Everyone believes that they’re the hero in their own story, and it’s what pushes many of us toward wanting to affect society in a way that validates our hero status.
This means very few of us see the world through the lens of villains, who are consciously diabolical and become gleeful knowing that they’re harming the people around them.
Over the years, I’ve learned that good people, who are well-intentioned, are often the ones who commit the evilest of deeds and unknowingly carry out atrocities because they’re convinced that their actions are for the betterment of society.
And because they’re true believers in their cause, they tend to fight harder than the malicious brutes who live among us to ensure that the evil deed has been carried out to completion.
Objectively good people commit acts of evil all the time, but they’re often incapable of seeing the destruction they’re advocating for or creating themselves. Once married to an idea, it becomes difficult for people to divorce themselves from it, and they'll rationalize their behavior to solidify their comfort with this relationship.
I understand what it’s like to remain in this ideologically toxic relationship because, for many years, I was the person who had worn this cape, believing that I was doing the right thing. Even in the face of visceral discomfort from putting my advocacy into action, I rationalized my emotions and, for years, continued to believe that I was still the hero despite it leading to someone’s death.
I was once a proud liberal who believed that his side of the political aisle was impervious to wrongdoing as we always proclaimed to want to strive to be constantly on the right side of history. I always believed that our policy positions were sincerely motivated by wanting to do what was moral, so I rarely applied scrutiny to group desires.
Abortion was always framed as providing an option for the mother, and while we understood that an abortion would be the ending of a life, I believe that we were too enthralled with the comfort of the mother rather than the child whose life is dependent on the grace of the woman they’re growing inside of.
However, my beliefs were challenged when an ex-girlfriend of mine became pregnant, and I was confronted with the reality of a mother’s choices. I believed that vocalizing support for whatever choice she made was the right thing to do because of my political beliefs, and I rationalized away the discomfort I felt when she chose to take the life of my unborn child.
I was a good person who facilitated an evil deed and justified the natural regret I felt for not protecting my child or at least advocating for his or her life to be spared.
It took me years to acknowledge my participation in an evil that has become so culturally commonplace in America, and I regretted focusing on the relationship I had with this political concept over my unborn child.
The United States currently has a festering culture that celebrates when you flaunt your hubris and considers you a hero when you double down on anything you wear your cape for, regardless of the outcome.
This is why evil deeds become far more prevalent than ill-natured evil-doers, because it’s hard to penetrate the soul of individuals with a blind conviction to goodwill, making it harder for them to reconsider the direction of their moral compass.
However, despite this difficulty, the fact that their intentions are good means that there’s still a possibility for change, and once their compass becomes recalibrated, they’ll fight just as fervently once placed on a truly moral path.
Malicious people make it their business to ensure that they never battle for evil deeds alone, and it’s their objective to exploit our good nature to make a useful idiot out of all of us.
The only way to escape the grasp of ideological trickery is with humility. If you’re humble enough to ask yourself this one question, you’ll be set free: “What if I’m wrong?”
