Blowing Water | Hong Kong must learn there is no black and white when it comes to anti-government protests, and sometimes good people do bad things
- Life is about grey areas and we must understand that if our city is to survive
The Chinese idiom, “virtue is one foot tall, the devil ten feet,” means it requires constant vigilance and courage to ward off evil, because the potential to commit evil lives within all of us.
Although it is a common belief that evil exists in everyone, we always have a choice not to commit evil deeds.
The truth is, sometimes there is no clear-cut way to define who or what represents good or bad. Every act defines a person, but it doesn’t excuse someone, who has done good deeds all their life to carry out a single act of evil.
Virtuousness is built out of lifelong habits of action and thought. We cannot collect virtuous behaviours like they are brownie points for us to redeem and bail us out from difficult situations.
Violence certainly is not a means to an end. But sometimes, good people do bad things and vice versa. They do bad things because of bad decisions they have made, or they might have been put in a situation out of their control.
In a hugely polarised society such as Hong Kong, especially now after months of anti-government protests, there is no clear-cut distinction between right and wrong. This makes it difficult for many people to take sides and rightly so.
