Other People's Minds

Which is more important: who we are, or what we do?

That is to say, is it worse to be a good person who does bad things, or a bad person who does good things? Who is in the lower rung of hell, the man who does good but knows in his heart that he is evil, or the man who does evil but knows in his heart that he is good?

The practical answer seems obvious: the man who does evil is worse than the man who does good, and it doesn’t matter what either one of them knows about himself in his heart. We’re talking about the real world, and in the real world the evil deeds of the good man create pain and suffering, while the good deeds of the evil man create trust and comfort.

Still, the practical answer engenders a troubling thought…do we really want a lot of evil men running around doing our good deeds for us? What if that gets us into trouble? I mean, who trusts a man who admits to his own evil nature?

And what about this good man who does evil? Isn’t it kind of disturbing to favor an evil man ahead of this fellow with the good heart? Sure, he’s done some bad things, but, well…if you know in his heart that he is good, and there’s this other guy you know is evil, which one do you trust in the split second? If you were about to fall off the edge of a cliff, wouldn’t you prefer to be with the good man, whose instincts to do good would require him to catch you, and not the evil one, whose instincts to do evil would require him to let you fall?

It’s a tough call. Fortunately, it’s not a choice that we ever have to make.

This is because we are not telepathic. We can’t actually know who either man is in his heart. It may be that the man who knows that he is good in his heart is lying, to himself most of all. And who is to say that the evil man tells the truth, either? He could actually be a good man who’s just trying to look conflicted and dangerous so that girls will like him. We’ll never know.

All we ever have to go on is what we know of the past behavior of these two guys. We can only infer from what they’ve done whether they are good or evil; their own perceptions have nothing to do with our analysis.

This is to say: for all intents and purposes, there is no difference between who we are and what we do. We are what we do. Our hearts may be a different matter, but our hearts are only our own concern. When we stand before the rest of assembled humanity, it’s not just that our actions speak louder than the words we say to ourselves in our heads about whether we are good or bad people. When it comes down to it, our actions are the only things that speak at all.