OPINION
WRITTEN BY TYLER SPINOSA ILLUSTRATED BY HELEN CHOI
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icture the nicest person you know. Do you think they are capable of murder, assault or even rape? If you said no, you are probably wrong. The likelihood of any random person running around killing people and having sex with them without their consent is slim, but under the right conditions, even the nicest people we know could be compelled to do something horrible.
Our moral barometers help us determine when someone steps outside of the acceptable standards of human decency. We instinctively decide what constitutes right and wrong based on examining a broad spectrum of behaviors and drawing a line. Our understanding of morality comes from a conscious consensus of where that line is drawn. Good people can do bad things for good reasons, and bad people can do good things for bad reasons. Just because someone does something horrible doesn’t necessarily make them a terrible person. To accurately assess the qualitative goodness of any given act, you need to take into account the motivations of the individual, external factors that could affect their decision and potential unconscious influences. Without acknowledging these peripheral factors, you are not accounting for every variable. When people do this, they generalize others and place them into oversimplified categories of good and bad — heroes or villains. In reality, heroes and villains don’t exist. No one is exclusively one or the other. TV shows like “The Walking Dead” or “Breaking Bad” are popular because they confront this idea. Walter White, the main