Are you a good person?

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And how do you know? I really don't want to use a phrase as revolting as "moral compass" but that is the kind of thing i mean.

― Uptoeleven, Saturday, 24 February 2007 22:46 (eighteen years ago)

No but I'm a good liar.

Goodness is a situational thing anyway.

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 24 February 2007 22:49 (eighteen years ago)

I always wash my hands after using the restroom and refuse to buy blood diamonds.

― Ms Misery, Saturday, 24 February 2007 23:18 (eighteen years ago)

There's no altruism.
We do everything for our own well-being, (even if we are sometimes unaware of it and even if it sometimes fail)

― Zeno, Saturday, 24 February 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

No.

― Noodle Vague, Saturday, 24 February 2007 23:28 (eighteen years ago)

Okay then, how do you know you're not a good person?

― Uptoeleven, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:14 (eighteen years ago)

Okay, what have you done?

― Matt DC, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:17 (eighteen years ago)

aren't you the poster who was doing master cleanse?

― Ms Misery, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:19 (eighteen years ago)

yes, I'm a good person.

― milo z, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:22 (eighteen years ago)

but have you master cleansed?

― Ms Misery, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:22 (eighteen years ago)

no, but it probably wouldn't hurt

― milo z, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:25 (eighteen years ago)

Goodness is a situational thing anyway.

Noodle Vague on Saturday, 24 February 2007 22:49 (Yesterday)

cop-out, nv. absolute moral relativism is a lazy answer: certain things are good, ineluctably. genuine charity, the mystical event that results from an at-one feeling with the universe (whether due to suppressed activity in the posterior-superior parietal lobe, or some other neuro-ascribable cause, or the result of some deific intervention is no matter), a conscious de-escalation of some violent scenario in favor of a peaceable solution, the novel formation of a true connection between two people, or whatever X else, these are all good actions. it's easy to come up with counterexamples ('what if the true connection between two people results in a, you know, white supremacy group'?) but that's lumping-together two distinct actions for the purpose of weakening the former by conflation with the latter. 'there is no true good' feels to me like anthrocentric bombast, and abdication of moral responsibility in the name of conscience-easing. if there's no 'good' we have no responsibility to act for anything higher than ourselves.

There's no altruism.
We do everything for our own well-being, (even if we are sometimes unaware of it and even if it sometimes fail)

Zeno on Saturday, 24 February 2007 23:26 (Yesterday)

Double bullshit! Just because good and kind behaviors often benefit the doer does not mean that they are anything less than genuine at the moment of their inception, enacted with anything less than the highest principles and selfless motives. ask any kindergarten teacher in a high-crime, low-income urban school why they're taking a shitty paycheck to fail year-in and year-out with a population that'll forget them and claim 'i made my way alone', for a bunch of diffident parents, a nasty administration, and i guarantee you'll occasionally find no higher purpose than 'i want to help where i can.' granted, i think true altruism is uncommon, but that's it. i feel like people who are (covertly) acting for themselves all the time are kinda scary, and delusional... in equal measure to people who tell themselves they're wholly altruistic. everybody i know is capable of both altruism and selfishness, and is guilty of both altruism and selfishness. neither's right, nor absolute.

― remy bean, Sunday, 25 February 2007 04:49 (eighteen years ago)

i'm mother fucking teresa.

― get bent, Sunday, 25 February 2007 05:35 (eighteen years ago)

I am a good person. Whether or not I am a great person is not for me to say. I'm pretty certain I can fairly claim a measure of goodness.

How do I know this? Firstly, I generally try to treat other people in the best way I know how, and other people seem consistently to appreciate this approach. I value kindness, honesty, fairness, responsibility, patience, good humor, humility and many other widely acknowledged virtues and I try to make these manifest in my actions every day. As a result, my co-workers like me, my family loves me and my neighbors trust me. If a good tree bears good fruit, then these are some of the fruits of my life.

I also recognize my failings. For example, I am not often generous with my money or my time. I seem unable to attain this virtue except in brief flashes which pass rather quickly. I am known to be brusque at times, and to make jokes of which I am not the butt. I am overly fond of being right. I sometimes fish for compliments. I don't magnify these petty sins, but their very pettiness does not speak well of me either. I suppose I haven't the greatness to sin greatly.

But, as your run of humanity type of person, "good" covers it pretty well.

― Aimless, Sunday, 25 February 2007 05:44 (eighteen years ago)

I am a vain person so it is my natural proclivity to say, "Yeah, I'm totally good."

Actually I fear I have some sociopathic tendencies, but 98% of the time I try to live by The Golden Rule, which is probably the best summary of things to Be Good.

― Abbott, Sunday, 25 February 2007 07:25 (eighteen years ago)

By situational I meant that people - all people maybe - are capable of doing good in certain situations. Because we don't have consistent personalities, more like an accumulation of things we do and don't do from moment to moment.

