It must the books I am reading, of late, I am sure, this obsession with the statement, "We are the good guys here." I cannot blame the authors, I suppose, because that's probably the phrase their characters would legitimately use. But I would be hard put to imagine a more inane statement than that.
I mean, really, does that sentence really convince anyone? Does anyone really expect even a villain to honestly admit, 'Look, I am the bad guy here'? Yeah, it happens in Bollywood movies where the chap actually revels in screaming, "I am a BAD man" at every opportunity. But, in real life...I mean, come on, villains possess such unshakable integrity that they will admit to their villainy?
Leave alone saying it, do people even really THINK that they are bad or are convinced that they are good? Just take a look around at all the Mafia movies all over the world. Does a Don Corleone or a Sarkar even SEEM like a bad man to you, the way they are portrayed, leave alone giving you the impression that THEY think that they are the bad guys? Is it not just as likely that they really think that they are the 'good guys' forced by an evil society to do what people call bad things in order to further their own 'good' cause?
I rather think that even a Hitler probably thought of himself as the 'good guy' though megalomaniacs seldom bother to try to convince lesser mortals about their motives. But the fact remains that if there is one thing certain about most of humanity it is their own conviction in their goodness. So what's the value of someone calling himself the 'good guy'?
What is a 'good guy' really? You could be a good head of the family but your very pursuit of providing for your family the best that you can could make you a scheming and manipulative colleague. You could be a good colleague but that could very well make you the bad guy for other departments in your own company. You could be a good employee but...you get the drift. Goodness is a concept related to the circle you associate with, for most of us.
Your goals, therefore, cannot define your goodness because the goals which do good to those you support need not necessarily be good for others in society. Barring a few, most goals are good or bad depending on which side you are on. And, even when they may be wholly good, the extent to which the followers are willing to go in pursuit of the goal can taint them. In fact, it is exactly those who are absolutely sure of the rightness of their own goals who cause the most misery, spawn the most evil. For, when a person moves from wanting to be in the right to being self-righteous, he finds it easy to think that ANY means to achieve those goals are moral; that anyone who opposes those goals are spawns of Satan and deserve to be destroyed.
It is what you feel for those not of your persuasion, or your identified circle, which ought to define your goodness. Do you feel that they are blind and misguided; or selfish; or satanically evil? Do you get irritated with them, dislike them or outright hate them? What are you willing to do to them? Convince them, ignore them or destroy them?
The touchstone of your 'goodness' is not how you deal with the people whom you support or the goals that you espouse. The touchstone is how you act towards the people who you disagree with. You can hardly claim to be the 'good guy' when you are propagating hate against people who do not belong to your own persuasion. Not that it has stopped people from doing so, throughout history.
In fact, come to think of it, 'We are the good guys here' is not such an inane statement after all. I mean, actually when do people say that? Generally it is when they have either done, or are planning to do, something 'bad'. It is more of a self-serving statement or a justification rather than an inanity.
More evil in the world has been done by people who thought of themselves as the 'good guys', and in the name of worthy goals, than has been done by those who were truly evil or immoral. It goes to show that cliches become cliches because they have a strong core of truth.
The way to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions!
