Why do some racist, classist, homophobic ect people do "good" things sometimes?

Submitted ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨PixelNomad@sopuli.xyz⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

For example, in The Shield, the cop character Shane is super racist and says the N-word, but when a Black girl is killed, Shane gets really mad and wants to find and kill the killer or bring him to justice. Some CEOs who are straight-up classist would still help their employees, and if their employee dies, they would start funds for their kids. But why? Why would people like this do something ‘good,’ especially when there isn’t anything in it for them?

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Dsklnsadog@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Your premise assumes people are morally consistent, and that’s just not how humans work.

Someone can hold racist or classist views and still feel real anger, empathy, or a sense of justice in a specific situation. People compartmentalize constantly. Having prejudice doesn’t turn off basic emotional responses when something concrete and personal happens.

Also, it’s not true that there’s “nothing in it for them.” There are always underlying factors like personal identity, guilt, attachment, social image, or even just the need to see oneself as not completely awful.

What you’re describing isn’t a contradiction. It’s exactly what real people are like, and why well-written characters behave that way too.

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- Holytimes@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  One of the dumbest but best examples anyone’s given me for the inconsistencies of morality. Is video game lobbies.
  
  You can find people who do charity work actively protest for civil rights and fight for immigrants rights. Then the load into a Dota 2 match and call the Brazilians dirty f****** slurs every 3 seconds and wish they were all deported for us servers.
  
  The only consistency in humanity is that it’s inconsistent.
  
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theywilleatthestars@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Well for one thing, people are complicated, but citing a fictional character isn’t helpful here.

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jeffw@lemmy.world ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Do you really think most racist people would say “fuck yeah, a Black person died!”? Racism in contemporary society is largely covert and not explicit.

In terms of your class question, most people who are “CEOs” are not in charge of billion-dollar corporations. They have a small company where they are on a first name basis with everyone

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- starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  The biggest piece of shit I know (MAGA, gun nut, religious nutcase, married his daughters off to desirable candidates) lives near the Mexican border and takes in immigrants who have illegally crossed the border, gives them food and drink and sends them on their way. No, he doesn’t call ICE.
  
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  - Tiresia@slrpnk.net ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Do as many people leave his place as entered it?
    
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remon@ani.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Because people are usually quite complex and rarely fit into the neat labels people want to assign to them.

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- TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  People keep trying to tell me all sorts of things about myself that I don’t agree with, and are objectively not true about myself.
  
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the_abecedarian@piefed.social ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
it’s a tv show, it was written to be that way because it’s part of a copaganda machine

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- dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  this is so ironic to say about The Shield, one of the rare TV shows known for portraying cops as corrupt pieces of shit
  
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  - Herr_S_aus_H@lemmy.zip ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah, but according to the show these pieces of shit are necessary and that makes this show copaganda shit.
    
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GreenBeard@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
As others have pointed out, there’s no “black-and-white” (if you’ll pardon the irony) way of categorizing people. Bad or good people are fictional. Even the best of us have ugly parts to how we behave, and otherwise terrible people can show surprising compassion. Our values can conflict and in the moment we chose to do something wildly out of character, or indulge in impulses we didn’t even realize we had.

In the real world there are no absolute heroes or villains. A man who gave his boots to a homeless man one moment, could beat another to death a few months later. Human beings are wildly inconsistent.

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- TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  There are objective good and bad people. They are just rare. Most people are in the bell curve, and the vast majority of us hold some racist/sexist/stupid beliefs… the issue is just if those beliefs align with our peers, then they are good, and bad if they don’t.
  
  I witness people saying horrible shit all the time, but as long as it’s against the ‘bad people’ people think it is great and you are wonderful for saying it.
  
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  - GreenBeard@lemmy.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    There are no objectively good and bad people. Never have been, never will be. Every one of us is a grab bag of contradictions. Objectively good people are not rare, they’re fictional. If you seriously look under the surface, we’re all both monsters and angels on some level. Some of us just have better self-control and/or fewer opportunities to be actively transgressive.
    
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  - dustyData@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Morality is not a bell curve. No one is absolutely good or bad, because what is good or bad is relative to the person doing the action and those observing it.
    
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devolution@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
And why do good people do “shitty” things? MLK Jr. was having affairs with white women while protesting civil rights and Gahndi used to sleep next to naked teenagers.

The answer is humans are nuanced.

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- TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  people also justify and re-interpret their actions in real time.
  
  on the outside looking at the past, we have hindsight and context and oftentimes a different cultural and historical set of standards than other societies and other times had.
  
