On The Legacy Of Star Trek - The Next Generation (1987-1994)

SPACE, THE FINAL FRONTIER
THESE ARE THE VOYAGES OF THE STAR SHIP ENTERPRISE
ITS CONTINUING MISSION, TO EXPLORE STRANGE NEW WORLDS
TO SEEK OUT NEW LIFE AND NEW CIVILIZATIONS
TO BOLDLY GO WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE

When Star Trek-The Next Generation first premiered in the fall of 1987, the television landscape was very different. Only the three major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) were broadcasting first-run television series. TNG was the first series ever produced with first-run episodes specifically created to be shown on syndicated TV (WPIX). It changed the face of television forever by opening up the way for syndicated TV to compete with the three major networks.

TNG was well received by critics. It made tons of money for the advertisers, regenerated the sagging Star Trek fan base and brought in new generations of fans that were born long after Classic Trek had been canceled - after just three years of its five year mission. It not only led the way for all other syndicated series but also made possible the development of new broadcast channels such as WB and UPN. To this day, TNG is considered the most successful syndicated series of all time.

I never considered TNG to be a sequel to the original Classic Trek. I always saw it as a completely new series with only a vague historical connection to the first series (starfleet, the prime directive, the starship enterprise). The command structure was different. There was no Vulcan on board and whereas Kirk was a more fiery and confrontational captain, Picard was more of an accomplished mediator at the helm of the Enterprise D.

The social commentary was now being presented by two characters: Commander Data - in his search to be more human - and by Wesley Crusher - in his search to grow up. The half-breed characters were portrayed by Counselor Deeana Troi (half Betazoid, half Human - aka the Enterprise Slut) and by Worf, the (culturally compromised) Klingon brought up on Earth, by humans.

The uniqueness of TNG for me was the Hallow Deck which opened up a whole new venue for playing with non science fiction settings within the deck of the Enterprise while it moved at warp speed through the galaxy. The other was The Borg, which presented the most terrifying adversary humanity ever faced. The TNG episode "The Best Of Both Worlds" was picked by TV Guide as the second most popular cliffhanger of all time, just behind "Who Shot JR" in Dallas. Star Trek 8 - First Contact, featuring The Borg, was the best of the TNG movies.

The linking of the original series with TNG, hinted at briefly in the premiere episode with the appearance of a very old Dr. McCoy, was fully solidified with the appearance in the third season of (Bendii-syndrome-afflicted) Sarek, in the fifth season by Spock (whose judgment had been influenced by his emotions) and in the sixth season by a very stout (in Transporter-suspended-animation) Scotty. As with the Classic Trek, and the other Trek series, the characters became the most important element that contributed to the popularity of the series, as well as the special effects, and the themes covered, which were both thought-provoking and relevant.

By the time it completed its seventh and unprecedented season, it had become one of the most respected series of all time and considered among the best science fiction television ever produced. At the Emmies, it became the first science fiction series to be nominated for Best Dramatic Series. It didn't win because even in 1994 it was difficult for the awards community to accept science fiction to be as legitimate as other forms of drama. Never-the-less, it made television history by going where no television series had ever gone before.

On Sacrifice

Although the practice of sacrifice has been used in many ancient cultures, its intent was, in some way, to satisfy the demands that the gods were making for repayment of some beneficial effects bestowed on behalf of the people. Over time these sacrifices became physical and included the sacrifice of animals and humans, in the hope that the gods would look kindly on the people and give them good fortune or ward off some evil that had been prognosticated.

If however we look at sacrifice strictly from a spiritual point of view, then it takes on a completely different meaning then interpreted by historical context. To sacrifice ones life for others is a noble gesture, that shows a person who recognizes the value of life, and chooses to give their own for the benefit of others. The selflessness of that gesture represents for the sacrificer, an evolutionary act in their development beyond their own desire for self preservation. A mother who throws herself in front of a car to save her child who runs into the street is considered one of the greatest acts of sacrifice one can make.

Sacrifice can also refer to giving up parts of the self that are associated with things not worthy of a spiritual person. Anger, irritation, selfishness, are just some of the traits that can be willingly sacrificed when one chooses the path of the spirit and consciously sets ones goal on the path of knowledge and wisdom. Recognition that in order to go to another level of development, giving up those self- associated traits, which impedes the progress one can make on the path to enlightenment.

