He is a good person. How?
I still remember my Rimi aunty who struggled with her five children. I was a good company for her as the academic counselor for her kids. Ha ha. I was in class eight that time. She was my neighbor. Her five kids were like five fingers of a hand i.e. different in nature. They were studying from class 4 to class 7 so I could guide all of them. Aunty discovered that I had good command over English and Math and have preserved all of my previous class home work/notes etc. So she maintained a good relation with me. I was fond of homemade snacks and she was a she was a good cook. It was too easy for her to manage me.
I tried to give some of my afternoon and evening time to her kids in sharing knowledge, old notes, home work of class 4 to 7 etc. I checked their class marks and exam marks. Really 5 kids were like 5 seasons. The 1st kid stood first always, the 2nd kid liked religious practices a lot and scored high marks in religion although in other subjects he scored just average marks, the 3rd kid was average in all subjects, the 4th kid always used to fail in math but scored good marks in other subjects, and the fifth kid was too bad and failed in all subjects but she had singing and dancing skill.
Their names were Abera, Bila, Heran, Ifrah and Teru (My aunt’s elder brother who lived in an African country for job purpose had given such peculiar nick names to his nieces/nephews).
Aunty always complained to me, “Tareque, why all of my kids are not like Abera? Why not all get good marks in all subjects. Can you guess?”
I pretended to be wise in front of aunty. I replied, “Well, aunty, I have also thought about it. Give me sometime, I will try to find the causes.”
For the next few days I kept my eyes open to find the causes. Then I submitted the following report to aunty.
“Aunty, now I know the reasons. It lies in their eating habit. Your elder child Abera is really nice, he takes whatever is there in the breakfast, lunch, dinner and he always obeys you. Your daughter Bila eats chocolates always but doesn’t eat other things regularly. Your third child Heran is a normal type boy, does not have much like or dislike, he is just average, I have not found anything special in him. Your fourth child Ifrah doesn’t take vegetables at all, so how can he develop his brain power or IQ? For your youngest daughter Teru I have nothing to say, I didn’t find her at your home, I don’t know where she stays the whole day, does she really read at all? “
Amazed at my skill, Aunty also felt too much excitement to find the magic formula. She planned to rectify the problems of her four kids. I didn’t know how she tried but I found some changes in their marks in the next to next exam. It was something like this: Abera remained first boy. Bila got 100% marks in religion but no change in other subjects. Aunty seemed unhappy, getting 100% marks in religion was not a good news, it’s normal with Bila. She had expected improvement in other subjects. Third child Heran had no change and aunty also had no additional expectations from him. The fourth child Ifrah this time passed in math but failed in two subjects. Youngest daughter Teru improved a lot in all subjects and also showed improvement in dancing. Aunty was in dilemma whether to thank me or not but I argued that there was a change in their result, no matter positive or negative, so I deserve my fees. She handed me over a box of chocolate that she came from her Africa-based brother.
In those days we had only one TV channel Bangladesh TV (BTV) and one Saturday it showed an old classic movie, “The Adventure of Tom Sawyer”. It was a thought-provoking and motivating movie for a class eight boy like me. I planned to try some tricks, some mischiefs shown in the movie. I am not going into the details but one such plan was to put photo-postcards of a heroine, whom aunty didn’t like, inside the notebooks of girls Bila and Teru. When Aunty found the cards she punished them. But the intensity of punishment was not the same. Why? Because she didn’t expect that Bila would commit such a ‘sin’ since she was of religious-type, so she gave her comparatively stronger punishment. But committing such wrong by Teru was quite normal as she was a dancer, so her punishment was lighter.
Ok friends, the background done. Today’s discussion topic is “Do we properly justify while labeling a person good or bad?”
A note of caution: According to many religions, on the Last Judgment Day, our good deeds and sins will be calculated but we have little idea about the basis/rules/regulations/formulas/logic behind the selection process. But on the earth we have devised our own methods and follow those. We frequently label a person as good or bad. For such labelling there exist so many different types of conventions, methods, rules, formulas, logic and those again vary from country to country, time to time, culture to culture, generation to generation, religion to religion , law to law — it’s unlimited. So what is the caution? Caution is: my discussion is confined to man-given rules only for the definition of good or bad . So no cross or clash with religion will happen.
For my current theory I needed to conduct some survey. I started thinking about the theory 3 years ago and prepared the survey questionnaires. I was lucky enough to get some good opportunities in the three years to collect data. I am thankful to my friend in Dhaka, Tareq who works in an IT firm. He took the opportunity from working on some government projects to introduce the computerization system, visits to some offices outside Dhaka, and communication with a large group of people for use in survey data. For example, some education offices, open university offices, customer support offices, Local government offices etc. I found it a matter of surprise and encouragement that when he explained the government officers about my objectives they promptly agreed to help him by filling up the survey forms. They really liked the idea of the theory and showed interest to continue their participation in this process.
