If you’ve ever watched a Bond film then you’ll know the world is most definitely separated into good and evil.

Bad people ooze evil, it’s amazingly clear cut who’s bad but luckily the sheer essence of being bad means that in the end you’ll get your comeuppance.

Yet in the real world, the one we inhabit on a daily basis it’s much harder to separate the good from the bad.

You see in life there simply is no good or bad. As a society we’ve constructed for ourselves a series of rules that we live by.

In western culture, we believe that we should only have one partner and that everyone is equal.

Travel a few 1000 miles and you’ll find monogamous relationships and a world where equality is none existent.

As a society we presume that we are right bit the truth is there is no divine creature that makes the rules. Equality is a human construct, we choose to abide by our rules and apply our own penalties.

The penalties of course depend upon being caught; after all the perfect crime leaves no traces and people don’t put themselves in jail.

It amazes me that western society is intent on forcing it’s rules on the rest of the world, when in reality there is no proof our rules are the right ones.

We forget that our societal constructs are direct consequences of our cultures, and simply forcing someone else’s rules on a culture that is neither prepared for or desiring to receive them will never end well.

With good and evil then it’s important to firstly remember that there is no defining line at which someone becomes evil.

The most evil of people in a business sense could in fact be entirely loving and highly moralistic people in their family lives.

The fact is, good people do bad things all the time. There are many areas to each of our lives and as much as we can excel at one area we can entirely fail in another.

Take the footballer that works with disadvantaged children through setting up their own charity, yet cheats on his wife. On the one hand a saint and on the other a morally questionable family man at best.

When you simply look at someone’s actions, classifying them as good or evil might seem easy and yet when you put them into perspective the lens through which you measure them can change.

The same footballer might have had his charity set up purely as a tax dodge, where as his wife could have abused him secretly for years leading to him seeking solace from another woman.

The above might be an uncommon extreme but they highlight a very good point; good or evil is all a matter of perspective.

When faced with losing your job and not being able to provide for your family you would undoubtedly do evil things if you had to.

As such it’s really important that you look behind the immediate actions of others a look for their causes. A client that seemingly does something evil to you, or for that matter does a good deed might have entirely different motives that will turn the whole situation on their heads.

Your reaction to such events then or seemingly evil or good deeds needs to be tempered more by the why than the what.

Chapter Summary:

• Good people do bad things
• Good vs bad is a matter of perspective
• Understand peoples motives

Read our next blog post “Things can change in a split second”.