What's the difference between a bad person and a good person?

Question

Everybody does things that hurt others...we're all guilt of resentment, impatience, hatred... at various times in our lives. Most of us have been vengeful or said things that we knew would cause hurt. Many people cheat on their taxes, park in handicapped parking, cheat on their spouses...etc. We all do bad things sometimes, the difference is by degrees.

So at what point does someone become a bad person? And what's the standard to be qualified a 'good person'?

Answer 1

In God's eyes we're all sinners, Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa and everyone else. It's Jesus who will separate the sheep from the goats.

Answer 2

It all comes down to intention. As you have already said we are all guilty of doing bad and even horrific things, and some of us feel horrible and repentant after doing these things. Some of us don't even realize we've done something wrong, or think that what we have done is harmless, like parking in a handicap spot. But there are others who intentionally do wrong, who are purposely vengeful, hateful and even dangerous. In my opinion those who cause harm to others on purpose and have no regret for the harm they cause are bad people.
A good person is someone who tries to be a good person, though they fail at times when they are tired or angry,their original intent in life is to be kind and peaceful. Most people to some extent are normally attempting to be good. Once you cross the line where your intentions are purely bad you become bad.

Answer 3

Interesting question! What was she actually asking with the "bad person/pad person" question? Did one 'bad person' do one thing and another 'bad person' do something worse? I am wondering if this is not the same sort of question that my son asked when he was 5..."Can a policeman arrest another policeman?" Cripes! We all know that people can do bad things and other people can do worse things! This is not rocket science! Yes, someone can be bad and shoplift at Walmart. Someone else can be worse and kill their neighbor! There is bad stuff and there is worse bad stuff. Am I missing something here?

Answer 4

It surely sounds like you are a "bad" person if you did all those selfish terrible things! I don't cheat on my taxes, park in handicapped spaces, or cheat on my spouse! I'm sure I do other bad things but those are really BAD.
The difference between a bad person and a good person is that a good person knows they're bad and tries to make up for it by doing good deeds and improving themself. The bad person just goes through life assuming they are good without realizing how bad he/she really is. Almost no body thinks they are a "bad" person. Who would want to feel that way?

Answer 5

it dpends on the person who decides who is a good person and who is a bad person. every one has different values, morals and opinions. It comes down on the judge/handler of the situation to decide cuz anyone can be wrong but they can also be right at the same time.

complicated stuff, just have to look from outside the box and many different angles.

Answer 6

The bad person is the one who shows no remorse, regret or any other type of emotion. They do the deed for the sake of doing it.
The good person is the one who can admit to his or her feelings about what they are doing, and find a way to move past it.

Answer 7

Morality is completely subjective. What is good to one person, may be bad to another. Who are we to say X is bad and Y is good, but in another society, Y is good and X is bad. The problem with morality is that people judge others and impose their standards on others. Theres no problem with having your own belief system of morals, but forcing others to abide by yours is ----> fascism, according the literary definition.

Hey you know in some parts of Africa cannibalism is a socially accepted practice.

Answer 8

"Good" versus "Bad"



I've said several times previously that we can only be measured by our interactions with each other. However, "measure" implies some sort of objective perception from the outside. This isn't an accurate description of how we observe each other. One person's interactions with another are entirely due to the "internal" conditions of that person's mind. Furthermore, these "external" events can only be understood by the "internal" changes they bring about in the thoughts and feelings of any observers. Thus there is no way to determine whether an event is "outside" or "inside" of anything because these concepts don't truly exist as separate things. Nothing can be thought of as "inside" or "outside" that isn't somehow connected with things on the "other" side. Therefore referring to the measurement of a person's life, I merely use that word to vaguely describe what is actually happening. Your can't really measure a person's life in the first place, because it doesn't exist separately from other people's lives. Also, saying someone is mostly good or mostly bad implies that anything can be better or worse than another thing. No event can be described as totally good or totally bad. There are "good" and "bad" results of every event. Even these results could be further broken down, ad infinitum, into smaller and smaller "good" and "bad" parts. Thus it is futile to say anything is good/bad or even better/worse than something else, because being better than something else implies some measurable quality of "goodness." Typically, the "optimist" sees the "good" in everything and a "pessimist" sees the "bad." However, though it may not seem this way, both are the two extremes of actually knowing about an event. Both pessimists and optimists attempt to categorize and break apart reallity. Both believe in a difference between "good" and "bad" which isn't really there (there can't be any difference between two things that don't exist in the first place). The difference between pessimists and optimists is only in what each believes to be the overall balance of "good" and "bad" in the universe. Thus there can be no "heaven" as opposed to "hell." Nature is neither good nor bad, because those qualities, at the very least, require something to compare it to, and there is nothing outside Everything. Humanity isn't all good or all bad, because it's made up of billions of individuals. But they aren't good or bad, either, because a person's life is made up of all that person's actions (karma, if you will). And no single action can be good or bad, because in addition to the original intent, there are the infinite effects of the action to take into account. Each of these is itself neither good nor bad, and so on. Obviously, there is still a difference between how one should act and how one shouldn't, but there are no words which can be used to convey this information in a neat little package. Every situation is different and constantly changing, so no frozen view of morality will suffice to dictate how a person acts. My own interpretation of the Fall of Man is quite different than that of most people, and almose assuredly different from the point the originator(s) of the bible intended to make. Instead of using that story to illustrate man's inherent sinful nature, I see it as the origin of a rigid conceptual view of the universe, which then led to suffering. At first, I saw the story as saying it was our moral sense that allows us to do evil, because, after all, if we can't tell right from wrong we certainly can't purposely do wrong. However, I now see it as the first time people used concepts of "good" and "bad" to break down the universe. This frozen moral view led to ignorance which in turn led to suffering. God didn't need to throw them out of Eden as punnishment for their disobedience, because their new ignorance led to suffering which made it so Eden was no longer paradise at all. There was no reason to throw them out of the garden because they had created suffering for themselves.

Answer 9

Bad people infringe upon the personal freedom and rights of others.

Do what you want to do and be what you want to be - just don't infringe upon the rights of someone else to do the same.

Answer 10

I suppose if you dont have the integrity to fess up to your mistakes.
Everyone has good in them, they just go through times. ppl make mistakes. learning from them is what matters.