Shaivalini's Blog

In a very rare scenario, I am publishing one of my assignments here. This is the article I wrote for my Ethics class. It is based on the movie Blood Diamond. If you haven’t seen the movie, I urge you to do that at the earliest. To make the article understandable, a clip from the movie is attached.

“My heart always told me that people are inherently good. My experience suggests otherwise. But what about you, Mr. Archer? In your long career as a journalist, would you say that people are mostly good?”  
“No. I’d say they’re just people.”

People develop beliefs based on their experiences in life. Both Benjamin and Danny had witnessed life in its most cruel form. But their experiences had been different. These experiences made them who they were.

It is mentioned in the movie that Danny Archer had a tough childhood. Both his parents were brutally killed in front of him, when he was just nine years old. Thereafter, he was on his own and, given the plight of his country, he must have had a tough time in his struggle for survival. This is evident as he grows up to be selfish, practical and apparently a cold person. But, that doesn’t totally take away the good in him. He knew what loss felt like. Humanity was still prevalent in him.

On the other hand, Benjamin seems to be a kind of person who had earlier been living in a comparatively peaceful environment. Later in his life, however, he somehow gets engulfed by the war, still, he works in order to make the lives of the children, better. This tells us that he is the kind of person who would still be looking for means of obtaining inner peace, in a war prone environment. And hence, he takes up the noble cause of rehabilitation of the war-affected children.

So, specific to their experiences, both of them had a different approach towards humans and their humanity. While Benjamin lived his whole life with the certainty that people are good, his exposure to the war made him question his belief. Therefore, he says his experience suggests him otherwise. Archer, on the other hand, falls in the grey area, he is not a ruthless killer; but he doesn’t mind killing if it helps him. So, he is of the view that people are just people, the situations can make even good people perform bad deeds.

If we observe closely, today, I think, most of us are like Archer. Even though, we had a normal childhood and a normal life; we aren’t inherently good. And we all blame it to the society, the world, the universe. We give excuses like, “So what if I don’t do it? One person cannot make any difference”. “Everyone else is doing it, why shouldn’t I?” We are manipulated easily by what everyone else is doing. That is a dangerous thing. It kills us in a way we do not understand. And by the time we realize the change, it is too late to recover.

In my life, I haven’t met a person whom I can clearly classify as good or bad. It is more of a perspective, what I think about them, which is a derivative of their actions and thoughts. In such a case, I don’t think I will ever come across any person who is good or bad. Nobody’s perfect. We all have our greys. And it is important to accept that. Otherwise, it would be impossible to live in this world. Probably, the imagination of God that I have in my mind is perfect. But that is just in my mind. And a number of times I have told myself even God is not perfect. Because, if he was, the world wouldn’t have been such a bad place to live in. I have come to believe that life isn’t fair. It will never be.

A sad side of the world is that, it does not value veracity and good deeds. A simple example being, the leave application for our classes. The rule is that, if we inform the teacher beforehand via mail, about the absence, then the leave will be granted and there wouldn’t be a downgrade. This has led to more people falling sick unnecessarily, because if they tell the truth, leave wouldn’t be granted.

The choices with a student here are both bad- either fake sickness or get downgraded. If I am a good person, I might get downgraded once or twice. But, what will happen eventually, when I see everyone is faking sickness? If I fake sickness, does that make me a bad person? It is just one act. How many such acts would it take to classify me as a bad person? It is not that clear. Hence, as Danny said, people are just people. Their actions might be good or bad. Based on those actions, it is not correct to put tags on them.

As a kid, I hated people who used to use abusive language. I just didn’t speak to them. I hated people who lied. I didn’t speak to them either. After a point I realised, I wouldn’t be able to make any friends, if I kept on doing that. Today, I am friends with people who abuse, who lie and do a number of other things, which I don’t like. But, now it doesn’t matter. That is how we get used to all the bad in the world. We get comfortable. Then, after a certain point in time. It stops bothering us. Probably, that is what happened with Archer. Everything stopped bothering him. Then people were just people.

The only way out here, that I see, is to make peace with the fact that being good isn’t going to be rewarding or easy. We should go on making those choices, with which we can live easily. In our own small ways like helping those in need, we can attain inner peace. Enough for a good night’s sleep. Next day, we can wake up to add some more good to the world. Hoping that eventually, the good and bad would get balanced out. I am not saying we will create Utopia by practicing this. But, at least, we can make the world a decent place to live in. It is worth a try, I say.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” – Rumi