why is bad to be bad?

People might admire a fictional villain, or the thought of a villain elsewhere. I suspect they feel quite differently if they themselves are affected.

Yes, you're wrong. I sleep well at night knowing that I've been honest and ethical in my work and personal life.

there once was a girl
who had a little curl
right in the middle of her forehead

and when she was good
she was very, very good
but when she was bad, she was better

Pitiful people needs scapegoats, some/someone to blame thus feeling good about themselves.

You probably are talking about yourself Hex...you just don´t know it...

Please try to say something intelligent, if you can.

So far you all seem to me quite right.

Some remarks/questions.


That'd be quite natural. And it's true that all of those villains, though ruthless, appear to be moral in a way. (Even Hannibal Lecter has a moral code). They often embody moral dilemmas. So people don't feel entirely negative about them.

On the other side, shouldn't we be grateful to villains? I mean, when we are confronted to some behaviour that we judge aggressive or unfair, isn't that an opportunity to test ourselves? To get to know better ourselves, to improve our self-control? and how would you feel if you are opposed to a villain but finally you overcome that situation and you... win? You would feel better, maybe even glad, Your self-esteem would grow.


Yes. One more reason to thank them.
Are not villains necessary for our well-being? At least to prove us that we are unlike them, that we are good, decent men?


OK, so you feel compelled to be good, do you? Have you ever considered to relieve yourself and let it go... at least once? Are you incapable of that? Is that a limit? Or are you afraid of what you might do?


Agree. I often feel attracted by bad people. They are generally more sexy.
Why's that?

No, not at all. Demagogues will manipulate the simpleminded and naive into beliveing that a person/group/nation ..etc, bears blame, thus use the scapegoat as a "lightning rod" so to speak. This has happend endless of times through history.
Also this usually instigates mob mentallity, where uncontrolled hateful emotion will rule, and logic/reason will vanish like dew before the sun.

I didn't say I'd never been bad.

You are right. It often happens that we are told who are the bad ones, without even knowing what is actually so bad in them. The situation you refer to could very well apply to scapegoats guilty of no crime - as it occurred many times throughout history, at least according to our current judgment.
But I meant that the bad ones are really bad and we need not to be told.

Anyway, you offer me the opportunity to make one step further.
Aren't the men we love to hate - even when they are positively responsible of some nasty behavior - sacrificed to our good conscience?

But I understand you regret that, as much as to sleep badly at night. (Well, I do not mean that it would be so unusual...).

But what are feelings for those that are bad - while you tend to be a good person?
Do you think that one can chose to be a bad person? Or must be s-he be sick, psychotic, ignorant... ? If you can think of somebody "normal" choosing to do something s-he knows to be "bad", how would you explain that?

With my experience of life, it has no meaning, it's thick haze of spin and misunderstandings.

Please provide a real life example of your thesis.

My statement is meant to enclose many instances. So there is no single case that would fully express what is supposed to express. I shall make just a couple of examples.

Recently, there's been a teenager murdered by her uncle.
The corpse has been concealed for several weeks, until the uncle - after repeatedly trying to mislead the enquiry - finally cracked and confessed. He also claimed to have raped the dead body of the smothered niece (to date it seems that there is no forensic evidence of that).

In the aftermath many (would-be) opinion leaders on public media claimed that such monsters deserve no mercy. It was not said, but it was apparent that if they only could, they would have personally hang him in the TV studios, in front of the cameras. (I refrain to comment on the utmost public support of this attitude, it was just impossible to say anything againts that purpose without taking the risk to be equated to a murderer and a raper).
Only that, as in a detective novel, the enquiry went on and... the confession was untrue. It seems that the man just tried to cover the real murder, which was seemengly his daughter.

For the sake of the example, I do not want to focus on what really happened and about who is the actual murdered. (The man was an accomplice anyway). It's the public outrage, the deaf and uncompromising thrust to simply erase from being that man. I could sense how much the good feelings of the laymen were relieved by that apalling confession, how much they just wanted to believe about anything to finally have someone to blame and condemn. It is worth to mention that the current main suspect, the cousin, the daughter of the self-confessed murderer, had been quite vocal in expressing her disgust for the father.

Second example: Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, aka Stalin.
The extent of his crimes are paralleled only by Hitler's. But while Hitler as long as he was alive was loved by his followers, anybody close to Stalin was just scared to dead by him. It seems that he died because nobody dared to enter in his chamber, regardles the signs of him suffering a stroke.

Stalin is generally viewed as simply a mass murderer tyrant and all historical judgement of his rule mirror this view. But this is not entirely fair. The man has been the real father of modern Russia. Without his ruling, there is little doubt that the USSR would have resisted and suvived the Nazi invasion. The man won WWII... or largely contributed to that. Do you know the history of the battle of Stalingrad? Do you think it could have been won by Russians without such a ruthless, merciless rule?
But, to my knowledge, no one would ever acknowledge that as Stalin's merit.

These men are commonly deemed as truly bad ones. We can try to analyse their behaviour but, eventually, it'd be hard to say that they are not guilty of their behaviour. And, anyway, for the sake of the example, the focus is on the common opinion of them.
Confronted to these deeds, people just stop their judgment and surrender to... something beyond their judgment (as you hint) and just fit the mold of moral condemnation. This is what I would call sacrifice to the good conscience.

Yes yes, uhm yearh, eh, ok aha, I see ...and NO!!!

What you say is true per se, but Imo Stalin only compensated for his immense incompetence by being utterly brutal and use his commisars to force the soldiers to victory by unspeakable horrorfying methods.

The rest, too many has been accused of horrorfying deeds, and actually admitted to the crimes, either by torture, suggestion, or exstorsion ..etc, there are many methods to make innocent people confess to crimes which they havn't commited, or judged has judged innocent people by falsefyed evidence. Only in minescule cases the real criminal has actually confessed.

So in the end the mob mentallity often will punish the innocent.