Enlightenment is not an unattainable goal. But it is to some degree a level that one must consciously make a choice to search for. In the process of that search, qualities of our humanness more associated with self are needed to be sacrificed in order to understand what the greater purpose is. Most religions talk about sacrifice. Certainly Christianity speaks a lot about Christ's sacrifice for the sins of humanity.

We also need to acknowledge and accept responsibility for our own sins. We can never gain wisdom from learning what we have done wrong if we continuously deny them or go to someone to seek absolution of them. Only by willingly accepting the consequences of sins, can we ever hope to finally sacrifice the motives and causes that made us sin in the first place.

More on sacrifice at another time.

---

I want to take this time to wish happy birthday to kevin - a good personal friend of mine and friend of this blog community. The following poem celebrates the man, his accomplishments and his valuable contribution.

K
He Walks With The Swag Of A Confident Man,
One With The Step Of A Kool Cat Dude.
He Looks To One Side Then The Other, With Ease,
Sniffing The Scent Of The Wind As It Moves
Like A Panther, On The Prowl For His Next Prey,
Caring Nothing That Others Look To Him And Pray
To Get His Notice, His eye, His Heat,
Notice Me, They Think, As He Passes The Fray,
Knowing They Notice, He Flinches And Belches,
Well I'm A Confident Man, He Thinks,
I'm The Kool Cat Dude, I Do What I Want, I Do What I Please,
I Pick Who I Want, Cause I Want Who I Pick, If You Please
Cause I'm The Cat, The Kool Cat Dude, Who Everyone Sees
Who Everyone Wants And Says, Please Notice Me
But He Wants Who He Wants, The Ones You'd Least Expect,
Cause He Senses The Heart Of The One He Picks,
Caring Nothing Of The Yearns, And The Calls For His Heat,
Cause He Is The One, The Kool Cat Dude,
The One With The Heart Of Gold

More On Karma

In a previous essay, I wrote about KARMA as the law of cause and effect. In this essay, I want to explore KARMA as the energy of attraction. By attraction, I'm referring to how elements, whether they be identified as physical elements or thoughts and actions, causes and effects, can be pulled towards each other, or repelled, by their magnetic nature.

For those who have studied chemistry, the periodic table exhibits numerous physical elements defined by their atomic number and weight. Their excitability for attraction to other elements is caused by the number of electrons which are needed to complete their outer shell and attain what is known as equilibrium. Water is created when oxygen, which needs two electrons to complete its outer shell, combine with two hydrogen atoms. The inert elements, such as Krypton, Argon, and Helium, have the complete number of electrons in their outer shell. They have no need to attract, or be attracted by other elements because they are already in a state of equilibrium.

If we look at thoughts and actions, (or cause and effect), in an analogous way, they too have the quality of excitability. They can attract other thoughts and actions and have the potential for provoking an energetic reaction which motivates the impulse towards a state of equilibrium, or conversely, they can perpetuate and perhaps magnify excitability. Whether thoughts and actions (or causes and effects) are excitable in precisely the same way that physical elements are, is not known. My use of the physical elements is a way to tangibly exemplify this process.

Equilibrium is that state where all the components of a "condition" find a state of balance, no longer having excitability (attraction or repulsion), as a quality of its existence. It has found its true nature which is defined by its equilibrium.

KARMA can be viewed as analogous to the excitability that causes physical elements, or in this case, "thoughts, actions -- causes and effects", to combine and form completion and attain equilibrium (balance). If we initiate certain actions that are injurious to others, we are attracting energies (from those thoughts and actions) back to us through an umbilical cord of sorts. KARMA works by drawing the corresponding energies that we send out, back to us.

While we think we are sending these energies outward, what we are actually doing is providing an inlet and attracting them through this opening (cord). We may not initially be aware of what we are doing because we are not cognizant of that energy, or the power or how our own thinking creates, in this case a negative vacuum of magnetic energy. Whether we accept this or not, each thought and action we create has within its innate structure, a magnetic force (either positive or negative). Everything in its purest form has, like the atom, a series of magnetic forces that will have some level of excitability as a defining quality of its nature. Karma works through the energy we create from our thoughts and actions that we emanate and conversely attract (from outside ourselves), by the very nature, substance and quality of our thinking.

If we are aware of the power of our thoughts and their ability to effect the environment by impacting on the people surrounding us through this power, should we not take care and at least think more carefully about the quality of those thoughts and actions which will directly or indirectly reflect back on us?

