Why Do Good People Do Bad Things?

This is a question that is posed when sometimes you can't explain the behaviour of people who you consider are generally good.

The question takes you through a subjective analysis of several words. Who is a "good" person? Why do they do "bad things?" In order to delve further, you'll want to determine what motivates these individuals to do what they do.

Let us take an example, if someone lies to you and if doesn't harm anyone, would you say that he is a bad person or that he did a bad thing. Many would argue that it depends on what the person lied about or even why he lied about it.

Taking a religious perspective, many would say that the Original Sin is a doctrine of Chrsitian Theology that accepts the universal sinfulness of the human race.

The muslim would declare an outright 'no' to lying as his scripture forbids such action.

Lesser mortals, for behaviour that is unexplained go down the path of doing "things" you can consider are bad.

In business, most would agree that cheating is bad but many do it. Let me throw in an example. Duty has to be paid for most goods that are imported into the country. Many would readily reduce the invoice value of their goods so that they can pay less duty therby increasing the prospect of selling their goods and making a higher profit? Is this good or bad. Some people see nothing wrong in it. Some can't even think of surviving in retail trade unless they engage in such action. Some would even exend the argument stating that you don't owe such duty to a callous state and therfore underdeclaring of invoice value is perfectly ok. Most of these people are generally good and do not wish to engage in doing anything bad.

When I wrote in this piece, I knew I don't have the simple answers. But we all need to reflect and adopt a value driven approach in our life so that we do not corrupt our soul and society.