What makes a person good? I've talked about evil before and it's sometimes fairly obvious why something is evil, but even then it's all really subjective and based on the point of view at the time. So what makes someone a good person, if there is such a thing? Maybe it's in the things they do. People are often judged by their actions so it's the most apparent indicator that someone is good. Maybe it goes deeper than that. What if the actions are only what's on the surface? It could be that true goodness is tied to intent. I've talked about cheating before. Some people think that cheating really only occurs when sex is involved, or at least physical contact. I personally think it's something more. If you enter a situation with the intention of cheating, but something prevents it from happening then you're still a cheater. Just because you didn't or couldn't act on it doesn't change what you intended to do. Some may think that's a little harsh and if you were to apply those kind of standards to other aspects of life then we have a lot of cheaters, killers, and thieves walking around who simply haven't acted on what's in their hearts. That actually brings up the question of: Is good just the absence of evil or is evil simply the absence of good intention?
If you were to ask the average person if they thought they were good, most would probably say for the most part they are. They may say that they're a bit of an asshole at times, but most people have moments where they're not exactly nice. More to the point, most people think what they're doing is right, or at least justified. So to them their actions, and in turn themselves, are good. Or at least good enough. Now for the most part there are some general accepted forms of being good. Helping people, thinking of more than just yourself, and actively trying to spread love/joy/happiness to the world around you. In most societies those things are considered to be virtuous. However, to someone who would rather see the destruction of a people, place, or thing would the good person really be good for them? For them it would likely run contrary to what they ultimately want and while you may not be able to go as far as to say for them good is evil, you couldn't exactly say that a good person is held in good standing. This goes back to the argument that maybe good and evil is only in the eye of the beholder.
Still it doesn't really answer the question of what makes a person good. It also kind of circles the point of what makes us different from the animals or a machine that could emulate our behavior. One might say what differentiates us is the fact that we use rational thought and logic. That we sense the world around us and understand our place within it. I can tell you right now if that's what separates us from the animals or a machine then I'm next to failing as a human because I rarely know my place in the world and am even less likely to use rational thought. One may also say that rational thought isn't enough to set us apart. It takes something more. It takes love, compassion, or empathy to be a truly good person. Without these traits then we're no better than some reptile or robot.
I won't get too much into love because I've talked about it before, but I will talk about empathy. I'd like to believe that most people are at least somewhat empathetic when it comes to people around them. Now I know it's hard with so many people on the planet and life moving so fast. If you allow yourself to empathize with everyone and everything you'd drown in a sea of emotion. Still with the people closest to us we understand how they're feeling or how something impacts their life. It's when we use that understanding to guide our own actions that we start to get closer to the idea of being good. Now before I get too far I want to mention something. When a child is growing up the first few years of their life they're in their own little self-contained world. They have no real comprehension of the people around them. They can only really understand their own experiences and needs. This can be a hard concept for some people to accept because for an adult it looks like the child is being selfish. And in a way they are, but they have no idea that there's anything else out there that matters. As they get older they start grasp the concept that the world isn't all about them, but they are a part of something larger. Now it's true that some people never really learn this because they still somehow believe that the most important thing is themselves. To be fair, for the strictest sense of survival, they're right. Assuming we only get the one body and one life then you should always be the most important thing in your world. If you cease to exist then your world also ceases to exist and all the other things you care about go away, at least as far as you can perceive. So if a child for the first five or so years lacks empathy what does that mean as far as the whole good thing is concerned? Most people would argue that a child is innocent and thereby good by default until something causes them to stop being good.
I've read a bit about Asperger's and some of the main traits with it are a lack of understanding social cues, extreme self-involvement, and a lack of empathy. If you tweaked things a little bit one way you'd have someone that would be considered a sociopath. One of the things several people with Asperger's have done to help them fit in and behave more 'normal' is to copy what other people are doing. It may not ever enter into their mind to ask how someone's weekend was, but after awhile they may train themselves to ask because they know it's kind of a social awareness that many people have come to expect. So for the person with Asperger's they're not asking how the weekend was because they want to know, they're asking because they know they should want to know. You can't throw out a blanket statement that says anyone who lacks empathy isn't a good person because someone with Asperger's or a child couldn't rationally be held to that standard. Still it does bring up the question though what is the standard?
We've all seen movies or read stories about someone who started out with the best of intentions and somewhere along the way they paved their own road to hell. I said before a cheater is based largely on their intention. So what happens when the intentions were good, but somehow the actions get corrupted? Arlo said there aren't any good guys. There aren't any bad guys or innocent guys. It's all just a bunch of guys. Meaning no one can be really classified as good or bad. Everyone is just sort of doing whatever whenever. It's almost cynical to think about, but probably not that far from reality. So you may think of yourself as a good person and maybe on most days you are, but if you're honest with yourself, you know there are days when that goodness takes a backseat and you do something that isn't even in the same zip code as being good. Does that make you a bad person? Not necessarily. There's an old question about if people are mostly good and sometimes do bad things or generally bad and occasionally do good things. How you judge the world also shows a bit about who you are. I'd like to think that if a person tends to try and do good and be good and has generally good intentions towards the world that we could go ahead and say they're a good person. Still my standards for what is 'good' may be different than yours so maybe there is no real way to know, except what's in our own mind. Then again, maybe that's all that ever matters.
