What Makes A Person Good?
 

Right now I'll settle for not being such a dissapointment. I've always had the dreams of wealth, power and women, and what I would do with each; but most of the time I just try to live up to my unreasonably high expectations and utterly fail at it. That being said, I do try to be a genuinely nice person. I try to help out. I can make people smile, I can make people happy, but for myself, I usually just need a cigarette and some good liquor to keep me warm.

I've been reading these two books: "Help," by Garret Keizer and "The Compassionate Life" by Marc Barasch. While Help deals primarily with discussing help in different forms, (obviously) Keizer - a minister - spends the first few bits talking about the tale of The Good Samaritan, Catholicism and Budhsim. Barasch spends a bit discussing scientific research - the last chapter I read was discussing the difference atwixt chimpanzees and bonobo monkeys, and how they relate to us on the empathetic/sympathetic side of things.

They're both really well written and are really intreresting so far, and I recommend both if you're curious about the nature of human goodness, whether or not it's actually "human" goodness at all, why people are good...

Barasch, in the chapter what with the monkeys, spends a bit of time observing chimpanzees, who have their alpha males, they have their own heiarchy. Bonobo monkeys are more easy going, more prone to helping each other... and sexing each other as well. Bonobos are the more kind, the more gentle monkeys, according to the book, which is according to people helping to continue the research of Sue Savage-Rumbaugh.

Sue is a psychobiologist, and raised a bonobo from infancy, sharing the duties with an adoptive bonobo mother. There's all sorts of stories to tell, such as how the monkey, Kanzi, tried to open a jar of cherries by throwing it at the ground. The jar bounced, and hit his keeper in the knee, who cried out, grasping her knee. Kanzi went to her, thinking that her hand was hurt, and asked through sign language or lexigrams to see it. He took her hand, inspecting it, and upon finding an old scar, urged her to take her canteen to clean it.

Barasch mentions the golden rule here: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Had it been Kanzi who suffered a cut, she would wash it, clean it.

Kanzi is very effective at making tools - when keepers put a box filled with goodies for him, they stretched a particularly tough bit of hide over the top, strapping it into place. Kanzi learned how to get at it by taking rocks, and smashing them until he could find a particularly sharp piece and cutting the hide. However, when they introduced a wild bonobo, P-Suke to the same problem, he couldn't figure it out. He didn't figure out how to open the crate. From that, Barasch infers:


It's an interesting idea, and Barasch goes on even further to looking things from a primate perspective at the airport on the way home. He sees people in alpha male positions, paternal patterns and the like. It's not all science, though. He does go on to talk about the Dalai Lama.

Keizer goes a different route on the same map. He talks about help as something that should be reciprocal: that one person should want to help, while another person wants to receive the help. He conradicts this by relating a story about a woman trapped in an incredibly abusive relationship, shut down so much that she won't even speak. She receives help and compassion and support and from the passages including her in the book seems to have gotten better. He remarks that while the woman might have wanted help, she was unable to communicate her want.

Keizer - and this is where I tie in my first sobering paragraph - mentions that of the many different kinds of help - from the Samaritan (who I didn't know the history of, Samaritans were kind of hated) to the help tries to give as a minister. He mentions that one type is to push it on someone (something he tells us is usually not the best action) but while that can result in further furors, sometimes the best type of help is to just let it be. To be available, but to leave someones privacy untouched, to let them be alone. When I get the book back - I lent it out - I'll see if I can use his wording, write in what he said, but for now I want to ask the question:

We're a weird people. We created religion where the ideal, the most one can aspire to be is a good person. Our books and writings tend to favor the hero, heroism by defeniton being doing good. We're usually fighting battles with ourselves, keeping us from shouting at someone we dislike in conversations we don't want to be in because of societal constraints, which again, push us toward being good. Though there are many definitions of "good," and how to be a sincere, honest, loving, genuine person, the question remains why aren't we? Why do we fight and bicker and hoard and thieve?

I'm hoping to trigger a discussion, but the thing that I've recently discovered was that after reading the books I mentions, Help and The Compassionate Life, I've thought about being a good person, and because I'm thinking about it, I'm acting it... or, at least, actively noticing the good deeds I do. Maybe that's the most I can accomplish with this discussion, the opportunity to get you to think about what being a good person means, and doing it because you're thinking it.

Not being an asshole.