Even more on KARMA at another time…

On Healing and Healers

When I was in college, one of the courses that I found most interesting was Medical Anthropology. It covered medical practices from a cross-cultural standpoint. Although it was a reasonable approach, it was also one that was often at odds with the scientific approach that western medicine embodies, primarily because in many cultures, healing is also mixed with mystical practices and beliefs. I generally do not like to use the word mystical or mysticism, because it denotes some kind of mystery usually not knowable. However, for lack of a better term, I will use it for the time being.

Although the thought of distinguishing healing from medicine would seem radical to the west, I do see it as analogous as viewing the distinction between spirituality and religion. A healer could be a physician, but not necessarily; while the reverse could also be true for some physicians, who heal, but not generally in the mystical sense. Although some physicians can be "mystical healers", their ability doesn't come from their western training.

While western medicine is steeped in science, healing and healers have been around for centuries in many different ways and in just about every culture. There is the medicine man in Native American, African and South American cultures to mention just a few. What makes a healer different from a physician? What constitutes the basis for healing? What are the ways healers heal? These are all questions that are valid to ask and reasonable for inquiry. They are also questions that are difficult to address in one short essay. My purpose is not to provide a detailed accounting, but just give an overview of the process. It's up to the reader to question, explore and come to his own conclusions.

- The Basis for Healing
Many belief systems view the body as analogous to the universe as being composed of energy that is either harmonious or disharmonious. When one is harmonious with the forces of nature (energy), health ensues. When one’s energy is disharmonious, sickness can develop. The task of the healer then becomes to find where the disharmony in the person's body exists, and help them to restore it to a state of harmony. In western medicine, a comparable view is HOMEOSTASIS. Wikipedia defines homeostasis as "the property of living organisms to regulate its internal environment to maintain a stable, constant condition, by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments, controlled by interrelated regulation mechanisms." In other words, homeostasis is a condition of harmony and balance, and the body, with interconnected mechanisms, works to maintain that balance.

Human life and health exists within certain boundaries where the body maintains all the systems in a harmonious interrelationship. If anything upsets that balance, then the person will get sick. How that illness defines itself depends on the kind and location of the disharmony.

In addition to the energy contained within each body, the individual cells also have a unique energy level. So there are many things to consider when health and illness is concerned. Perhaps cancer is the breakdown of the energy level of a cell that then proliferates and spreads, interfering with the other processes of the body by interrupting the homeostasis of the whole system.

How the healer works to restore the balance of the person's body can take on a variety of forms. Herbs that have been known to be effective in restoring the body’s energy balance can be used, or with acupuncture where certain nodes of energy regulation can be manipulated with inserting specially designed needles into the body at those nodes, then rotating the needle to stimulate the flow of energy to the weakened area(s).

Other kinds of healing can involve the healer who is able, by some process, to draw out the illness from the sick person, take it into their own aura (energy) and then discharge it by a process that is still unclear. Again, these are methods that are not generally accepted in the west because they don’t necessarily lend themselves to the scientific method or to reproducibility, because they largely depend on the ability of the healer. The scientific community, however, views the experimenter as simply the facilitator of the experiment; his energy level is not supposed to intermix with the experiment he is performing because it would affect the ability of the experiment to be reproduced by someone else. This is primarily the difficulty in using the scientific method to prove healing. We can't separate or isolate the energy of the healer from the person he is healing. It's not possible to reproduce the healing with someone else who claims to heal since their level of energy will be different, and the basis of the healing will often be determined by the level of energy of the healer.


[from the author]
There are other ways to conceptualize illness and healing. Although the differences are clear, there is a place for western medicine as there are for other forms of medicine and healing. The important thing is to have respect for the varieties of approaches and to recognize that those forms, unfamiliar to us, can work and do have at its basis a long tradition of theory forged from a view of the world and universe that goes beyond what we normally consider as part of the scientific tradition.

On Accessibility of Health Care in the United States

There is no excuse or logic why so many people in the United States remain uninsured or have no accessibility to medical care. I fail to understand any excuses that try and explain it. In a country so rich, with almost unlimited resources as the United States. Politicians on both sides of the aisle that elucidate the complexities of solving this problem have failed to find any reasonable solution to the biggest failure of the American Government (both under democrats and republicans) and to the American way of life.

