The line is not thin

It struck me the other day as I was leaving office: I'm the crossbred between an idiot of an angel and a genius of a devil. It was just a random thought but I couldn't get over that line in bold.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that there is really no totally good or totally bad person. Or the former may exist, some saint maybe, but someone bad to the core? I think it difficult..

So, the guy on the street is both good and bad though proportions vary. Let's have some mf-ised definitions:

Not-too-clever angel ~ does/says a lot of good things though they may be silly; everyone knows he/she is an angel and likes asking him/her for help cos he/she will always be willing to do so

Smart devil ~ seeks ways to satisfy himself/herself and people he/she likes without considering other people; able to do so without exposing his/her nature cos he/she is super intelligent

* Pls pardon the undecided genders. Tempted to define angel as female - you know, stereotypical winged things in white - but realised that women could be most evil too! :p

It's really a thick blurred line between good and bad. We've been conditioned to think that lying is bad, but what if it's a white lie to eg make someone feel less disturbed by his otherwise unfortunate new haircut? If someone is generally kind, I'm sure there's a bit of them that thinks otherwise. Likewise if someone is generally thought of as evil, there must be something in them that shows the opposite. It's a matter of the proportions of good and bad.

So for those who have a greater proportion of the devil in them, why are they like that? What makes them bad or want to be so?

Can't help recalling that some time in sec school, the motion for the finals of a inter-varsity debate was "ren zhi chu, xing ben shan" ie we are born kind. The opposition won. But I found it difficult to accept. I think we are born kind, and negative effects come about as we grow up. It's easier than to be born evil - ok, not kind - and to then to learn to be "right". Three years to be corrected, three days to be corrupted, right? (too lazy to type Chinese)

Not too coherent here, hmmm.. Shall end with something strange from TV.. Caught a commercial on some cleaning agent the other day, a couple of ugly anmations jumped into view and exclaimed in the typical voice of a villain that "we are germs!!" Now, the cold virus is evil (to us; I have no idea why they exist in the first place!) and so are cockroaches. Cos perhaps without meaning to, they cause nuisance/trouble to other people. While they are evil to us humans, I believe that they live um, happily with their peers in their respective communities and hence not evil among like species. But we, humans with power to choose to be kind and not evil, could be utterly mean to our own kind. Oh dear, we seem to be faring worse than roaches :p

PS: I think I have more of the devil in me, more than I like. But I try to cultivate the winged figure in white, I try..