Saturday 6 October 2012

The myth of the "good person" being good.


Do you like to read books? I do, I love to read books. In books most of the time the characters are either good or bad, if they're bad they do bad things, if they're good they do good things. They always know that they're good/bad and goodness is always rewarded, while being bad is always punished somehow.

That's books though. In reality? It isn't so clear cut. In reality, most people think they're good people, whether they are or not depends on how they behave.

There are three type of people in the word in terms of behaviour. The majority, people like me and most others are neutral, we have the capacity for bad and good. Those of us who are aware of this make a choice as to which action we will take and we accept the reality that we aren't always good while recognising that we can be bad.

People like me score highly on self awareness, and we're entirely capable of balancing our own needs against those of others. We have a great capacity for knowingly doing good or evil as a result. This is why I always say I am not a good person, I am a person with the capacity for good or evil because I am not always good and not always bad.

There's a smaller group of people who I would consider to be good people. Most of whom probably cannot comprehend of being deliberately mean because they don't have a mean bone in their body. Most of them wouldn't describe themselves as good people because they just are who they are.

And then there's definite bad people. Again, some of them know they're bad and revel in it. They're not so bad, at least they're honest even if they do bad things to people.

But the worst of the bad people? The worst are "good people". The kind of bad people who are so sure they're actually good people that they wreak havoc any time they do something harmful to another person. They often are so invested in the idea that they are a good person and thus can only do good that they could stab you by accident and the likely result of your complaining about it would be for them to cut your throat to silence your "lies" about them, then claim they didn't do anything to them even if they were caught standing over your body. That's how seriously delusional such people are, they frequently don't just do bad, they do evil, all the time blithely convinced that they're practically sainted.

I hate dealing with "good people", it's like dealing with particularly malicious children, they go around ripping into people, and throwing tantrums every time even a glimpse of the havoc and harm they cause to others is seen by them. Everyone else is evil unless they're telling the "good person" how good they are or supporting the "good person's" personal grudge against someone who dared to find the "good person's" actions harmful.

They are incredibly dangerous, they're often devoid of ethics, emotionally manipulative, experts in the art of crocodile tears, and willing to do anything to protect their delusion of being good people. Nobody can wreak so much havoc as someone who thinks they can only do good and who is willing to sacrifice as many people as it takes to keep that belief intact.

Anytime someone tells me that they are a good person, I tend to be wary of them, the worst evil is often done with the best of intentions and a belief that one is a good person. The type of "good people" I'm talking about are typically pillars of the community, they may spend a lot of time in church praying openly, how "good" and "devout" they are is often what you'll hear about them, but if you take the time to sit and watch how they treat others, it often becomes clear that they are not actually very good people. They're often petty, malicious, self serving, gossipy, outright spiteful, and yet still believe they are good people and also convince others they are good people.

1 comment:

  1. This was a hard article to find. We are so convinced of this that even google was starting to get defensive
    "Who I think I am" is more important than the truth.
    This all started because I was searching for Vegan Cat articles. The one I found was as sad as can be. The cats ownner runs living by her ethical standards.

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