Plank,
It is hard to assess the actions of others because we can see actions, but not motivations. It is the motivations we question more, in reality, when it comes to bad behavior especially.
Take an affair. Is not one of the first questions we as a BS asked, "Why????"
As humans, we want to understand motivations, because this is what helps us delve into the hearts and minds of the other person. To empathize, to sympathize, to connect. To have the facts, that is fine. I can see something happen and make an assessment - but unless I know why it happened, I do not have the truth and do not come close to an understanding.
The problem with all of this is that motivations have many layers. They are not as cut and dried as we want them to be. Take for example the following question:
Why did you fall in love with your wife?
Not easy to answer! There are a thousand answers, and yet, no answers, all at the same time. When you tried to answer this, did you find yourself sort of conflicted? You start to say one thing, and another thought intrudes and then your brain wants to make sort of a "priority list". Then the brain says, "no, wait, I need to organize this list, and maybe I don't necessarily want to put that particular thing on the list at all, it sounds cheesey". You get the idea.
Similar things happen in the thought process when "bad behavior" ideas spring up. Inner conflicts regarding bad behavior will begin in much the same way. Some people are good at resolving them in a way that ends up with appropriate behavior, moral responses, and in the end, socially acceptable resolution. Others make moral compromises with themselves to a certain limit, and go no further (this may explain the "emotional affair" that does not cross the boundary into the physical realm). Still others compromise and compromise, until they end up in Texas, as you so put it.
-By the way, I'm in Texas!!!!!
Anyway.
Your idea is right on, in that the boundary of gray is chipped away at, and a person may ultimately end up where he might not want to be. The good news is that for most people, the boundaries seem to be independently drawn - for example, I have a boundary for stealing, a boundary for lying, a boundary for affairs, a boundary for murder, etc. The gray area for a person who might have an affair might be acceptable clear over to the very dark gray, and yet for stealing he might not even move a teeny bit off of the white at all.
So maybe you can see why someone can still be a good person, while having an affair. Because that one boundary, that one gray area is compromised, but all the others are still good, and independent of it.
That's what I mean by a person being a mixture.
By the way, I'm humbled that Plank has learned from me, and that he reads what I write. I've learned from you, and you have given me much strength in my difficult early days.
