Dear George Jr.,

I had a thought yesterday that I had to run with. I apologize up front, because this might get deep.

I was thinking about how some decisions or choices that we make are good and how some choices that we make turn out, ultimately, to be the wrong one. How do we get to that point? Is it a result of a head injury, or questionable parental skills? Do we wake up one morning and start making criminal choices? I guess I have this naive assumption that a large majority of people who are in any given situation, given an equal opportunity, would make a decision that could be considered "good".

But I guess it starts with an analogy. If you think of all decisions that you make being somewhat akin to points on a compass rose, with north being "Good" or ethical. And south being "Evil" or immoral then I have a bit of a trip for us to take together.

Well, as I was thinking about this, I thought about how it might come to pass that people
go from one end of the spectrum to the other, and I have a feeling it is because we need to focus on two perspectives at the same time. Only in our minds can we conceive that a decision could be completely independent of any other influences. So I think that we have to recognize that each decision can be focused on "good or bad", but then that decision also has to considered in respects to the broader picture (Where you started from). I was thinking that you could very well make a series of decisions where each one was pretty good (each one vaguely North by Northeast). Each individual choice was a pretty good one, but after 4 or 5 choices if you look as a whole, you would be pointing toward the south.

So I was thinking of taking this analogy and relating it to the War in Iraq, or the events in the Middle East, or some other wildly political topic in the current news, but I guess that would just be too easy.