contemplativeAre we defined by our actions or can good people do bad things and still be wholly a good person?
Which acts cross the line and forever taint your impression or opinion of another person?
For all that I often entertain fond thoughts of mowing people down with a machine gun, I'm a pretty moral person. Almost naively so. I have this tendancy to view things in black or white terms and lump people into one side or the other. It reminds me of a scene from a book by Elizabeth Moon called Divided Allegiance.
"A paladin can sense good and evil directly," he began. "Now you might think that would make everything simple: on one side are the bad people, and you kill them, and over here are the good people, and they cheer for you."
It might not be as extreme as that, but sometimes I get the impression that my worldview shrinks down to something along those lines. It all depends on whether a redline has been crossed I guess.
