Morality: The Bad

Abstract

In chapter VII, above, I discussed human perversity as one result of an advancing technology, and pointed to some of the disorder it occasioned. That was an exceptional view, and so in the chapter before this one I endeavored to lay out the whole spectrum of human behavior with respect to morality. There, however, I was occupied chiefly with the good. Human life when looked at in all of its aspects is neither simple nor entirely admirable. The human individual lives in a society which exists in the midst of other societies, and he is confronted with a number of conflicting challenges which together often amount to more variables than he can deal with to his advantage. He must do bad things in his pursuit of the good, and so we have not adequately considered morality until we have looked also at the bad.