72 Days without Food

Good and evil describe people. People are characterized by their actions. Therefore, good and evil should describe a person's collective actions. One good action does not make a bad person good, and one bad deed does not make a good person bad. But that still leaves the question of what is considered a good action? And what is considered a bad deed?

The answer lies within a person. Any action can be considered good or bad with justification. A terrific example is the Andes flight disaster, when Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was stranded for 72 days. They had to resort to cannibalism to survive. We can argue that this was completely bad, that there is no are never any means to eat another human, that the noble and good thing to do would have been to die together with their friends. On the other hand, we can listen to stories of how had to melt snow for water, of how they tried to eat leather from their suitcases but couldn't because of chemicals, of how they ripped open seat cushions in hopes of finding straw but only found inedible foam. And then we can believe that they did the right thing. They made the hard decision to not linger over the dead, but to keep as many alive as possible. Each interpretation of the story is 100% valid. It all depends on the person.

In today's society, we try to move to an idyllic world where everyone is a good person who mostly does good actions. But this is impossible. As long as we each have our own individual morals, reasons, justifications, whatever, there will be both good and evil. And because society is constantly trying to push us towards the good, there will always be a struggle.