Hello, thank you for sharing your feelings with us.
Good and bad, right and wrong, good and evil. These are morals and values that we use to divide up some of the world and make a little bit of sense about things, but as the poster before me said, good and bad are very subjective concepts. What is bad to one person may be perfectly acceptable to another.
For example, a popular argument is capital punishment: if a woman is caught murdering the children of her neighbor, is it then wrong to punish her with death for her heinous act? What if she was a pillar of the community beforehand, and this vile act occurred out of nowhere? What if she then told you that she saw the children literally as demons that she was absolutely certain were trying to kill her?
There are many questions involved, and getting to the just answer is not easy. For all appearances, she was defending herself against a perceived threat; she did not see sweet, innocent children, she saw vicious, ravening demons come to steal her life. Is she to be punished for defending herself? What about her mind? Did she have a fever? Is she sick? Does she hallucinate? Is she very angry in private?
Again, all of these questions go to form a conclusion about the situation. You can even take a less-complicated example: Two men, raised in different countries. Both of them are fine, upstanding men of a high moral compass who have never been guilty of hurting anyone for selfish gain. Say these two men encounter one another, and one man gives a very pleasant greeting-gesture to the other. Let's throw in that this greeting in the second man's culture is a contemptuous gesture, and is the worst kind of insult. Let's say that the second man's culture demands that his honor must be reclaimed by shedding the first man's blood.
Up to this point, neither man has ever been violent, but suddenly, and without a single word exchanged between them, the first man is under violent physical attack for no known reason, he defends himself and during the struggle, the first man kills his attacker when he throws him down and his head hits a rock.
As outside observers, we know all of the criteria; I just explained them, so the answer is simple: it was a misunderstanding, not a murder. But think about any passer-by, and their perspective. Say the next person to pass by is a man of the law, and all that he witnesses is the first man throw the second violently to the ground where his head splits open on a rock; that is all the lawman knows that occurred, and he is bound by the law to act. The second man is dead and cannot give his side of the story, and for all the lawman knows, the first man could be lying.
Morals and values can be very complex, and it takes time to understand them and the perspectives of other people.
That being said, a "bad" act is an act that either results in the reduced quality of life for another person or group of persons, or breaks a moral code or belief (even if no harm is done to anyone!). And a "good" act is considered any act that improves the quality of life for a person or group of persons, be it of a singular mind or done in accordance to a code of ethics. The line blurs when one group of people have morals and values that overlap and conflict with those of another; both sides believe they are doing the right thing. Hardly anybody wakes up in the morning and looks at the morning sun with the though "Hmm, I wonder how much misery and suffering I can bring into the world today?"
All of this is a very old topic of conversation. Human beings have fought over beliefs for as long as we have walked this world, and most likely, we will continue to do so until the last one of us expires.
What most people consider "evil" is when a person willfully commits an act they know will result in the reduced quality of life (or even outright harm) for another person, but the problem with that is that so many people are very willing to quickly believe the worst of others. Nobody sees themselves as the antagonist in their own life, so if any harm befalls them, the "fault" is placed on someone else, someone who can be "the bad guy".
We could debate this for a very long time, but I think I covered it. If you have any more questions, feel free to message me privately. (:
