Grey

Human beings are complex animals, or at least they seem to be since we, being a part of it, are therefore aware of this fact. History has shown that people, charged by the moment, have fought for ideas, values, principles, and ended up dead, martyrs to his fellow men. The villains are scoundrels that betray for money, for privileges, for self-benefit.

But to the man-on-the-street, history is of numerous sweeping generalizations, which often fail to highlight small qualifications � fine prints at the bottom of an attractive trust fund ad, important yet oft overlooked. So the dead heroes may have harboured some selfish intentions, and the condemned may well be forced to take this path of damnation. Yet it�s their deeds, at that very point in history, which more often than not later generations determine if they are great men or conniving knaves.

This is not a sympathetic piece attempting to redeem the bad guys, or, worse, deny the heroic acts of men that are immortalized in books, monuments, whatever. It�s just that in life, we enter so many grey areas and are forced to make decisions, with consequences we won�t immediately know of. One act of discrepancy against your principles is all that�s needed to negate you as a person precisely because beliefs define one�s identity.

Maybe you have been misled into such a quagmire. Perhaps you have been trying to help a friend. It is moments like this that calls to question how strong your belief is, be it of the religious or secular type. Because once the deed is done, we humans always prone to judge and seldom forgive, the only recourse for you to return to the embrace of society is to hope that people will forget � soon. I doubt they would seriously listen to your side of story, which can easily be dismissed as mere excuses.

Take for example, cronyism. B, a law abiding citizen, commits this so that A, a good friend who�s struggling to make ends meet, can clinch a contract and earn his keep. At one look, we would have said B is in the wrong and is foolish to commit this mistake. But who can understand the multitude of emotions in B�s mind thinking of how A has always helped B in many matters? This, I understand, is a heavily flawed example to illustrate my point, but my present state of intelligence has kept me from making more plausible cases.

Humans are complex because human complicate matters for themselves. To benefit one�s self, he knowingly or unknowingly unleashed a butterfly effect that makes matter worse for the people surrounding him. Always remember as much as Man is a community animal, he strives for personal survival too. In the end, grey areas can become traps to ensnare the innocents and to vilify them for the benefit of the real villains.


I think I spoke too harshly.