βGoodβ and βevilβ are the stadium-chorus words of moral language. Easy to chant. Emotionally satisfying. Broad enough that everyone can mouth along without asking what the song is actually about. Like singing along to Bon Joviβa huge hook, big feelings, very little diagnostic precision.
Those words flatten reality. They turn systems, accidents, fear, negligence, power, biology, and circumstance into cartoon silhouettes. Once you label something βevil,β inquiry stops. Once you label someone βgood,β responsibility often evaporates. It feels clarifying, but it is mostly anesthetic.
Real harm almost never arrives wearing a villain cape. It shows up through timing failures, intoxication, bad judgment, missing scaffolding, unexamined fear, bodies that did not get what they needed, brains misfiring under stress. None of that fits neatly into a chorus. It is verse work. Uncomfortable, specific, hard to sing together.
I have been living in the verses my whole life.
That is why the good/evil framing feels thin. I am interested in mechanisms, not mascots. What conditions produce harm? What conditions reduce it? What systems failed? What capacities were missing? Who had choices, and which choices were actually available at the time?
That is a much quieter song. Fewer people clap. But it is the one that actually changes anything.
My resistance to moral melodrama is not moral relativism. It is moral maturity. I am not saying βanything goes.β I am saying βlabels are not explanations.β
Good and evil are crowd words.
Care, responsibility, limitation, repairβthose are workshop words.
I have never been interested in singing along. I have been trying to understand what instruments are even in the room.
I think the good and evil lingo is a bit over-played. Like every Bon Jovi song ever made. Okay it lands and everyone knows the words but what are we really singing along to?
