No Stupid Questions

I once read that people judge others by their actions and themselves by their intentions. I think about that a lot.

When asked how he could admire an airforce general despite being a pacifist, MLK jr responded "I judge people by their own principles – not by my own.” Judge that redditor by the principle of someone whose career is helping children but instead exploits them.

I agree it doesn’t matter how many children he’s helped. I’ve heard from my Hindu friends that good deeds won’t naturalise bad Karma. Im not religious and don’t believe in karma, but I think this is well grounded. It doesn’t matter how many children he has helped, it doesn’t change the fact that he has damaged so many others for sexual gratification.

The guys a vile worm, and think you’re right to judge him.

Yes. As always though, context is key.

I tend to look at it as a see-saw. Run-of-the-mill kindness and general acts good nature sit near the fulcrum of one end of the seesaw. Similarly, a single or very few acts of genuine heroism and selflessness sit right at the far end of the "good" end of the seesaw, providing as much effort the lean towards the "good egg" character trait than the dozens of daily acts.

On the other end of the see-saw, being a general cunt sits near the fulcrum of the "bad" end for me, genuine malicious acts of emotional daaaamage or shithousery sit in the middle, with outright rape; murder; Nickelback fan club membership; and noncery sit at the far end.

So yes, on balance, if someone is habitually a good spud on the daily but happened to get a bit frisky with someone other than their monogamous partner once, I'd still say overall they were a good person but with shit judgement.

Equally, someone like Jimmy Saville or raised millions of pounds for British charities with his fame and stardom appeared to be a stand up guy, but the covert fiddling offsets that almost instantly.

A crude metaphor, but it works for me.

It depends. Consider the inputs and outputs of this judgement:

Inputs:

• How bad was the act itself?
• What were the intentions behind the act? A mistake? A crime of passion? Or a deliberate act of greed or malice?
• Was this just a one time thing you don’t think is indicative of their future behavior or is it a part of a pattern of behavior?

Outputs:

• What are the stakes of this judgement? Are we trying to punish this person or at least prevent them from doing the thing again? Or is this just for our own moral or social understanding?
• Can the person be rehabilitated or is it a waste of time trying to give them the benefit of the doubt?

Just as an example I think about sometimes: Sometimes you will get some older politician running for office. They have done and said some horrific things in the past. You point to that as a reason they shouldn’t be elected again. Someone comes out of the woodwork (I’m sure entirely organically /s) and says something like “can’t people change? Don’t they deserve a second chance?” And sure. People can change. And if that politician wants to go work at a McDonalds or something I’m not going to go out of my way to cancel them, but when we have millions of people who could be elected, most of whom, didn’t, idk, support segregation, why does this guy in particular deserve another chance to be in a position of power when he’s already used it in a bad way? In terms of your example, maybe if the sex offender is remorseful and goes to therapy for the issue, they could go reintegrate into society… just maybe not in a job that involves directly working with children right? That sounds reasonable? We can acknowledge the steps they took to reform themselves but also recognize that they lost the right to be trusted at certain kinds of things?

There are some crimes though that are so bad that they can never be forgiven. I don’t think the oil execs who deliberately lobbied to effectively cause the end of the world so they could keep profiting off of it for decades should be forgiven. I don’t think there is a punishment severe enough to serve justice for such a crime. No amount of work they could do to try to fix the problem could undo the damage which they have already caused. There is no actual means of redemption.

I'll roll out

"What about the good things Hitler did?"

I tend to ask how bad that worst act was. Some shit, ima judge your ass for even if it was only once, no matter how much you say you changed, because you might be faking the change to keep from being noticed.

But the standard is pretty fucking high if it wasn't personal to me. Like, if I saw you kick a dog that wasn't even remotely aggressive, ima judge your ass, but be open to you changing. Eventually, if that's the worst you've ever done and you at least pretend to have changed well enough to not repeat it, I'm not going to hold that over your head forever.

But you kick my dog? Assuming I can't get away with burying your ass, you better hope we never run across each other in the woods when we're both 100, because it'll be your last day on earth. No forgiveness, no benefit of the doubt.

But really big shit? No, Hitler never gets to be forgiven, period. Yeah , he's dead, but ima judge that motherfucker until my last conscious moment

Now you brought up a specific example. It happens to be an example that I would absolutely never, ever trust the person again. Three reasons first, abuse of position. He already proved he will ignore professional ethics as well as general moral ones, as well as laws. That's hard to change in people. Not impossible, but hard.

Second, he got away with it. That means his regret is dubious. If he truly regretted it, why's he divulging it that way instead of taking steps to make him less likely to be able to repeat things?

Third, people that diddle kids don't tend to stop. They just tend to pause. It's impossible to nail down exact numbers because there's some that never get caught. But the recidivism rate is high, and it is very rare that someone willing to do that can stop with just one act.

So, no, I couldn't believe that any good he did balances out there near certain fact of the only reason he didn't diddle every single kid he could have was because he didn't think he could get away with those. He absolutely would have fucked every single patient that met his victim profile if he could have.

Also, it's okay to say pedophile, the word police aren't going to spank you.

Tbh, I can't think of any situation where I could weigh any amount of good acts against fucking a single child and that one bad act not taint everything else. And it doesn't have to be literally fucking, I'm speaking figuratively here. There might be some act that was so irrelevant to the victim that it might not matter if the good was good enough, but I doubt it. I can't think of anything at least.