The survey form was like following:
Survey 1: Sorting from good to bad serially
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
Based on your practical experience of interacting with so many different types of people till date, reading, studying about so many events of human life around the world, please try to write in your order of serial from good to bad from among the following five categories of people:
1. A renowned Actor or Model> AM
2. A government head or late national leader like President/Prime minister/National Hero> PN
3. A religious priest like a Moulavi or Imam of mosque, Prohit of temple or Bishop of church>MH
4. A middle class Office Goer>OG
5. A Teacher>TE
I collected around 5000 such survey forms from as many sets of group of people and the average results that came are shown below (in order of serial from good to bad):
MH, TE, OG, PN, AM.
You may argue that with such small survey data how can I derive any decision? Well, it is my guesstimation. The results may be slightly different but the average result, I believe, will always be like this. The significance is MH always scores high as good person. And AM always scores the lowest. Because it is a perception that an MH type person who is supposed to be a religious person, spends more time in prayer and less for material world and hence deserves more good score. On the other hand, without any doubt the model or the actor deserves a low score because he spends his days in the entertainment world, has less time for religion etc.
The middle person OG is always 50% scorer, he is never a very good or very bad person. People think given a chance one can turn to be a bad person otherwise one remains a good person. That’s the perception.
Now let’s take another survey of the opposite type. This survey asks questions: How severely should a person be punished for a scandalous event. The higher the score, the higher the punishment. I used the same category of people and the same type of survey form. The results from the 5000 data were like this (in order of the highest punishment to the lowest punishment) :
MH, TE, OG, PN, AM.
Interesting! Isn’t it? People expected MH should be punished more because he is not supposed to do any scandalous work. The AM person got the lowest score because doing a scandalous work is not a surprise for his type of people. People are ok to see AM acting well only in his talent area but in other characters he may fail. That’s again a perception.
So friends, from the above we learned that although all are humans, considering their status in society, the weight of good and bad ranking is different. We can easily accept someone as a good man but not all, we can easily accept someone as a bad man but not all, etc.
Now regarding the category of people like PN, it is such that we expect they should be all together good persons. They should score above 80% in all subjects like the elder son of my Aunty. People don’t like to see their PN to score high only in one characteristic and average in other. I can give you a lot of examples. In all countries followers of great leaders or famous writers feel like this. For example, why should we expect Tagore or Milton or Gandhi or Nelson or Napoleon or some late leaders of Bangladesh should score high in all departments? They were humans like us and they didn’t know from birth that one day they would be respected by mass people. Any human being is made of good and bad properties but we try to forget it when it come for great men. People do research and then declare that “I discovered he had that bad habit, he was wrong in that statement, he is not that good or that bad”, etc. But what I don’t understand is who told the researcher: You must assume your subject is a 100% perfect person and now try to find his faults, his weaknesses, what wrongs he did. A religion like Islam teaches us to hide a person’s unpleasant truth unless it is necessary to disclose and not to talk bad things behind someone. But people worldwide love to do research and thesis to find unpleasant truth and dark side of living and dead persons. What a world we live in!
Now take another set of category of people: A renowned cricketer, a doctor, a university professor, a writer and an airhostess. I leave it to you all to think and write for each of them which bad characteristics of them you are ready to pardon and which you don’t.
If a person is good in behavior, good with poor people and gives donation, good with members of the family and relatives but he doesn’t pray or may pray irregularly. Is he a good person? Another person is not of good behavior but he prays regularly: is he a good person? That person is good, means what? He is good in behavior, or a good husband or father or employer or employee or religious person or good with needy/poor people?
To be a good person do I have to do all good things and score >80% in all areas? If not, then am I not a good person?
For simplicity let us confine our analysis to common people like us and to common duties as a father, husband, son, employee, employer, society man, citizen, priest, etc. Telling someone a good person is not a simple thing at all. You don’t believe me? Ok, let’s start a deep thinking on this subject and you will see how complex it can be. Take someone as a test case, say Mr. Moon who is your neighbor, a middle-aged service holder family man having a son and a daughter. As a neighbor of 3 years you have formal relations with him, meet him occasionally during national and religious festivals, his kids are friends of your kids, etc. You found him an ok person and never heard anything bad or objectionable about him. So now if I ask you: Is Mr. Moon (or think about a similar known person of your surrounding whom you know as a good person) a good person, your answer will be yes because you have no negative information about him. This is ok. But if we want to make the situation complex and try to do an analysis on Mr. Moon to find how good a person he is we have to get answers to many questions and he has to score high in all of those or is it so? We have to ask ourselves, are we ready to waive some of his bad behaviors because he scored high in other area? Also, can he be good in one item which doesn’t contradict with his other traits? Let’s start my questions but you may add more by adding those in Facebook comments.
