Pickle

Did you realize that I didn’t include “good and bad” in my list of opposites a while back? Do you have any idea why? I didn’t know exactly why either. Until now*.

You see, good and bad cannot be characterized in terms of right and left. It just doesn’t work. You see, bad really has nothing to do with anything besides itself. Hashem, in His infinite wisdom, deemed it proper to command that certain actions should not be done, and that when a person does such an action, that will be called “bad”.

Bad is in the realm of doing. Doing is in the realm of choice. You can ask if doing is right or left. You can ask if choice is right or left. But you can’t ask if bad is right or left. The definition of bad is: a certain action based on a conscious decision. Is that right or left? It depends what the action is! It depends what the decision was! And even then: it's the nature of the action or decision which can be categorized, not the "badness" of it.

Take the action of killing, for example. Killing is not bad unless it's done to another human being. Then it's bad. But it's the exact same action whether it's killing an animal for food, or killing a man out of revenge. The action is the same. And we could categorize the action if we were knowledgable enough. But just because you added the word "bad" to it due to a circumstantial change (person as opposed to animal), that doesn't alter the nature of the action. The action is what's being characterized, not the badness of it. Hey! I just said that at the end of the previous paragraph.

Don’t you see? Bad is not based in any type of color or flavor. It is dry as a wrung out pickle. It’s as hypothetical as your dog scratching it’s ear (if you don’t own a dog (or if the dog you own doesn’t have ears)). It is nothing until it happens. And even then it’s nothing. Just plain bad.

I can’t explain myself any more than I already haven’t. So long.


*edit: work in progress.