For example, in The Shield, the cop character Shane is super racist and says the N-word, but when a Black girl is killed, Shane gets really mad and wants to find and kill the killer or bring him to justice. Some CEOs who are straight-up classist would still help their employees, and if their employee dies, they would start funds for their kids. But why? Why would people like this do something ‘good,’ especially when there isn’t anything in it for them?
Because almost nobody is all good or all bad. Most “bad” people still draw a line somewhere
the world is not made up of exclusively binary good/bad characters or outcomes, and most half-decent TV shows aren’t, either.
People are complicated. Their motivations and actions don’t always seem consistent.
Do you really think most racist people would say “fuck yeah, a Black person died!”? Racism in contemporary society is largely covert and not explicit.
In terms of your class question, most people who are “CEOs” are not in charge of billion-dollar corporations. They have a small company where they are on a first name basis with everyone
The biggest piece of shit I know (MAGA, gun nut, religious nutcase, married his daughters off to desirable candidates) lives near the Mexican border and takes in immigrants who have illegally crossed the border, gives them food and drink and sends them on their way. No, he doesn’t call ICE.
Do as many people leave his place as entered it?
Should I ask the neighbours 🤔?
Let me guess, he thinks/says “But those are different than all the others!!!”
Or y’know, maybe they are pretty representative of the people who comes here like that
Morality does not CAUSE anything. No one does things because they are “good”. People are “good” because of the things they do.
Morality is a DESCRIPTION of something, not an EXPLANATION.
People DO things. WE assign labels to the things they do and to the persons themselves.
Your premise assumes people are morally consistent, and that’s just not how humans work.
Someone can hold racist or classist views and still feel real anger, empathy, or a sense of justice in a specific situation. People compartmentalize constantly. Having prejudice doesn’t turn off basic emotional responses when something concrete and personal happens.
Also, it’s not true that there’s “nothing in it for them.” There are always underlying factors like personal identity, guilt, attachment, social image, or even just the need to see oneself as not completely awful.
What you’re describing isn’t a contradiction. It’s exactly what real people are like, and why well-written characters behave that way too.
One of the dumbest but best examples anyone’s given me for the inconsistencies of morality. Is video game lobbies.
You can find people who do charity work actively protest for civil rights and fight for immigrants rights. Then the load into a Dota 2 match and call the Brazilians dirty f****** slurs every 3 seconds and wish they were all deported for us servers.
The only consistency in humanity is that it’s inconsistent.
it’s a tv show, it was written to be that way because it’s part of a copaganda machine
this is so ironic to say about The Shield, one of the rare TV shows known for portraying cops as corrupt pieces of shit
Yeah, but according to the show these pieces of shit are necessary and that makes this show copaganda shit.
Log off for real
Leave him be, for real.
When you have some time for introspection, you’ll find good characteristics and bad characteristics within you. That’s normal. If you dig deep enough every saint can be an asshole sometimes and the person who just bombed to death 110 girls in a school can be a caring family man. We are complicated monkeys.
Because people are usually quite complex and rarely fit into the neat labels people want to assign to them.
People keep trying to tell me all sorts of things about myself that I don’t agree with, and are objectively not true about myself.
Like based on my last name they assume I’m an Italian immigrant and often will argue about it with me and tell me how I must have grown up, usually based on TV stereotypes of Italians. It’s totally bizarre. For example I grew up on shitty processed white people food, not Italian food. I never had fresh proper Italian food until I learned to cook it myself in my 30s, and yet people ask me what it was like to have a mom cooking wonderful fresh food at home… and if say that wasn’t what happened in your childhood, they call you a liar.
Each person has a different definition of good. On a Venn diagram, you might even overlap with Hitler or pol pot on one or two points. Humans and their ethics and morality are complex. Different people have different dealbreakers.
Take the example of “even a broken clock is right twice a day” and therein find an answer.
Why whouldn’t a morally good character do good things?
Many comments have alluded to this: people are contextual.
I’ll add to this that thoughts are very, very flexible.
In some contexts we learn to think one way and in other contexts we learn to think in other ways. Our thoughts always get activated by context, either external contexts or internal contexts. For example seeing an apple might have us think we’re hungry if we’re hungry. Or it may make us think we don’t even want to see it if we just ate a lot. Or we might think of our upcoming presentation and that may be the context for the thought “I’m not prepared enough”.
Not only are thoughts contextual, but they behave in interesting ways. Often, we transfer thoughts from one context to another context. If we think “I’m never prepared for presentations”, we might end up reinforcing ideas like “I’m never prepared [in general]”. We may end up thinking we’re never prepared for dinner with friends or for tough conversations with loved ones.
Another critical feature of thoughts is that we can even change the role thoughts have in our behavior. For example, the thought “I’m not prepared enough for my presentation” may be seen as a literal truth. Or it could be seen as a thought and just a thought. In other words, thoughts can sometimes be taken literally and we can be fused with them or we can look at them from a distance.
These three examples illustrate my point: thoughts are ridiculously flexible.
This flexibility is what explains the phenomena you notice. That is how we end up with a capitalist who may have strong thoughts about family and may stop focusing on profit-maximization when their employee’s daughter die. That is how we end up with a worker who could have strong thoughts about profits and may stop focusing on solidarity with his peers when a promotion is offered.
My perspective comes from contextual behavioral science and relational frame theory.
What terrifies me, is I feel like a lot of younger people no longer can separate out words, thoughts, and reality. They seem to think if you ever have a racist thought once in your life you are irredeemable forever… it’s wild.
It feels like a evangelical christian craziness, just focused on race rather than sin.
And why do good people do “shitty” things? MLK Jr. was having affairs with white women while protesting for civil rights and Gahndi used to sleep next to naked teenagers.
The answer is humans are nuanced.
Ghandi used to sleep next to naked teenagers, what?
To test his will. It’s fucked up.
Whaaaat???
people also justify and re-interpret their actions in real time. cheaters often think their cheating is justified rather than thinking of it making them terrible in the eyes of their spouse or family.
on the outside looking at the past, we have hindsight and context and oftentimes a different cultural and historical set of standards than other societies and other times had.
I find it particularly baffling when people like go back and read 18th century books and think they are bad people because they were racist or something. At that time, not being racist would have made you the moral outlier, just like being atheistic would.
People who are racist arent trying to be evil: they genuinely think that Europeans and Asians are more evolved to live in societies that require cooperation. They are wrong to attribute to color the effects of culture and education.
People who are homophobic arent trying to be evil: they genuinely think that propagating the species is honorable but hedonism is not. They are wrong to dismiss the social and intellectual benefits of cooperative sexual recreation.
If these bigots decide that violence against the other will solve their problems, they become far more dangerous.
And Asians? Over here people are just as racist towards Asians.
I’ve lived in Asia for over a decade and it’s not just anti-asian racism. Hell, as a white blond guy, I have it easy compare to black folks.
everyone is racist.
racism being some ‘white on non-white’ only thing is a figment of rich white liberal imagination. not to mention their ignorance of intra-minority racism, of which asians are particularly nasty ime.
why do anti-abortion women get abortions?
I think this just shows the way socially ingrained attitudes are not total, i.e. there is lots of room for variation and breaks - exceptions exist even to people thinking in terms of stereotypes or generalized patterns.
“Oh I’m different. I had a good reason.”
