The gap between good and bad

When I heard her say for the first time “what does ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mean? what is good and what is bad?”, I stared back with a blank expression not knowing how to handle a question like that. It seemed like a trick question for all I could see; one of those questions that breaks into a silence and anything the respondent says thereafter is either incorrect or incomplete. Luckily this time, it was a rhetorical one and the answer soon followed from her.

“Good and bad is what WE define: the society. But if you look at it, there is really no good and bad in this world. It’s about how we look at it.” I think she went on for the next ten minutes elaborating on this worldly issue of perceptions. I must have trashed it as pop-philosophy then, now that I come to think of it. But in keeping the subject of good and bad going, I see two cases that are clearly presented to my mind where one could put the two words into context in a way that it has a fair deal of meaning. One is of ‘intentions and actions’ and the other being ‘subject and environment’.

Intentions and Actions

I’m currently involved in a project wherein we’re putting together the largest Clean-room in an academic institution in the country. While the construction is happening, the designs for the subsystems (like water supply, fire suppressants and so on) undergo continuous changes and is a work-in-progress, as you would know if you were an architect, a civil engineer, or simply knew the ways of the business. In one of our weekly reviews with the contractor, we were just not pleased with the fact that he had deviated from the frozen design, albeit a small one, without prior notice. This argument started, went back and forth, and finally settled. At the end, the contractor said in his defense “We only have good intentions for you”.

He had hardly finished the line, and a professor who was part of the design team flew at him. “Haven’t you heard my favourite saying?” he asked.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

I guess the penny dropped for the contractor, and a prolonged silence implied he had got the point.

Why does this happen all the time? For long, I maintained that my Uncle held the copyrights to the line “I’ve always had good intentions.” Though I never brought it up with him, I often wondered if that were to be true, why are the actions not in line with ‘good intentions’?

Which do I more trust in and buy into- the good intentions or the bad actions? Some would call it ‘walking the talk’, but call it what you will, it’s a gap in what we wish to do and what we do that baffles others, but rarely bothers us! Ask any child whose parent declared they loved the child and yet somebody went home in the evening after school having to lie about their test grades for a variety of reasons that are irrelevant to this theme.

Subject and Environment

There’s the story of the famous violinist Joshua Bell who stood on a busy street in Washington D.C at peak hour in the day playing on his $ 3 million violin. In their haste to get to work, hardly any one took notice, and by the end of 45 minutes of playing, all he could show was about 32 dollars in collections in his hat that was laid out. Just a couple of weeks earlier, he had played to a packed audience of a few thousands at a landmark auditorium in the same city.

Environment makes the man. This idea is as old as the hills. But when you think about it, environment really makes the man; or the woman. A friend and I recently co-authored an article for a college magazine. When we got the prints in our hands, we were disappointed to see the article aligned and typeset very poorly.

“It makes us looks like bad writers”, my co-author remarked and I couldn’t disagree with him.

There are several cases like this where a good subject stuck in a bad environment ends up being perceived by the outside as bad. A good student in the midst of teachers who can’t rise beyond their petty selves, a good athlete and a poor coach, a genuinely good stand up comedian (or a musician) playing to the wrong audience all end up looking not quite like what they should.

The natural order of arrangement implies that a sharp looking person, well dressed, would be taken more seriously by a stranger in an air-conditioned conference room, or a social setting of some standard, than in a flea market by the heat of the day.

There’s always a best fit for everything. When there’s a sizable gap between the quality of the subject and the quality of the environment and an optimal fit doesn’t occur, it’s best for the subject to look elsewhere for a place or a way to work things out where it feels easier and more natural. Until then, he’ll continue brushing his teeth with his left hand.