1. He should love his wife.
2. He should be loyal to his wife, i.e. no girlfriends.
3. He should give enough time to his wife.
4. He should fulfill the physical needs of his wife.
5. He should fulfill the financial needs of his wife.
6. He should respect other women.
7. He should love his son.
8. He should give enough time to his son and take care of his needs and studies.
9. He should love his daughter.
10. He should give enough time to his daughter and take care of her needs and studies.
11. He should love his parents.
12. He should take good care of his parents including providing financial help if required.
13. He should take care of his brothers and sisters including providing financial help if required.
14. He should take care of his poor relatives including providing financial help if required.
15. He should behave well with his house servants.
16. He should pay well to his house servants and help them additionally if required.
17. He should behave well with his guests who come to visit him.
18. He should behave well and give money to the beggars.
19. He should pay money to poor on religious occasions and when the country needs like flood/winter time, etc.
20. He should respect elders and love youngsters.
21. He should be dutiful in family life.
22. He should be sincere in office work.
23. He should behave well with his office colleagues.
24. He should behave well with his office peons/drivers.
25. He should be a religious person.
26. He should pray regularly.
27. He should perform duties of a good citizen like helping keep the city clean, follow traffic rules, obey law, vote, pay tax, bills, etc.
28. He should not have any bad habit like drinking alcohol, taking drug, etc.
29. He should not cheat people.
30. He should not tell lies, should not tell bad things about people and should not quarrel unnecessary with people.
31. His political ideology should be fair.
32. His way of thinking should be clean and fair.
33. N numbers of such characteristics you can go on writing……..
It is just the starting. You can think and write a huge number of such good characteristics that a good man should have. And the more you write the more complexities will increase. How? Take for example the big factor “Money”. To be a good person you need money. But without having enough money, to whom will you give priority and get the label of “good man”? Wife or son or daughter or parents or siblings or relatives or poor people? What, if because of the socio- economic and family status of your surroundings you have no opportunity to show any favor to your wife or son or daughter or parents or siblings or relatives or poor people ? How? Why, if you are unmarried or have no siblings or parents have died or relatives are rich or there are no beggars or poor people in your vicinity. It’s like you are not getting any chance to show that you are a good person or to show that you are a bad person. See you also need opportunities to become a good or a bad person.
If Mr. Moon is altogether a good person but you never see him going for prayer then will you term him a bad person? Or if you see that he is not behaving well with his servants and not giving any money to the beggars but praying regularly then is he a good person? Or if he is good as well as praying then is he 100% good? May be he has financial crisis and cannot help his poor relatives and his relatives speak bad things about him to you and you may believe it also. Who knows? Or may be at his office he takes bribe but you don’t know about it. Or may be he is all good now but he did something wrong long ago in his early life which you heard from his an old foe/relative recently. Can you forgive him and accept him as a good person? Or he does not love his wife because she is not his type and likes a female colleague in his office. Or the wife is a very good person. Mr. Moon loves her but they have problem in their conjugal life.
It may happen that you saw once that he was scolding his servant and you thought that he is always like this, i.e. he is not a good person to his servant. But in reality may be the servant did something really wrong and deserved the scolding. It may happen that the political party he supports is disliked by you so although he has many good qualities yet you don’t treat him as a good person just because of the political differences.
Relativity- I like this theory of Einstein not only as a scientific law of space/time but also as a platform to explain every aspect of our life. Everything in life is relative, nothing is absolute except death. But on a second thought if you think deeply then you may find that it also has a relativity. Relative to religion you have afterlife, relative to science you don’t have afterlife but then total energy in this universe is always the same, and it just changes the form. So after our death our state changes only.
Einstein said before describing any event you have to define from which platform you are observing and measuring the event. The same way whether a person is good or bad, you have to justify it based on from which platform you are observing him. If we prepare a scorecard for marking properties of a good person then I doubt whether we can give it a universal look. We have to define different charts for different countries, religions, nations, cultures, age groups, sectors, societies etc. Why? I cannot answer. I could not answer smartly to my Rimi aunty long ago. And after a long time, after a lot of study, I am unable to answer today also. May be it is because we are human beings so we don’t follow an absolute rule , we follow relativity rule, we follow variable rule, we follow partiality rule, we follow black and white, Hindu or Muslim, rich or poor, ordinary person or celebrity rule. Or may be we are built by the Almighty like this, our DNA is designed like this, we cannot escape from it. Good advice, bad advice, good example, bad example, good company, bad company all are visible in front of us. We are intelligent and adult enough to understand what is good and what is bad for us still we cannot escape the four chemical bases- Adenine, Guanine, Cytosine and Thymine. We are coded by AGCT-based DNA structure which controls us. It is inside our each body cell. Nowhere to escape……
