It's our actions that make us good or bad.

Disclaimer: This entry discusses and discloses the conclusion of the movie Blood Diamond.  If you hope to see the movie and don't want to have the ending spoiled, I suggest you skip on to other reading.  I heartily recommend the book of Ecclesiastes.

The scene is  Heart of Darkness (or Apocalypse Now, as it has become known) in reverse.  Fleeing from the insanity of warring, murderous rebels, Danny Archer (DiCaprio) & band stumble into an idyllic oasis of tranquility, peace, and love.  In the midst of a nation ripped apart by civil war, our heros accidentally stumble upon the only piece of land not caught up in it all.   They are surrounded by children - the victims and perpetrators of horrible acts of cruelty and murder.  It is a place of rehabilitation.  A place of hope and goodness.

Having a cold beer in the middle of this jungle oasis, Archer and the headmaster of sorts, Benjamin, engage in a brief, relatively terse and surface level discussion of man's true nature.  Is it, as Benjamin argues, basically good, with outbursts of evil that mar but can't fully eclipse the good?  Or is it as Archer argues (while lying to the headmaster about his profession and reason for being in the area), that man is basically bad, though good things occasionally happen?

Which indeed?

The movie leaves us hanging - though you wouldn't know it at first glance from all the melodramatic candy coating that is piled on at the end.  Archer dies, and before his death heroically saves the life of Solomon and his son.  Of course, we don't know what Archer would have done if he hadn't suffered a mortal wound and knew he was going to die before he could get on the plane to freedom.  He admits himself that he considered stealing the diamond and leaving Solomon and his son high and dry.  Considering the web of crosses and double crosses that Archer has to alternately weave and escape, it's hard to believe that he wouldn't double-cross and use these two just as he had ultimately double-crossed and used everyone else he knew in the movie. 

But because he knows he's going to die, he has the opportunity to do something heroic.  The viewer is left to decide whether this was simply bad luck or fate, or if Archer was really good under all the pretenses he dressed himself in.  Of course, the movie not-so-subtely encourages us to forgive Archer in his death and find him a tragic hero.  As though in the final four minutes of the 140 minute film he finds redemption and his true self and we can rejoice with him.

Or not.

If man is to be judged (Daniel means "God is my judge" in Hebrew) simply by his actions, which actions do you choose?  Do you choose the one good act in a lifetime of evil?  Especially if that's your last act?  Or do you choose the preponderence of actions?  Who is the judge, and what are the criteria upon which he judges?

The movie of course removes the issue of judgment - at least in any sort of final or eternal sense.  "God left this place a long time ago" Archer muses in a moment of tearful bonding with Maddy.  Of course, in the back of your mind, you're wondering whether or not Archer has gone all weepy simply in hopes of bedding Maddy.  I'm sure that possibility would move a lot of guys to get in touch with their emotional side.

So if God's out of the picture, then why do we care?  Why the distinction between good and evil in the first place?  Man becomes simply who he is.  He truly becomes nothing more than the sum of his actions - or in rare instances, a specific, defining action by which all his other actions are nullified or forgiven.  But we have this drive in us to label good and evil.  I haven't met anyone who is willing or able to simply give up this distinction in favor of a vast, unjudged is. 

We're stuck with this monkey on our backs of wanting to define good and evil.  We try to relativize it, but we know we can't, not ultimately.  Whether you think pistachios are delicious or not is a relative matter.  Murder is not.  As much as we would like to get away from it, we reinforce a set of moral baselines that insist that some things are bad, always. 

Archer apparently makes peace with himself.  Most others who follow this philosophy of  "our actions make us good or bad" will not.  Because we can never really be sure if we've done enough good.  We can remember much of the bad.  But how much good is enough?  How much tilts the balance of the scales in our favor?  And who do we need to prove our goodness to?  Ourselves?  Others?  God?  So many questions without answers, just that damn monkey screeching on our back and digging his claws into our hearts.