The only two choices that have been presented (to date) are: government control of the medical care system (socialized medicine, as in Canada) which needs a lot of thought, and consideration, or a private-sector Medical Care system whose accountability remains more involved with its investors. What we have now is a split between private sector control (accessible for those who can afford it) and a public medical care system for others who can't (medicaid). We also have non-profit medical providers which are supported partially by the government and private donations.

Although everyone agrees that change is needed, there are many differing views on which of these two choices would solve it. What we really need is an enlightened economist/philosopher with vision to come along and propose more creative options, new ways of looking at this problem and perhaps rethinking the whole medical structure in this country. I felt that it was important to present this issue as a challenge for a fresh approach to problem solving - something that will be needed to resolve this problem. The following are some of the current issues which have resulted from a mostly republican philosophy, expressed by the current republican administration.

The pharmaceutical companies (with the sanction of the republican administration) control the price of drugs which they claim are high because they need the money to continue researching new drugs for treatment. Yet here in the United States, they spend billions of dollars to advertise new prescription drugs on television, radio and magazines to manipulate the population to put pressure on their doctors to prescribe these medications even though generic drugs are perfectly good to treat most conditions. This money would better be served by putting it into research. Part of the problem is that the pharmaceutical companies are businesses. Their accountability is to their stockholders not the American people. They are in business to make as much profit as they can. Their accountability always remains with their private investors. This is part of the complex problem of solving the Health Care Crisis in this country.

The cost of using HMO's (also private corporations) have sharply risen for those who have them. When I started paying for an individual policy three years ago, it was approximately $320 a month, and is now just under $650 a month for standard individual coverage. Most HMO’s won't touch you if you have any pre-existing conditions. That is standard policy with all HMO's.

Children, the future of the American Culture, go uninsured throughout the country, which is the richest country in the world. People are forced to crowd the emergency rooms because they don’t have the money or the coverage to go to doctors, while the Medicaid system is forced to absorb all these costs and the taxpayers ultimately foot the bill. The Republican Administration enacts laws to prevent people from getting medications from cheaper sources like Canada which they claim is for the benefit of the American population. They reason Canadian drugs have not been proven to be safe for US consumption. The President, and his administration, acting as the grand protector of the United States, will do everything to keep the American population safe, so the propaganda goes.

Anyone who has visited Canada, seen their medical system and the quality of their pharmacies, know that all that is a bunch of governmental fabrications aimed at propping up the American pharmaceutical companies to keep them in control of the costs. Everything that the republican administration has done to date has been more for the benefit of the drug companies than for the American population.

I haven’t even mentioned the FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, that ineffectual, arbitrary, excuse for an organization which has become more of a political arm for the Republican administration, by creating the illusion they exist to protect the American population. I don’t know which is more pathetic: The organization itself, or the people who believe what they say. This is also true of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The politicians go on and on. The republicans would put a band-aide on the medical care system and prop up the HMO’s and other American pharmaceutical companies, and continue to require Americans to pay exorbitant fees for everything medical. The democrats, newly elected to control both senate and House, are still so lukewarm and disorganized about medical care reform that they provide no concrete leadership to rely on to negotiate a reasonable re-haul of the medical care system.

What we should all do is what Peter Finch did in the film NETWORK, where he told people to go to the window, open it up and yell as loud as they could: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore." We need to tell, not only the politicians, but the universities, the problem-solvers, the creative thinkers and economists that they need to step forward and propose ideas, any idea. It's from these kinds of thinkers, with focused and dedicated politicians, that the answer must come.

My solution is simple: Treat this issue like the election of a pope. Take every member of the legislative branch of the government (house and senate) along with the president in a room, and lock it from the outside. Tell them that they will not be allowed out until they find a credible solution to the medical care crisis. If we want an even faster solution, tell them the restrooms will be off-limits.

Although this seems ludicrous, it stems from my personal frustration that solutions to this problem remain bi-polar. No new creative ideas. Who believes the United States can do better? The answer won't come from politicians alone. They will have to come from all of us.