/thread

My definition of what makes someone good is a simple one.

If one's actions creates more smiles then anything else, then said person is good.

Short, simple, and to the point.

But what if you're in an ancient roman collesium, back when they all thought brutally murdering midgets was a great laugh?

Actually, if you make them brutal murder vigilantes you've got yourself a hit TV show
 

The thought of a gang of dwarves going around committing brutal murders still brings a smile to my face.

I don't know why everybody's so uptight all of a sudden.

I am suggesting that good people do not link gay porn on 8-bit webcomic forums.
 

I'd say that to be a good person, you just have to actually care about everyone you meet, and see them as a real person.

its ~*ironic*~, hEh
 

Not being an assholeryan sohmerhttp://img696.imageshack.us/img696/2410/20111205.gif

Obvious post is obvious
 

Recently I've become sort of interested, maybe a little obsessed, with the idea of self-image. I have always seen myself as a 'good person' and while I still hope that is true on some level I think that believing this as an inherit quality of myself has often led me to a form of confirmation bias where I believe what I'm doing is good becuase I am a 'good person'. Now, breaking away from that is depressing as hell becuase 'man, if I'm not good, what am I?' but it has motivated me to want to do good things becuase they are actually good and not becuase they confirm my self-image.

The issue with 'goodness' and trying to attach some specific meaning to it (or badness for that matter) is that all these definitions we give it are extremely context-dependent. It's not always good to be honest, it's not always good to be non-violent. There is a very general idea about those things being 'good' that usually works but I suppose in order to be truly good you have to be able to understand what's good within the context of the situation.

I guess what I'm saying is that Batman should kill The Joker.

First about the coliseum, that was the past, and I tend to focus solely on the present. Therefore, I don't think about that.

Seil, you bring up a good question. My initial instinct is to say that animals can be good. But usually don't have the intelligence to pursue it for everyone. Rather animals go for survival first, then being good. When they are good, they are usually only good for their territory and family, which in some cases can be seen as survival. Without being an animal, it's hard to say if they do some actions to be good, or to survive.

Good and evil are always relative though. Some would say killing is good. Others say it's evil. The reasons usually have to be as pure as possible I guess to be considered good too. (Trying to put it on a black and white scale). I'm actually having a discussion with RL friends about this 3 days ago, so I'll try to get multiple opinions as sources and make judgments based on all the information I can muster.

I mean, it's not even a good joke.
 

Wow, that's terrible.

Also why is he looking at me in the panel where he's cutting the carpet?

Following the tenets of our Lord and Saviour.

Don't worry, his eyes can't actually focus anywhere with his face frozen in that permanent "I'm so cool and relaxed but somehow also extremely smug about it" expression.

Thiiiiiiiiis is a touchy subject for me. I've always seen Good and Evil a little differently than most. Mainly because I'm willing to admit that anything and everything can be wrong at any given moment. My views on good and evil are what some would call...askew.

First, I don't see absolutes. There is no absolute Good or Evil in this world. There just can't be. An issue is never black or white, it is always shades of gray that most refuse to see.

Building on that, what is commonly held to be Good or Evil is a matter of public opinion, and that can change. Hell, people change all the time, public opinion of what is good or evil can change just as rapidly.

Building on that, Good or Evil is really just how you see it. It's your perspective. It's always been your perspective, it's always going to be your perspective. If you find something that offends your perspective, you can either change the thing that is offending you, or change your perspective.

Now, there are a few things that never seem to change. Such as Do Unto Others is always thought of as a good thing to do, and kicking puppies, while relatively minor, is thought of as evil. Those are what I refer to as the deep, still waters of opinion. They rarely change, if ever, and are held across most boundaries.

All that being said, where do I stand? A good person, or an evil one?

Haven't you heard anything?

I'm somewhere in between.

A philanthropist comedian who also has a single person locked in his basement who he's raping.

I'm normally a fan of simple answers, but I don't think you have the right simple answer.

If part of the definition of goodness is that it is not a passive quality, then I would say usually not.

.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned it yet, but not being a Republican seems to be a good start.

Seems like the prerequisite for membership in the GOP these days is being a pretentious, terrible, half-witted, inconsiderate, ego-maniacal, narcissistic, short-sighted, child-molesting, closeted homophobe whose only ambition is to fuck the world at the bidding of your corporate masters, who will then gleefully grease your asshole with more of their dirty money.

