You’re not misunderstanding at all. You actually took what I was saying even a step further, so thank you for asking. I was using some reductive language to avoid making it over complex or sounding pretentious. I spoke of it in terms of “being a good person” because I think this conversation is at heart distillation of the problems of consumption and our self perceptions. Like, it’s about morality too but that part is easier settled by just not giving problematic artists our resources.

So for the meat of it, when we’re talking about whether it’s okay to consume art from “bad people” I think what we’re trying to discover is if doing so makes us bad. and like, it possibly can but not intentionally and not if we do it critically. and also the quality that I’m referring to as bad isn’t actually a binary. it’s actually an expansive amount of values on their own individual spectrums that we should be analyzing and keeping in our mind while we participate in the art. from there we can broaden our concepts of good and bad or problematic/unproblematic and actually use that awareness to prevent some harm.

I said doing this makes me a bad person because I assume most people I interact with have all-or-nothing morality and I don’t think it will change. I find it easier to just live with the base assumption that I’m a problem and not wait for people tell me who I am but that’s probably trauma talking. I probably should be examining that.

But anyway yes, you’re right. But I’d call most good deeds that can be done as acts of creation. Like creating feelings of respect and ease of life by holding a door for someone.