On Marijuana

OH CANNABIS, OH CANNABIS
HOW GOOD YOU MAKE ME FEEL
CAN IT BE A MISPERCEPTION,
OR PERHAPS A HIGH POINT OF CONTENTION
THAT SOCIETY THREATENS ME WITH DETENTION
IF I PERSIST IN MY WAYS
TO INHALE YOUR SWEET FUMES,
THAT CAUSE MY MOODS
AND SEALS MY DOOM
SITTING ALL ALONE
IN MY CELL BLOCK ROOM

Marijuana has been misunderstood for so long, it's questionable whether it's possible to look at it with a fresh perspective. It's been lumped together with other drugs for so long that to even utter that word in anything above a whisper in certain public circles, is to draw the attention of all those "upstanding law abiding citizens" who look on marijuana as a corrupter of the young, and a defiler of the very foundations of civilized society.

Those very same citizens who would think nothing of displaying bottles of liquor in front of their children or go to a bar and drink till their breath reeks of drink, that being in the same room as them runs the risk of causing second hand drunkenness. They would say, "Its legal, so its ok".

Think of the kind of society we live in: We watch television commercials all the time. How many of them are related to over-the-counter drugs, which I might add are taken like candy. Got a headache? Take an aspirin, a Tylenol, or Ibupropen. Got a stomach ache? Take "Pepto-dismal". Got cramps, aches and pains? Take this or that.

Anything that one wants to take for whatever ails them is available at the corner drug store, and what isn’t, is now advertised by the pharmaceutical companies specifically to encourage people to pressure their doctors to prescribe them, such as overused antibiotics. And I haven’t even mentioned the livestock industries that load up cattle, sheep and chickens with antibiotics so that they are plump and ripe for the butcher block, never thinking that we are ingesting second hand antibiotics thru what we eat which all adds to the ever-increasing antibiotic resistance that threatens us with the new resistant strains of bacteria which would render current antibiotics useless. They are all legal.

It's interesting to think that we live in essentially a pill-popping society that has no tolerance for pain, and which measures the goodness or badness of what we pop into our mouths by whether it’s a legal drug or not, as if abuse of over-the-counter medications or prescribed medications is not an even larger problem in this society than marijuana could ever be. Just think about cigarettes, and that old bastion of capitalist institutions, the tobacco industry, and how much damage they have done over the centuries. Still sanctioned and protected by the American Government, despite all the revelations that have come to the public's attention for decades about cigarettes and addiction.

The US Government, never-the-less, stands as the guardian of our health so to speak, to keep the devil's harvest from the grasp of the public, while maintaining that it causes it's users to go on to other drugs despite any significant evidence that it does.

The medical use of smoking marijuana has long been known to have many beneficial effects. In addition to increasing appetite, alleviating side effects from chemotherapy such as decreasing nausea and vomiting, lowering intra-ocular pressure in glaucoma patients, just to name a few, the US Government continues to dig it's heels into the ground and claim that smoking marijuana has no beneficial effects, at least not substantial enough to make it's use in medical situations and under medical supervision legal. It claims that Marisol, the pill form is sufficient enough, even though many patients who have tried Marisol don’t feel the same beneficial effects that smoking extends.

The US Government won't even publicly conduct studies that might provide the evidence that would substantiate the claims that people with medical conditions have sufficient justification to claim the beneficial effects of smoking marijuana. It maintains it's decades old position that this drug should be categorized with other drugs that are much more harmful and addictive, using the argument that marijuana leads to the eventual use of these other drugs.

There is no sufficient evidence to prove that using marijuana directly leads to the use of other drugs. It should be legalized, at least for use in medical situations. The US Government, rather than stick it's head in the sand, should be conducting scientific studies that are objective and open to what the results might show.

On The Death Penalty

If I had committed some crime and I was condemned to death, such as Timmothy McVey in the Kansas City bombing, I would have denied all appeals made on my behalf and chosen death as he had. He is still contemporary enough to stir up the National anger that supports the death penalty. "A perfect example of someone who should die for what he did", they would say. And those directly affected, and most of the city of Kansas City, would also agree.

Putting myself in his shoes, I would think that death is preferable to living the rest of my life, a young man in prison without any possibility of parole. No chance to escape, no place to go, nothing to do except survive for many years trapped in a prison population, out to get him, where society has thrown away the key. He chose death to a living hell.

My position on the death penalty is that I am pro-life, but it seems illogical to me for those that are pro-death even for certain horrendous crimes could also claim to be pro-life when it comes to abortion. Life is life, whether it’s a sinned life or an innocent life.