If I missed anything in their description, kindly bring it up. I'm very tired at the moment, but want to give proper credit where credit is due.

No one brought it up, because no one wants to start a political shitfest.

generalization ,insults, not cool, etc.
 

I know this is a round about way of saying "not taking the easy way out" but the way you worded that pretty much means suffering pointless hardships makes you a good person which is pretty ridiculous

It's all relative. It's kinda hard to do a 100% good and 100% evil. Because some evil acts like murder can be good. And some good acts like diplomacy can be used for evil. It's like every single thing in life has an equal chance of being both good and evil. Just like every person can be good or evil. You'd have to strip off every layer and break down every argument and thing to it's smallest bits. And analyze them one by one.

Therefore, I made a bad argument for what is good based on smiles of others. I tried to shift away from the acts themselves and focus on how others see the acts. Therefore, if everyone in the world sees your acts and smiles are what is produced, I'd say that is good.

As of right now, all of our definitions are relative. My definition makes it subjective rather. Sometimes, it's better to go out in left field to argue rather then stick with the basics?

good and evil are ideals that change throughout time.

So I had a thought, maybe good and evil have nothing to do with "good and evil". What we define as appropriate behavior is good and what we consider anathema to that is evil. Most people in our modern society desire cooperation, fairness, and prosperity of human life. Thus kindness, equality, saving a life, are all viewed as good. Their opposition, greed, hatred, violence are in turn viewed as evil since they are destructive to what we view as good.

So maybe its not even about goals or desires of a culture, but the norm and what most within the culture believe. As that norm shifts so does our values. Meaning a person that is good or evil is not determined by their morality, but more so on how much their personal values match that of their peers

Good and evil are fairly subjective.

And I'm not saying that in a "nihilism anarchy woo vote che guevara" kind of bullshitty way. I just mean, the same person might be good in one direction and evil in the other. People aren't black and white. They aren't even shades of grey. They're complex fucking checkerboards of every color of the rainbow, even (especially!) the ones that don't lie in that scalar good-evil direction. And people change over time, even over the course of a day. They perform good acts and evil acts. And then, the same act might be seen by one person as good and by another as evil.

I guess the best way to say that a person is good is to say that the overwhelming majority of their actions are those generally seen as positive, and the slim minority are acceptable evils.

The philanthropist comedian who rapes somebody in his basement isn't good because he commits an act that is seen as unforgivably evil by most. If he tries to atone for it and genuinely regrets it, maybe that makes him good again? It's a case-by-case thing, I think.

But the jerkass co-worker who farts when he walks by your cubicle and flicks paper in your hair isn't evil. He certainly isn't good, but he isn't evil. (Hint: He's just a jerkass.)

Now the most used image in my photobucket
 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...biblealone.jpg

Their ability to make and the quality level of their brownies.

ok now I know people are giving this kind of response sarcastically. But in the eyes of our modern western society this is basically true. Core of our value system is whats in Christianity. Can thank the romans for that

Christainity stole it pretty much wholesale from plato though.

you cant really steal a philosophy. If its exactly the same it just means they thought it was a good value system and adopted it.

Warring kingdoms+national trauma-pantheon=Jews
Jews+Plato+Egypt=Christanity.
Christanity+Zoroastrainism+Judaism+Desert+Sweet drugs=Islam
Maths is fun.

none of that is "theft" thats just natural evolution of an ideology. You might as well say we stole calculus from Newton. Plato developed his philosophies specifically so they could be used by others.

[edit] beside, we don't believe in such values because of Plato, we do because of Christianity. Specifically the Roman Empires conversion to it, and said empires practice of destroying all cultural identity save the its own. Followed by the religion enduring past the point of the empires collapse.

Remember, impressionable kids: Liquor makes you cool. It's even in the Bible!
 

Oh hey, is this that one I saw somewhere with a special hollow for a hip flask and a couple of joints? I dunno if it makes you good, but it certainly makes you more awesome.

It wasn't really politically correct by the Middle-Age's standards!

Clearly Dungeons & Dragons has all the answers
 

Eh, I think that would put you at Chaotic Neutral, probably. Like there are clearly goals involved here, possibly political, obviously sexual, not just feeding the planet to demons from the netherworld.

If you keep someone prisoner and regularly rape them, and your DM doesn't make you change to evil, you are playing FATAL.

And you're already dead.

