Fear The Walking Dead, Survival Rule Of The Week: Bad For Good

Fear the Walking Dead

When you’re willing to do bad to good, it makes you easy to manipulate.

As bad as the things that Howard and John were willing to do, believing that they would make something good out of what they’d done, what was worse was the revelation that Strand knew their goals. Because they were willing to do whatever he asked in the hopes of achieving them, he manipulated them into carrying out his nefarious bidding, most especially throwing people off of the roof of the tower.

As Strand said, he needed them to be “motivated” to do what he wanted, so he lied to John and Howard. He let John believe that he would be more receptive to calls for leniency and possibly walk back some of his harsher policies, knowing full well he would do no such thing. And, with Howard, he allowed him to believe that his wife and son, who’d left him sometime before the outbreak, were still alive in Texas and that they could find their way to the tower, all the while knowing that both of them were dead.

Another problem with the “ends justify the means” mentality is, that once a more unscrupulous person knows you believe in that philosophy, they can begin to convince you that by doing what they want, you can, eventually, achieve your goal.

Plenty of people over the last century or so have committed despicable acts — Big Brother surveillance, persecution, and murder — under the orders of others who claimed that, by doing so, they could achieve a “greater good.” The one thing all those people had in common was the belief that, because they were working towards something they thought good, whatever they did in service of that goal was acceptable.

When you believe in doing bad to do good, it leaves you open to manipulation by people who only want to do bad.