  I find it particularly baffling when people like go back and read 18th century books and think they are bad people because they were racist or something. At that time, not being racist would have made you the moral outlier, just like being atheistic would.
  
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- Magnum@infosec.pub ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Ghandi used to sleep next to naked teenagers, what?
  
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  - devolution@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    To test his will. It’s fucked up.
    
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dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
why do anti-abortion women get abortions?

I think this just shows the way socially ingrained attitudes are not total, i.e. there is lots of room for variation and breaks - exceptions exist even to people thinking in terms of stereotypes or generalized patterns.

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- starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  “Oh I’m different. I had a good reason.”
  
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RumorsOfLove@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
People who are racist arent trying to be evil: they genuinely think that Europeans and Asians are more evolved to live in societies that require cooperation. They are wrong to attribute to color the effects of culture and education.

People who are homophobic arent trying to be evil: they genuinely think that propagating the species is honorable but hedonism is not. They are wrong to dismiss the social and intellectual benefits of cooperative sexual recreation.

Only if these bigots decide that violence against the other will solve their problems, they become dangerous.

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- starlinguk@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  And Asians? Over here people are just as racist towards Asians.
  
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  - TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    everyone is racist.
    
    racism being some ‘white on non-white’ only thing is a figment of rich white liberal imagination. not to mention their ignorance of intra-minority racism, of which asians are particularly nasty ime.
    
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nimpnin@sopuli.xyz ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Log off for real

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- Lumidaub@feddit.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Leave him be, for real.
  
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frisbird@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Morality does not CAUSE anything. No one does things because they are “good”. People are “good” because of the things they do.

Morality is a DESCRIPTION of something, not an EXPLANATION.

People DO things. WE assign labels to the things they do and to the persons themselves.

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you_are_dust@lemmy.world ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Humanity is shades of gray. Most people don’t do 100% morally and ethically good things or 100% morally and ethically bad things. Likewise it’s probably a small minority of people that are evil and strive to be as evil as possible at all times.

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snek_boi@lemmy.ml ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Many comments have alluded to this: people are contextual.

I’ll add to this that thoughts are very, very flexible.

In some contexts we learn to think one way and in other contexts we learn to think in other ways. Our thoughts always get activated by context, either external contexts or internal contexts. For example seeing an apple might have us think we’re hungry if we’re hungry. Or it may make us think we don’t even want to see it if we just ate a lot. Or we might think of our upcoming presentation and that may be the context for the thought “I’m not prepared enough”.

Not only are thoughts contextual, but they behave in interesting ways. Often, we transfer thoughts from one context to another context. If we think “I’m never prepared for presentations”, we might end up reinforcing ideas like “I’m never prepared [in general]”. We may end up thinking we’re never prepared for dinner with friends or for tough conversations with loved ones.

Another critical feature of thoughts is that we can even change the role thoughts have in our behavior. For example, the thought “I’m not prepared enough for my presentation” may be seen as a literal truth. Or it could be seen as a thought and just a thought. In other words, thoughts can sometimes be taken literally and we can be fused with them or we can look at them from a distance.

These three examples illustrate my point: thoughts are ridiculously flexible.

This flexibility is what explains the phenomena you notice. That is how we end up with a capitalist who may have strong thoughts about family and may stop focusing on profit-maximization when their employee’s daughter die. That is how we end up with a worker who could have strong thoughts about profits and may stop focusing on solidarity with his peers when a promotion is offered.

My perspective comes from contextual behavioral science and relational frame theory.

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- TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  What terrifies me, is I feel like a lot of younger people no longer can separate out words, thoughts, and reality.
  
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muntedcrocodile@hilariouschaos.com ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
The philosophical justification for fascism is utilitarianism which essentially boils down to the greatest good for the greatest number of people. It is as Plato said about democracy tyrant of the majority.

Nobody believes that they are bad or evil. People come across as this as their goals are just different from your own. Muslim terrorist believe they are saving the world by doing terrorism. Israeli Zionists believe they are making heaven on earth by their actions in Gaza etc etc.

So its just a matter of what particular flavour of evil u are willing to be for your desired outcomes. U have the choices of blind religious extremism (religious terrorist or Zionist of Christan crusader, hyper rationalism separated from emotion (fasicm or communism depending on ur interpretation). Hyper emotionalism which just makes u a useful idiot to whoever can present the ideology that signals GRE greatest virtue.

So what do u choose?

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UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Why whouldn’t a morally good character do good things?

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wesker@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
“Man is a double being and can take, now the god’s-eye view of things, now the brute’s-eye view.”

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