I am someone whom most people in my past saw as being a bad person, but these days most people see me as a good person. Since I had to get from Point A to Point B, I have some understanding of how to arrive at Point B. I am now communicating this understanding.
Probably the best thing that you can do is interact with good people and learn from them. I have known a number of amazing people, and I am privileged to know them. Most of what I know about being a good person, I have learned from these people. The way in which I can be a good person differs from the way in which someone else can be a good person. Other people can show you the way; you will have to yourself make the effort.
Another is attempting to understand and be compassionate to other people. I used to be very judgmental; but my experiences have taught me to the contrary. Julia told me that it’s easy to see other people as bigots and hypocrites, but better was extending to them compassion and understanding and figuring out why they are the way they are. I have done that with many people, including people I would have held in contempt before, such as the Christian fundamentalists. I recommend this path; it is a lot more fulfilling and less contentious and painful.
Another is making a determination to hold yourself to a high standard of conduct. Every thought, every feeling, every action, must be rigorously scrutinized to be free of sin. If even your thoughts can have impact upon the world, that demands responsibility in how they are wielded.
Also helpful is spiritual development. If you focus on a great figure such a Jesus or Buddha, you leave yourself open to influence by these figures. In my experience Jesus has been awesome. Here is a being much greater than myself, who can reach out to me and guide me without making me feel inferior. It is not true that the like attracts like; I don’t need to be Jesus to attract Jesus. Focus on a being however leaves one open to influence by that being; and the more you focus on Jesus the more like him you become.
With love, there is love universal and there is love romantic. The first – compassion and understanding – should be extended to everyone; the second – passion and partiality – should be extended to one’s partner. It is important to know which to practice and where. Universal love is for outside the home; romantic love is for inside the home. The two must never be confused. W. H. Auden said, “the error born in every bone of every man… not universal love, but to be loved alone.” That is not an error. If you are married you may very well expect that your partner should love you alone, and I don’t expect anyone to act in any other way.
The people I’ve known who were good tended to follow the Golden Rule. I have misgivings about the Golden Rule. The problem is that people differ from one another, and the way another person would want to be treated may very well be different from how I may want to be treated. I have been seen all my life as a freak, and I am skeptical of the idea that if I am treating the next person the way I want to be treated has anything to do with how another person may want to be treated. I can however figure out how the next person may want to be treated and also whether that way is right.
As for what does not make a good person, there are some things as well. One way in which you do not become a good person is by practicing high self-esteem. In fact it works the other way around. If you have higher standards for yourself, then you will find it harder to feel good about yourself than if you have low standards for yourself. Rewarding self-esteem does not reward personal good. It rewards low standards.
Another is positive thinking. Positive thinking causes more problems than it solves. It leads to carelessness and short-sightedness. You think positive, you fail to anticipate problems, you do foolish things. We have seen strenuous coercion toward positive thinking, and the results of that have been disastrous. People are ignoring the problems of the world, and these problems keep getting bigger. Meanwhile these people are lost in their positive-thinking world and think that they’re being enlightened and that everyone else is a neanderthal. These people are arrogant, careless and unethical; and there is nothing enlightened about it.
Another is believing in yourself. A person who believes in himself and only in himself is far less likely to do difficult and dangerous things than a person who believes in something greater than himself. What we see here is a kind of self-centredness. Some people believe this attitude to be strengthening, but I have seen the opposite. The real strength I have seen has been in people who identify with things greater than themselves and who from that standpoint do things that a person who believes in himself and only himself cannot do.
Another is absence of fear and the claim that fear is at the root of everything wrong with the world. These people don’t know what they are talking about. I have known genuinely courageous people. These people did not claim to disown fear; they claimed willingness to act in presence of fear. The people who believe such things have not been through experiences that actually test courage. They have no authority on the matter.
With responsibility, it depends on how it is defined. There are many people who think that they are being responsible when they aren’t, such as when they overconsume resources and poison the environment. This behaviour is more irresponsible than even drug addiction, and it hurts many more people. The drug addict hurts himself and the people who love him; the over-consumer of resources hurts everyone. Responsibility should not be defined as having a Hummer and a huge house. It should be defined as leaving the world a better place than you have found it. Have the correct definition of responsibility, and end up doing the right thing.
Some people see being a good person as being self-sacrificial; but that does not always work out correctly. The question is who is being sacrificed and for what. If honest, courageous people sacrifice their lives for arrogance and incompetence of their leaders, then that is not a correct sacrifice to make. If people work all their lives for the benefit of the state only to have the fruits of their labour wind up in Swiss bank accounts of the bureaucrats, then that is not a correct sacrifice to make. Seeing such things, Ayn Rand claimed that sacrifice was evil and something that only a tyrant or a thief would want. In many cases she is correct. I would sacrifice myself for my family; I won’t sacrifice myself for Westboro Baptists. I would sacrifice myself for love; I would not sacrifice myself for Michael Murphy or Andrea Dworkin. The question to ask, once again, is who is being sacrificed and for what. Clearly sacrifice is not always good, and any time that sacrifice is demanded one must question the person demanding it and see whether or not he is a tyrant or a thief.
With duty, we can see any number of ways that it can work out. Duty happens under all sorts of undesirable systems, such as Communism. At the same time duty builds great nations. The question to ask at all times is, What are you being dutiful to? Are you dutiful to something better than yourself or to something worse than yourself? Who benefits from your duty?
Empathy, in turn, has to be balanced with discernment. Empathy is a good thing, but it can go very badly wrong. A person who empathizes with the mafia will get used for wrongdoing in spite of her good intentions. It is valid to be compassionate to people; it is not valid to fail to see people as they are. By all means be compassionate, but be careful of sin.
With religious beliefs, it depends on how they are practiced. Clearly the people who think that the only wisdom is in the Bible, and that everything else is of the Satan, are wrong; and I’ve known many good people who did not practice Christianity. The problem with religious fundamentalism is that it closes one off from all the knowledge and wisdom that is not in the Bible, and that impoverishes these people’s world. We see the same with “scientific” materialists, who have decided that religion is for the stupid and have closed themselves off from all the wisdom that is in the religious and spiritual paths of the world. The best thing that one can do as a Christian is have a strong relationship with Jesus and strive for esteem in the eyes of God. It is not to damn everything else that people have come up with.
Figuring out what it means to be a good person has been a lifetime goal for me. I have seen a lot of things that think that they are good but aren’t. I have also seen genuine good. I have looked at both what actually makes a good person and what doesn’t. I hope that my observations be useful to other people.
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