As with anything, it's just highly subjective. What some call an heinous act is another person's heroic act. Likewise, where I draw the line between an unlucky person and a villain is going to be different from someone else.

Personally, I do believe that there are benefits to labelling others as villains if a certain threshold is met. It cognitively reduces strain by allowing us to blanket-label all of their acts as evil [0] (although with the drawback of occasionally accidentally labelling acts of good as evil), allowing us to prioritise more important things in life than the actions of what we call villains.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halo_effect#The_reverse_halo_e...

It’s not really subjective if you don’t believe it’s your place to judge the human to begin with.

If you were in their exact life circumstance and environment you would do the same thing. You aren’t going to magically sidestep cause and effect.

The act itself is bad.

The human performing the act was misguided.

I view people as inherently perfect whose view of life, themselves, and their current situations as potentially misguided.

Eg, like a diamond covered in shit.

Just like it’s possible for a diamond to be uncovered and polished, the human is capable of acquiring a truer perspective and more aligned set of behaviors - redemption. Everyone is capable of redemption so nobody is inherently bad. Thinking otherwise may be convenient but is ultimately misguided too.

So the act and the person are separate.

Granted, we need to protect society from such misguidedness, so we have laws, punishments, etc.

But it’s about protecting us from bad behavior, not labeling the individual as bad.