What does it mean to be a good person?

Caitlin Jones
Jul 30, 2017 · 3 min read
Here is a picture of a boab tree because I couldn’t figure out what a good pictorial representation of good and bad would be, and boab trees are pretty cool.

This is a question I have asked myself lots as the concepts of “good” and “bad” have developed in my mind. I struggle to define things that aren’t black and white, that don’t have a strict rule to follow or a definite line not to cross. What is good or bad is very subjective though. I think marshmallows are bad and tinned spaghetti is good, but according to most people that is a very bad categorisation. Most people would say that clear days are good, but if you’re more likely to get sunburnt, isn’t that bad?

Of course, my partiality towards tinned spaghetti, whether you believe tinned spaghetti itself is good or bad, doesn’t really help me or anyone decide whether I as a person am good. That unfortunately lies in the hands of less trivial questions, questions of morality. For example, I don’t want to murder anyone, which I hope that most people would agree is good.

On the subject of murder I think for a good percentage of the population would agree, but of course moral questions can get a lot trickier. Questions like how much should you tip the waiter, is it ok to judge people’s fashion choices or how many intimate partners is an acceptable number may have obvious answers for some, but not for all. It is probably due to this huge grey area that our society has turned to another way of judging how good or bad people are.

The measure of the goodness of a person seems to be judged by your opinions on topics such as global warming, politics and religion. These ideas which are formed based on your education and upbringing are the current measure of inner goodness. That basically means entire cultures can be good or bad.

I do think it’s a good idea to have an opinion of your own on these types of topics, but generally I don’t outwardly share my opinion on them, because I don’t want be lectured every five minutes on whatever the right or wrong opinion is. Also, I don’t usually think I know enough on the topic to say and therefore influence others with my ideas.

Someone recently said to me “to be a good person, you only need to do two things: don’t pollute and don’t waste.”

Don’t pollute and don’t waste. Terms that we have learned to associate with global warming, yet I’m pretty sure the person who said it to me is a skeptic.

And I really don’t care whether or not you believe we are accelerating the rate at which our planet is heating up, or which side of politics you support, or what your religious beliefs are. I really don’t care. I do care if you drive your car in an un-environmentally friendly way, if you throw your Maccas wrappings on the ground instead of walking 5 metres to the bin, if you chuck out half a pizza because you’re full (especially because everyone knows pizza is the best leftovers).

And maybe I won’t directly care about it, but someone will if you waste significant proportions of time in class, at work, in your home on non productive activities. Someone will care if you pollute an innocent mind with things it wasn’t ready to hear. Someone will always be affected and someone will always care when you pollute or waste.

As I said, I don’t think that these things should only be done with respect to global warming. There shouldn’t need to be a reason to not pollute and not waste. In my mind at least, I see knowing not to waste and pollute as a similar thing as knowing not to murder.

I don’t expect people to follow my categorisation of what is good or bad, but maybe I’ll add a slight adjustment to the one I was given;

Don’t pollute, don’t waste, and try to have a reasonably clean moral slate, and then you’re probably doing pretty well.

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