badness

What is not in doubt is that I have done things that cross any reasonable threshold of badness.

blather

My life coach says of themselves, “I am not a bad person, but I’ve done bad things”. It’s an effective mantra: shut down the ruminations, and replace with a more truthful reduction.

integrating

I played with it for a while, but what feels more wholesome to me, to integrate is “I am a bad person, because I’ve done bad things”.

People seem to baulk at this, but why?

reasoning

Why are we so beholden to an ideal that is not even qualitative? In any case, I am shaped by what has been, is, and (perhaps above all) what might be said about me in the future.

In a world where roughly half of a voting populace elected Donald Trump, twice, and where I think it’s reasonable to assume that half of all of us might well do the same, what is the value of goodness?

I think the values are inherent for the doer of good, in the metagame of life, but maybe I’m just rationalising the value of traits I’m stuck with anyway.

fitting

My experience in life led to a place where I have, for at least as long as I can recall, had to operate on a “worst case scenario” premise.

Can my worst actions be leveraged against me? Yes, and they have been, more than once.

Therefore I get out in front of it, by removing the pressure to meet a stated, but unmeasured principle.

downsides

In consideration, I don’t think that integrating this will lead to me being a less kind person. And given the spot I find myself in, philosophically and pragmatically, perhaps a little more badness would be no bad thing for me.

This does not change what I have done, so — are we still baulking?