From everything I have written up to this point, it should be clear that my views on CAUSE AND EFFECT (KARMA), resolve, for me, the issue of the death penalty. I don’t think it's necessary for someone to be put to death by the state to know that the cosmic laws will take care and appropriately deal out justice to those who have committed horrendous crimes. It's enough for me that they have been ostrazised from society and kept under lock and key for the remainder of their life.

For those directly affected by the crime, such as the family members, it's hard to simply say, let KARMA take care of the situation. For them, the pain is too great, and the desire for revenge is understandable. If I were in their shoes, I would in all likelihood wish for the same thing. But I'm not, and neither is society.

The question still comes down to whether THE STATE has the right to take life under any conditions. If religious authorities and spiritual people contend that life is sacred no matter what - even a sinned life is as sacred as an innocent one - then THE STATE, in my opinion, clearly has no right to take life. Only God does.

The problem with the judicial system in this country is that it talks about rehabilitation, but how it meters out “justice” is more based on revenge. It is not interested in taking a perpetrator of societies' laws, and turning him/her into a contributing member of society. There is too much anger in society to pay back some form of pain to those that have committed crimes, but the level of revenge for those who have committed minor crimes seems to be out of proportion with the reality of what has actually been committed.



Crimes that are not injurious to others should, in my opinion, not be aimed at revenge or retribution. There should be more aggressive attempts to re-educate those people and make every attempt to get them reintegrated back into society. The problem is society doesn’t acknowledge this. Often people who commit less injurious crimes are locked away with people who have committed more serious crimes, and by the time their sentence has expired, those who should be allowed to re-enter society have been so hardened by being mixed-in with the prison environment of career-criminals that they have themselves become irretrievable. The objective of re-education and rehabilitation then becomes a pointless endeavor. When they are eventually released, they can no longer survive in a society that has labeled them as criminals, and which provides no support system to help them readjust. They cannot easily integrate or live without repeating some of the crimes that brought them to the criminal justice system in the first place.

Large percentages of people incarcerated in prisons today are there because of some drug-related crime - either selling or using substances that society has deemed illegal. These criminals are not on the same level as those that commit the crimes of murder. They do not deserve to be thrown away into hardened prison populations because society hasn’t thought out a proper way to rehabilitate them.


The issue of the death penalty, how we define any of the criminal elements in society, and how we deal with them as a group, defines the very civility of our culture. What the United States says in the way it deals with its criminal elements is that it's not the least bit interested in rehabilitation, and that certainly has had Karmic consequences on our society.

On Being an Ethical Person

I - Defining ethical behavior is less a factor of whether a person is intrinsically good or bad as it is with how they deal with a moral dilemma that presents them with two or more conflicting resolutions. What is important is the code they use (process of reasoning) to arrive at the choice they make in resolving the dilemma.

We all, at one time or another, face moral dilemmas in life. They are unavoidable. They create conflict because the potential choices of resolving them are so at odds with each other and because they test the very foundation of the morality we have been brought up to accept. The actual position we take in resolving them are less important to ethics than how we prioritize and reason out the position to come by whatever decision we reach. We can also learn more about the character and internal workings of a person not by the position taken for resolution but in the way their process of thought proceeds to come to that decision.

We often confuse being an ethical person with being a good person, as if goodness has anything to do with it. Very often, the position taken in resolving the dilemma is one that a majority of people may not agree. The value judgement we place on any given choice is not what makes the person ethical or not. It's often the way we (society) would like to define a "good" person as being ethical and a bad person as being unethical.


II - What makes a good person good, and a bad person bad?
Again, when we are referring to whether a person is ethical or unethical, what we think we mean is whether they are good or bad. So, how do we define someone who is good or bad? A good person is someone who does good things, and a bad person is someone who does bad things.

What society attributes as good or bad is essentially more important to defining goodness and badness as any other factor, since we as individuals take those interpretations and internalize those values as our own.

How we act them out in our behavior (which society labels) will be ultimately how we will be defined as good or bad, while religion often use evil synonymously with bad, but it's essentially the same thing.

Most things we associate with a good person include being true to those attributes deemed valuable and important in defining a person as a positive contributing member: helpfulness, magnanimity, honesty, kindness, bravery, reverence and others. Which ones have i forgotten?

Being a bad person would include doing things that are counter-productive to society, being destructive to others, selfishness, irreverence towards religion, the laws of society, etc.

The important thing to remember is that however we are defined by society or by ourselves, ethics has nothing to do with it. A "bad" person can have an ethical code by which they live as much as a person defined as "good".