Leibniz was calculus. Newtonian calculus is shitty and you can only use it if you are differentiating with respect to time.
Also claiming cultural continuity to the Roman Empire is a ridiculous stretch. Ask the Syriacs how that is going for them.
Also the extend to which our value system is "christain" is pretty heavily debated and not something you can claim outright.

There definitely seem to be some fundamental "christian values" in our history underlying a lot of our morals of today. That is purely personal observation though, since I don't really now enough about all the historical factors involved.

Which values are you talking about specifically? Because a lot of the "christain values" at the centre of our culture can be found in lots of other cultures.
Like if our culture was built around the tensions of the theological necessary suffering of our diety or the interplay between monotheism and polytheism then I would buy it but generally when people argue "christain values" they are arguing like "Don't murder people" which is stupid.
Pretty much up until the 20th century christainity was used as a justification for morality and the people actively sought christainity as a moral compass but that doesn't necessarily hold that it is was the actual moral guide.
My argument here is that there are so many different christain moralities many of which have falled to history and their interplay is so wide and varied that the moral development of "christianity" is more reflective of the moral development of humanity than anything else and christianity was just a justification tool. Because the moral guide of christianity in the 19th century was completely different to the moral guide of christianity in the 18th century and in the 17th century and probably all the other centuries thus making it pretty much worthless as the defining guide of moral.
But I am open to interpretations here as our culture has been profoundly influenced by christianity. However I think its more of a justification tool than anything else as there is no central "moral code" of christianity that I can say that has lasted through centuries let alone milennia.

If someone wants to suffer hardship they believe is pointless, yeah, that'd be pretty ridiculous. I was thinking that never happens, though.

The first one to come to mind is forgiveness. Not saying it doesn't exist elsewhere, but the sort of being able to forgive almost anything is christian cultural thing, isn't it?

But the parts of christian morals that did make it to this day in some form or another could be considered christian.

Also seen in Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism plenty of pacific island cultures and probably heaps of others.
If everyone comes up with the same idea that's just using religion to cover your general moral development.
But my point is there are none. Christainity is just used as a convenient message deliverer. They change pretty constantly such that the christain morals of today would be unrecognisable as christain morals of a few hundred years ago.
That is not deriving a moral lesson from christainty, that is using christainity as a figurehead for your own selfderived moral system.
If you want to claim a christain moral culture they need to be specifically christain and not just general morals with a pastiche of christainty slapped on top and they need to be consistent.

I actually found it really interesting that many of the religions today all depict their deities as pure and good and peaceful and benevolent. Certainly, the chief deity being otherwise would be a terrible day-to-day thought, but people depict the ideal as someone who is peaceful and kind. They encourage you to apply his/her lessons. They ask you to share his/her world view:

Link.

The bible is less a guide to morality than a parasitic hijacking of it.

I had an interesting conversation during D&D with one of my frineds. He argued that if you do evil to an evil person than you are actually doing a good thing. But then if you are committing an evil act, you are still being evil, no matter who you are doing it to, right? Any insights to this problem?

For the greater good of evil
 

Yeah, but back when it was written, people NEEDED the idea of an angry, all-smiting God and a land of torture and flame to keep them from doing shit like killing each other and raping puppies.

Now we're all raised on Disney, which teaches us that being good makes us win in the end.

"You see a giant butt monster. Which of your rape spells do you want to cast on it?"
 

If you're playing FATAL, you're automatically disqualified from participating in any discussions of "What Makes A Person Good". Also civilized society.

I already posted one random thought earlier, but this question hit me again a few minutes ago.

I came to the quick realization that for the past 3 years, I have judged people solely on their opinion of Avatar: The Last Airbender and That Live-Action Movie That Wasn't Real Or Related.

Yes, may be useless but I'm an overall good person who always helps others when able.

A good to me is someone who is considerate of others even when there is nothing to gain
A good person is one who helps others for the sake of helping and not for some reward. Someone who cares about others and values the life of all livings even alittle. Someone who treata everyone equally and is generally honest and liea only to aid those in need.

A good person is a caring person. Even if they don't always show it.

I think that for the most part I am a good person, but there is a little part of me that is is evil. Basically I try to be good and help others as much as I can, but if someone does or says the wrong thing I kind of shut down and think about ways I can get back at that person. It is usually nothing serious, but I wish that I could somehow purge that part of my personality.