It will never cease to amuse me that "bad apples" is thrown around like that, downplaying the problem. And then people nod and are like, "yeah, that vaguely reminds me of a folksy saying, it must be credible."
The saying is "one bad apple spoils the barrel", and is stressing how much of a problem it is for there to be individual deviance, and how we must be super vigilant for it and throw it the heck out. If we're to believe that, and we're to believe there have been "a few bad apples" for some time, we should expect that the whole barrel is spoiled and would be quite right to be cynics.
I don't necessarily agree, and I certainly don't think that folk wisdom is the best way of making decisions... but it's probably better than the uncritical opposite!
The saying is "one bad apple spoils the barrel", and is stressing how much of a problem it is for there to be individual deviance, and how we must be super vigilant for it and throw it the heck out. If we're to believe that, and we're to believe there have been "a few bad apples" for some time, we should expect that the whole barrel is spoiled and would be quite right to be cynics.
I don't necessarily agree, and I certainly don't think that folk wisdom is the best way of making decisions... but it's probably better than the uncritical opposite!