I understand why you want to deny relativism, but I don't think you've successfully argued it away. You want there to be ineluctable good, but you can't demonstrate conclusively what it is. Which seems like another version of relativism to me. Maybe if you accumulate enough billions of subjectivities you can call certain patterns objectivity. Me I'm left mostly with the idea that the World is just a bunch of stuff that happens. Which is a moral position, oddly enough.

― Noodle Vague, Sunday, 25 February 2007 10:06 (eighteen years ago)

I'm okay. I don't go out of my way to be bad.

We do everything for our own well-being

Is this enlightened selfishness? Whereby if you do things that make you happy, you'll make others happy in the process. Unless of course, you get yer kicks outta being bad. Then the arguement would be that 'bad' people can't be truly happy.

― jel --, Sunday, 25 February 2007 11:34 (eighteen years ago)

I suspect that this is one of those questions, like freewill vs. determinism, where the deeper you explore it the more you begin to doubt your own sanity.

― Bob Six, Sunday, 25 February 2007 12:30 (eighteen years ago)

otm

― latebloomer, Sunday, 25 February 2007 12:50 (eighteen years ago)

But what else have we got to do today?

― Uptoeleven, Sunday, 25 February 2007 12:54 (eighteen years ago)

I want to be a good person - I suppose one could say I do it for my own well-being, since I feel quite sick and unhappy when I think I've done wrong, and I like to avoid feeling sick and unhappy. I'm not fully good, at all, I fall down in word and deed and thought all the time, and I think it'd be hubristic to call myself a good person, esp as sod's law says I'd probably go out and do something awful straight after. It's quite dangerous to call yourself a good person, too, because you can easily fall into the trap of thinking "i'm a good person (regardless of my actions)", which is just as bad as "i'm a bad person (and nothing will change me so i can do as i like)".

I suppose I have quite a strong moral sense, which is funny because I can't really voice what my morals are (and I've always thought ethics a little more civilised than morals, a bit cooler). I believe in things like practicing what you preach, and extending tolerance to people, and being nice&polite to everyone you meet even when you want to punch them in the face, and trying not to hurt anyone, all sort of fuzzy hippy sentiments that approximate to my moral true north or whatever. But even practicing these wouldn't necessarily make me a good person: you can do them with a bad grace, you can do them sanctimoniously, you can be selfish, there are a million and one ways you can get it wrong, there's never a point at which you achieve "good person" status and can take a break. Still, I suppose devoting yourself to the uphill struggle of becoming morally true is pretty 'good' in and of itself, if you can keep it up.

There isn't a reward for being good, as far as I'm aware: I'm an agnostic, I find the idea of life after death particularly hard to swallow, it seems such an obvious sop for earthly misery, a convenient carrot-and-stick formula to keep people from wilfully hurting others. Maybe the lack of a reward makes it 'better'? a thankless task seems to me more morally clear, something that's not done for others' eyes but for the beauty of the thing.

― c sharp major, Sunday, 25 February 2007 13:08 (eighteen years ago)

Actually, thinking about it, I'm pretty sure that if I stopped thinking of myself as a bad person I'd lose any chance at being a good one.

Most of my examples in the previous post are behaviour-to-others things, I noticed? I suppose because behaviour-to-others and behaviour-in-your-society are the two easiest things to control, as outward actions that don't need to reflect your inner state. 'doing good without hope of reward' is a pretty decent approximation at being a good person, and there's always the hope that the repetition of outward forms will make goodness feel natural.

― c sharp major, Sunday, 25 February 2007 13:25 (eighteen years ago)

trying to be.
m.

― msp, Sunday, 25 February 2007 13:45 (eighteen years ago)

girls i've dated have told me i'm among the most 'good' people they've known. maybe i'm a good liar.

― modestmickey, Sunday, 25 February 2007 21:38 (eighteen years ago)

I've been told (both by friends and by psychological tests) that I have a very strong sense of "justice" but I don't think that's the same thing as being a "good" person. It's kind of a double edged sword, to have this pronounced ideal in my head of right/wrong fair/unfair - but I don't necessarily ever live up to it.

It's an interesting question, though.

― Masonic Boom, Monday, 26 February 2007 10:58 (eighteen years ago)

Apparently, I'm the worst kind of guy there is: a nice guy. :-(

― StanM, Monday, 26 February 2007 11:02 (eighteen years ago)

Nothing wrong with being nice, Stan. Nice is what it's all about!

I don't know if I am a good person or not, but I try to be.

― C J, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:11 (eighteen years ago)

i dunno. i try to be a good person. it's not so hard, most of the time. if i know something's going to have bad ramifications for other people/the planet/whatever it's not that hard not to do it. obv sometimes i am selfish and fail: was i going to miss my ten-year reunion because flying is bad? like fuck i was. but it's come naturally to consider implications of my own actions and if not have a positive effect, at least not have a negative one. casual benevolence to whoever/whatever's around me is easy and never really took any learning. er. i dunno what that means.

