Saint or Sinner? The Problem with Moral Binary
During the US presidential election, the intense villainization of both party’s candidates was dramatic. No matter what political beliefs you hold, you can admit that the polarization and hatred we saw this election was incomparable to anything we’d ever seen before. Whether that be because a convicted felon was running for president, the people of America being unready to have a Black woman as our leader, or simply the role of social media, the election reflected deep-rooted societal issues that transcended policy debates— our harmful tendency to place people on either end of the moral spectrum with no consideration of the in between.
In our society, the delineation between vice and virtue is not only emphasized but woven deeply into our cultural fabric. Misbehaved children who don’t listen to their parents are on the naughty list—they don’t get any Christmas gifts; students who distract others get the red traffic light on the whiteboard. Christianity does this very thing—separating saints from sinners and sending them to two drastically different eternities. We as people feel comfortable separating good” and “bad”. Perhaps it’s because by clearly separating the two, we can try bringing order to the unpredictable nature of human behavior. We assign people to one category or the other, simplifying the world, and petting our egos and self-concepts. The binary helps us construct a seemingly digestible worldview—a framework that tells us what to do, who to trust, and who to avoid. In terms of this year’s election, it allowed people to wallow comfortably in their hatred for the opposing candidate, and make radical claims about their choices.
People do this to ensure we don’t spend more than the necessary amount of cognitive energy making judgments about others. Heuristics, mental shortcuts, and schemas explain our tendency to categorize; we use our previous experiences to make quick judgments about others. What began as a survival skill to assess threats and conserve cognitive energy has now evolved into a harmful, divisive tool. However, when people teeter between “good” and “bad”, floating in moral purgatory before their final sentencing, we feel discomfort. Our brains’ automatic categorizing, separating, and grouping, are temporarily disrupted—prompting us to consciously question why we believe certain things, and whether or not they are right.
Sometimes when confronted with figures who resist this binary categorization, we force ourselves to reconsider this dichotomy. Figures like Gandhi and Gypsy Rose Blanchard illustrate that humans can be virtuous and vicious at the same time. While fighting for the independence of his nation, Gandhi slept naked with young girls to “test his restraint”. Gypsy Rose Blanchard meticulously planned her mother’s murder, but only to escape the medical abuse her mother’s delusions prompted. Consider the newly released TV series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, a sensationalized story about the ‘brothers who murdered their parents’. The documentary was a weak effort to capture the complexity of the true situation. It does attempt to capture this complexity, offering a look into the sexual abuse and the psychological torment the brothers experienced. However, the very act of dramatizing their lives for entertainment arguably diminishes their humanity and is prone to tired tropes of the heroes or the villains.
When true stories of pain and moral ambiguity are turned into sensationalized TV shows, the individuals involved are often reduced to characters in a narrative, stripped of their full personhood. While the series may aim to explore the nuance of their situation, the medium itself—entertainment—creates a barrier to fully understanding the gravity of their experiences.
Rather than sit in this discomfort, we try to make sense of things. We create religion and film documentaries to decide who is good and who is bad. The media thrives on heroes and villains, leaving little room for complexity. But the real world does not let us get away with neatly sorted lists of saints and sinners. Real people are tangled up with contradictions and emotions; morality isn’t as black and white as we might hope. Our obsession with categorizing only blinds us to the complexity of people. Rooted in self-interest, we brand those unimportant to us as labels and archetypes, hence the prevalence of stereotypes. Our need for tidy divisions ultimately limits us: It keeps us from confronting the fact that each person’s inner life is as layered, messy, and contradictory as our own.
Instead of reducing someone to a single choice or action, we must ask what forces shape them and what fears or dreams drive them. This does not mean excusing harmful behavior, but acknowledging that everyone’s story is likely far more complicated than it appears from the outside. Through this, we challenge the artificial, automatic boundaries that divide us. We become less likely to dismiss others based on a single narrative crafted in our minds. Instead, we start to see commonalities where there once were only differences. This shift requires patience and humility—it asks us to admit that our initial judgments might be wrong and that our assumptions are often incomplete. Yet, in this act of questioning and seeking, we cultivate empathy, recognizing our shared humanity.