A while back I wondered about what makes a bad person a “bad person”.
Does 1 bad act make someone a “bad person”?
If so – how does one redeem themselves?
Is the adverse the same?
Does 1 good selfless act make someone a “good person”?
So many questions?
What might be considered a good act?
And in doing a good act, does a person expect something in return?
And suppose, just suppose, the good deed was done by accident?
Yes, a good deed was done, but it was unintentional.
So, does intent need to part of the good deed? Or does the end result of a good deed speak for itself?
And does 1 good deed make up for a wrong this person might have done? And if so, is one good deed the same as all other good deeds, or, are there several degrees of good deeds?
If a person committed, let’s say 4 or even 10 very small bad acts, does 1 really REALLY good deed make up for those? Or does the person need to perform 10 good acts to cancel out 10 bad acts?
Yes, I pondered this.
See, I did a good deed today.
So, am I good for the day?
If I did a good deed, do I call the day a success or do I now have a “freebie” to do a bad deed because I’ve got this good deed in the pocket?
But, doing a bad thing purposely is just wrong. Maybe a bad thing is done without malice. Perhaps it was a mistake that happened to be a bad thing.
For the sake of this post, let’s say a scoring does exist for good deeds. To make it simple, let’s make it a scale of 1-10. On this scale, a “1” would be holding the door open for someone and a “10” would donating a kidney.
So today, I might have committed a 2 on the “Good Deed Scale”.
If there were a “Bad Acts Scale”, do I now get to commit a ‘2’ on that scale? Or perhaps I could committ 2 ‘1’s and still break even for the day?
Can it work that way?
Why can’t it work this way?
Well, of course it can – it is BecauseJimSays after all.
BUT – we must take intent into the “Good Deed Scale”. If I committed this ‘2’, but I did it by complete accident, does it lesson the ‘2’ in value?
Or, is a ‘2’ a ‘2’, regardless of intent?
Does the act itself stand alone?
Kind of a head scratcher don’t you think?
k, I feel some detail is needed.
I’m at the WaWa today and my bill was $4.68. I did the self checkout and towards the end of my transaction I was prompted to round up my purchase for a charity.
I wasn’t paying attention to the screen and I hit “YES” to round up and donate $.32 to this WaWa charity.
So – good deed, yes.
But – when I think about my “Good Deed Scale” and this being a ‘2’ do I lessen the score based on it being an accident and not intentional.
And if this charitable giving is a score of ‘2’, if I were to have given $100, does this move it up the scale?
I feel like a need a computer guy to write me a code for this. Too many variables are making it way too complicated.
In this “Good Deed Scale”, I don’t want to use a decimal point. A ‘2’ is a ‘2’, not a ‘2.2’ or a ‘2.3’. I consider using decimal points like a participation trophy.
Suppose I have this ‘2’ today and I do nothing else good or bad to be awarded any points, be they positive or negative, do these points carry over into the next day, or, does each day start with a clean slate?
And further suppose I really feel like being an ass one day. Do I plan ahead, maybe get a bunch of positive points built up so that I can cash them in and be an ass and still break even?
And if someone does witness me being an ass and they say to another person, “That Jim, he’s an ass”.
Does that 2nd person shoot back, “Why no, he did several good acts ranging from 2 to 6 last week and he has 27 points built up. Take away the 21 negative points today, because I agree he acted like an ass, he’s still looking at a positive total of 6 still left over”.
Yeah, I can totally imagine that conversation.
Suppose even further if one could wear their score, like an electronic score card, on some type of Velcro’d sticker so that the public would know where you’re at?
If that were to occur, then I’d really be on the lookout for people with a high positive score. With a high score, they might be more willing to committ a bad act because they’ve got quite a lot to fall back on.
Likewise, I’d also be on the lookout for someone with a very low score, because that person just doesn’t care.
Suppose further that you have a high positive score and you’ve committed a moving violation and have to go to court. Might a judge impose a lesser punishment based on the high positive score?
And with a very high negative score, might a judge sentence someone to 30 days in jail for, say, jaywalking?
Ok, is it just me, or am I really on to something here …….
My Take on Life and Events 