans can be capable of.

Who are we to say that under certain circumstances and pressures, genetics, etc... .we would not be 'cheaters,' 'liars,' etc?

What if we were born in a country where at 7 we are handed a gun to protect our family from real dangers in our community?  How would that shape our thoughts and behaviors?

Who are we to judge people based on what we think we or they 'should' be capable of?

Wouldn't we too... .if given the same exact set of enviornmental, biological circumstances as the next person... .behave the same way as them?  By definition... .I think maybe we would.

We cannot say we would be of stronger mind, therefore make different choices... .because then there we are changing the mind... .to a stronger one to make our point... .which dissolves the point.

Idk... .my thoughts for today.

Hi blackbirdsong,

I recently re-read the book Nonviolent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg.  NVC says that everything anyone ever does is an attempt to meet their needs.  So, in my interpretation, according to NVC there are no "bad people", only people who are trying to get their needs met in ways that don't meet some of their own or others' needs (alternately we could say their attempts to get their needs met are "tragic"  We can still take action to meet our own needs and protect ourselves (i.e. meet our own need for safety), but there's no such thing as a "bad person", or even "bad behaviour".

I do not hesitate to admit that this is a challenging point of view for me.  That's kind of why I'm putting it out there, as food for thought and another perspective to consider.

Sometimes there are bad people... .the really evil ones... .who rape and kill and pillage and turn kids into child soldiers and cause destruction of communities, nations, who cause genocides... .and

And then there are mentally disordered individuals... .who have no intention to be "bad" but they have bad effect on those who come in contact with them, on those who love them and on those who live with them.

Although a famous poet asked, how can one distinguish a dancer from the dance?

In some cases we just have to try to dissociate between the "bad act" and the mentally disordered individual who commits an act that has bad effect on others... .morality dictates that we do so.

I agree with Rosenberg, and to take it a step further, everything we do is an attempt to gain pleasure or avoid pain, or both.  Beyond that, the vehicles and behaviors we use to meet those needs are either empowering or disempowering, for ourselves and for others, there is no 'good' or 'bad'.

Now depending on how someone's wired, what constitutes pain and what constitutes pleasure can vary, but looked at from that pleasure/pain frame can make motivations become clear, which doesn't make behaviors OK but it can make them understandable.

There are no bad people.

People do what they can to gain what they desire. What they "can do" depends on a complex set of attributes the person possesses. We are limited mostly by our inborn qualities such as appearance, physical strength, intellect, etc. Society provides some limits, but having enough of several things can offset the consequences of crossing those lines.

Mentally ill are just people with faulty wiring which might make them engage in maladaptive behaviors. It's sort of like sneezing when exposed to bright lights, the optic nerves are put together in such a way that when exposed to bright light, it instead triggers a response from sensors inside the nose saying that there's some sort of debris, and then you sneeze as a reflex. There was no debris, just like some of the problems involving the mentally ill have to do with irrational thought patterns or emotional response to otherwise mundane stimuli. Or little response to normal stimuli.

Lying and cheating is not abnormal in humans, and provides some advantage if used correctly. Even murder works as a way of removing competition permanently, provided there is no consequence or that the reward far outweighs the risk of consequence. You don't kill your tribesmen because you need them, even if they are jerks.

In fact, that's really what it comes down to. Does reward outweigh potential consequence. There are no bad people. Just cause, effect and one's ability to impose their will on the world around them.

In my world, yes, bad people do exist. And yes, that includes some disordered people who didn't choose to be bad but unfortunately ended up as very very bad people. Purely bad? I don't think so. Psychopaths like their pets sometimes, sadists actually "love" their "objects". A very very bad person in some ways may serve humanity greatly in other ways. Also, is "bad" something bad? That's open to discussion and depends I guess. Can we call someone universally, purely bad? Of course not, but then you can never call an X,Y,Z universally that. It's not about the validity of "bad". Nothing is universally, unquestionably valid. Still, victims do not need a universally frozen, timeless system to call someone bad.  

I'm not religious, I'm not a moralist and I'm not saying what I'm saying because I like labelling certain behaviours as bad. However, I don't live in an abstract world consisting solely of moral judgments, either. My world is filled with humans, humans are social, vulnerable beings. They are affected by others' actions. Is that not the reason why we actually have a social contract (the basis of which - homo homini lupus- I don't agree with) on which we base a kind of justice system no matter how insufficient? Why do we take rapists, psychopaths, child abusers (very disordered poor souls actually) to that system? Actions. Actions have doers. Actions have victims. What is line between calling someone a good person with bad actions and a bad person? That line may be blurred forever. Still, I don't think the world only consists of good people with bad actions.  Where does that leave us about good people with good actions?

I think when we think about the other end of the scale, that is virtue, good people with bad actions does not sustain forever because we lose our definition for what is virtuous. Yes, there are bad people. It's possible to understand them, forgive them, love them, save their lives even if they raped you at one point, give your life for them. But yes, in my world there are bad people.

In my understanding healthy and unhealthy does not contradict with this because it may be about the reasons but actions have results that affect others, too. That's where "bad" comes into play and can exist together with healthy and unhealthy. 

And sorry for posting twice but this is a question that I think about a lot and is very helpful to me in a lot of ways. I don't think "bad" is a permanent quality, it changes, it develops, it lessens. I believe in humans' capacity to change what they are, to a degree. Child abusers acting on it are bad people who are actually serve a very basic need in a completely warped way ("she wanted me, too", hell yeah!). Keep them in jail for 20 years, many get scared and stop acting out and yes, even if there is no internal change in their desires or perceptions, I believe they are better people for not acting out. So, they are not equally "bad" now only because a definition of good based on the harm inflicted on the victim exists.

It's so so sad that many people do what they do also because formal and informal justice systems fail to recognize emotional abuse in a lot of ways and there are no repercussions and society attributes less "bad" value to it than physical actions in a false hierarchy of "bad" - however, ask persistent abuse victims and many say some physical abuse may be preferable to emotional abuse actually. If we had education, justice, value systems that recognized hurtful emotive actions as much as physical actions then many people, including many disordered individuals, would do less of these or would be controlling themselves according to some other criteria. Not everything that happens to us happens because people around us are truly unable to control themselves in all these instances. They just think it's not that "bad" and their value system is more or less coherent with that of the society in this regard.

So yes, badness doesn't only result from the individual, the society contributes to it. Again, though, isn't that so for everything and everyone? Do we say Father doesn't love me because his concept of love is developed under social circumstances, is not wholly unique to him so it's not love?

Also, choosing to describe "bad" in accord with "reasons", "illnesses", "needs", "intention" are not unshakable or universal, either. They can be ethical or pragmatic choices privileging reasons over effects. One psychiatrist may choose to do this whereas another one working with abuse victims physically maimed forever may see this in another way. I know there is not a clear answer but there are so many voices to be heard, some of them completely ignored sometimes.