Is it ok to applaud a crook for saving someone’s life if the day before he stole a car? Seems like a simple question. Of course. It’s just a car. Compared to someone’s life it’s worthless.
Is it ok to applaud a famous athlete for giving “hope” and raising a lot of money to cancer patients and cancer research if that athlete got to the position they’re in by cheating? Now consider that it would be impossible to be in that position (7-time Tour de France winner) without cheating, and that every Tour winner that’s ever lived has cheated in one way or another. The original question seems pretty easy to answer. Yes, Lance Armstrong does more good for the world than evil by contributing to the cancer society than he did to hurt the world by taking drugs to win bike races. After all, it’s just a bike race.
Now go back to the first scenario, the one with the car thief. It was ok to praise them for their good deed even though they stole someone’s car. But what if a non-criminal saves someone’s life. They didn’t steel a car AND they saved a life. So therefore they’re doing more good for the world and they deserve more praise than the thief, obviously. But that doesn’t happen.
What isn’t obvious to most people is that Lance Armstrong is in the same situation. How many hundreds of thousands of people have contributed more than Lance (in terms of time spent, contributions made—financially, physically, mentally, effort put forth—to cure cancer)? How many of those people do you know by name? I know zero of those people’s names. I know Lance’s name. I know a crook’s name and I associate that dishonest person with a noble deed. I associate a cheating liar with something good. And so do you.
People aspire to be like the ones talked about in the media. We value a lying, cheating multi-millionaire more than a nameless nurse who ACTUALLY helps cure cancer. How can the world become a better place or even survive if this is how we think?
We have a president who we think is doing good for the world. What good is it that he’s doing? Answer: mainly he’s not doing some of the bad things that other recent world leaders have done. But he’s still dropping bombs on fucking huts. He’s still leading a country that’s raping the world for worthless gobs of black mucus– to make and transport worthless heaps of trash to be sold at Wal-Mart to a nation of ignorant uncaring fools. But let’s not fool ourselves though, he’s about as in control of things as any president has been—which is as much as a puppet is in control of its puppeteer. Who’s in control: people who have billions of dollars. There’s 1,000 of them in the world. How’d they get there? By being lying cheats.
Lets say one of those people owns a company that makes cancer treatment drugs. That same person also owns a company that drills for oil (they probably also own stock in Haliburton and support the Tea Party movement but we’ll forget about that for a second and just focus on the drugs and oil) . Oil is considered “bad” by some people. Cancer drugs are considered good by ALL people. Most people would say that this billionaire is doing more good for the world than bad. I don’t buy that for one second and neither should you. Dishonest, corrupt, immoral, self-interested people do not do more good for the world than good. They continue our species’ existence-long trend of allowing the lying cheat to thrive and rise up in the world while the honest person crumbles to the ground and dissolves into a dust so fine it might as well be nothingness.
There isn’t one billionaire alive who’s a decent person or that got to their position by “honest hard work” (whatever that means). Not one of them does more good for the world than bad. Not even close. Think about that: not one person who as any say in our world’s future has a drop of decent morality in them. How could a person with a billion dollars care about anybody or anything other than themselves? But I’m getting side-tracked. Back to my main pessimistic point: we’re all evil because at one point in each of our lives, we’ve done something bad.
There is no gray area for being a good human being. It’s like the movies. You’re either good or bad. After all, if I save two people from drowning, that doesn’t give me the right to go out and strangle someone.
KENNETT PETERSON 