Originally Posted by
BandD
Intellectually, its tempting for me to say well yeah, good/evil are just words and everything is nuance shades of grey blah blah blah.
But good and evil are felt, not known. It's obviously 'good' to save an innocent old lady from a burning building, and obviously 'evil' to laugh at her as she dies and then smother her dead ashes on your body whilst you tweak your nipples and sing the lyrics to Goodbye Horses. (And even eviler to make her think you are there to save her, and then do the latter!) The 'in the middle/everybody is a little bit of both' comes down to the fact that it feels like most people would be incredibly indifferent to an old, helpless lady dying in a fire unless it was their own mother/grandmother or close family member. So they might feel a little bad for her from a safe distance, but they wouldn't actually do anything about it or care very much.
That was just one example. It's easy to think of thousands more.
The temptation of being evil is that in the moment it feels incredibly good and exhilarating. Like you are born free, like that Dexter episode. This isn't just reserved for creepy serial killers tho, I strongly believe its an objective trait that everybody feels. Also what Cersei said to Septa Unella was pretty spot on as well. She didn't do those cruel things because she was worried about Cersei's salvation, she did them because it felt good.