― emsk, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:20 (eighteen years ago)

i'm good at being a person.

― ken c, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:24 (eighteen years ago)

I have always tried to entertain a moral code that is summed up by the phrase "Be excellent to each other." The problem with this is that what you THINK is being excellent at the time actually turns out bad for all concerned, so I'm having to rethink my modus operandi. But I still think it's a good general thing to bear in mind.

― The Wayward Johnny B, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:43 (eighteen years ago)

Listen to your heart! Your golden heart - only it can tell you when you are sweet, cherishable

― Latham Green, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:49 (eighteen years ago)

Ken is good at being a good person.

― PJ Miller, Monday, 26 February 2007 12:53 (eighteen years ago)

nine months pass...

bump

― Surmounter, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 19:17 (eighteen years ago)

I'm a better man than that bitch Ayn Rand.

― hawth, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 20:29 (eighteen years ago)

Nobody sell yourself short!

No one!

― Abbott, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 23:26 (eighteen years ago)

Ned Raggett is a good person.

― emilys., Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:22 (eighteen years ago)

I honestly feel like a fraud in 90% of what I do. I feel like many of my emotions are social acting and that I often wind up being too self-centered without intending to be. I don't step on other people's toes and I'm always polite (sometimes quiet and standoffish), but I feel irrational and deep-rooted contempt for a lot of people for unexplainable reasons.

which explains why I've been single for a veeeeeeeeeeery long time now!

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Thursday, 29 November 2007 05:01 (eighteen years ago)

I'm not even a good parsnip.

― Oilyrags, Thursday, 29 November 2007 05:09 (eighteen years ago)

i was happier last year, and had a better view of humanity. also, i was drunk when i typed the above ^^^^

― remy bean, Thursday, 29 November 2007 05:20 (eighteen years ago)

I am just the tilde key on the keyboard of life

― Bo Jackson Overdrive, Thursday, 29 November 2007 05:21 (eighteen years ago)

woah bo jackson overdrive, how are you me? scary!

also, this probably sounds pretty basic, but it's taken me a while to realize that being "good" does not mean not being "bad," and trying not to be "bad" is worse than trying to be "bad," because if you're trying to be bad, at least you're trying to be something.

― strgn, Thursday, 29 November 2007 06:23 (eighteen years ago)

but it's still not as good as trying to be good, put scare quotes wherever

― strgn, Thursday, 29 November 2007 06:26 (eighteen years ago)

and remy i still like your answer

― strgn, Thursday, 29 November 2007 06:27 (eighteen years ago)

Today I learned on ILK: moral relativism bad, critical relativism good, or was it the other way around or opposite of that?

― Reginald Mantle, Thursday, 29 November 2007 07:52 (eighteen years ago)

I Love Karachi

― gershy, Thursday, 29 November 2007 07:53 (eighteen years ago)

come on all you good people, come join the rest of us.
together we can finish burning this bitch to the ground.

― nicky lo-fi, Thursday, 29 November 2007 08:07 (eighteen years ago)

lol remy but I totally admire that you wanted to say there was ideal good, full stop, drunk or not. Still I lurk down here in my relativist (it ain't even relativist, I'd argue it's realist, or some kind of Humean idealist) lurk hole. But y'know, fuck a lurker, and fuck a glib people, often. Fuck Reginald Mantle, basically.

― Noodle Vague, Thursday, 29 November 2007 08:52 (eighteen years ago)

There is a secret to moving forward here and it starts with not being disappointed that there isn't a clear good. Because wanting that signpost generally leads to bad, in subtle incremental ways. I guess Lawful Good peeps is often assholes, even a cursory reading of D&D should tell us that.

― Noodle Vague, Thursday, 29 November 2007 08:54 (eighteen years ago)

I try to be, I treat people how I’d want them to treat me, if they don’t though I treat them how they do treat me and speak to them how they speak to me. This then looks to others like I’m an arsey twat and it’s me that has the problem.

― not_goodwin, Thursday, 29 November 2007 09:59 (eighteen years ago)

Is a good person someone who considers themselves to be good and tries to fulfil their own idea of that goodness as much as possible. Does considering oneself "good" lead to good deeds?

Or is a good person someone who regularly scans their conscience for wrongdoing and considers themselves an okay person, with flaws. Or lacks the moral confidence to deem themselves a good person.

I never know.

― Ronan, Thursday, 29 November 2007 10:11 (eighteen years ago)

I suspect that this is one of those questions, like freewill vs. determinism, where the deeper you explore it the more you begin to doubt your own sanity.

Indeed. It raises too many questions and makes my head hurt. I'm not quite sure what inspired me to start this thread.

― Upt0eleven, Thursday, 29 November 2007 11:05 (eighteen years ago)

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