The Five Things We Need To Know About ‘Good People’

In our society, we have good people and bad people. Society labels us one or the other. The scale doesn’t account for anything in the middle.

We’re taught from a young age who the good and bad people are. The evil character versus the hero in our favorite cartoons, for instance.

I remember watching Scar in The Lion King, throwing his brother to the stampede. He was the bad guy. And then there was Simba, who came through at the end and saved Pride Rock. He was the good guy. It was that simple.

The good guys always seem to win. In popular culture, it’s rare to find a story where the bad guy triumphs, where we admire the evil.

And then there is this quest to be a good person. The wise and talented Dave Schapelle defines being good as his version of success.

Success to me is being a good person, treating people well.

He makes it sounds so easy. Be good in the same way you eat your vegetables every day. Do the right thing. Do good for other people. Be someone who is good.

I keep re-reading Dave’s quote hoping to reconcile this feeling I have about the good people of this world. Because lately, it would seem the good people in my life are doing bad things. For all the times we’ve put good people on a pedestal, what happens when they do something wrong? When they do something ‘bad’?

I’ve realized something very poignant about good people lately.

They don’t exist.

Smashing the idea of ‘good people’

I was in the middle of a war with my former best friend. For the two years prior, she’s tormented me with her dismissal of my wants and needs. She’s stopped listening to me, stop caring about me, and given me all indications our friendship was over.

I ended the friendship. I told my best friend that I no longer want to speak to her and that I needed space. An eternal amount of space.

As I made my decision, I turned to my aunty for reassurance. I explained everything that was going on with my best friend. My aunty knew my best friend well and I thought perhaps she had seen some of the behavior unfold.

But as I spoke with her, my aunty could only say one thing about my former friend. “I’m sure it’s hard for her. She’s such a good person.”

I thought long and hard about what my aunty said after the shock wore off. It didn’t matter if she was a good person, I reasoned. She had acted like a bad person. It then that I realized:

1. Good people can hurt without intention

There’s an age-old Hollywood storyline. It’s about the doctor who loads the needle with the wrong medication. After hours of sleep deprivation and stressful hospital interactions, the doctor slips. They give an innocent patient the wrong dose, and the helpless person dies under the watch of a good person.

It’s the perfect example of how good people can hurt others without intention. They have no intention to do the wrong thing. They haven’t set out to do something that harms the other person. Yet that is the result of their actions.

I’m sure my best friend didn’t intend to hurt me. Maybe there were moments she hoped her actions would hurt me. But for the most, I’m sure she was behaving with good intentions.

2. Good people can make the wrong decision

After ten minutes on the road, it’s impossible to dismiss how often good people make bad decisions. Car accidents are often caused by zero malice or intent to harm other people. Most haven’t taken to the road in the hope of causing an accident.

People run the red light in the hope of making it to their event quicker. They don’t want to disappoint the person waiting at the event. But in trying to do the right thing, they make the wrong decision. The hit someone traveling through the red light and the rest is self-explanatory.

My friend may think my decision to end our friendship is wrong, too. She may consider what I’ve done as bad as running the red light. That my decision had negative consequences that could never be undone.

Decisions are a fifty-fifty gamble. We either get them right or get them wrong. It doesn’t take much to tip the scales in either direction. Even the people with the best intentions, the good people, can choose the wrong path.

3. Good people can defend the wrong person

It’s possible for the good to side with the bad people.

Sometimes I look at my aunty and think she’s defending the wrong person in the argument. I want her to chastise my best friend, and to applaud my approach to the situation. I regard my aunty as a good person yet she is siding with the wrong person. Yet, that’s a matter of opinion.

Sometimes it isn’t a matter of opinion. We see people defend politicians who do the wrong thing. We see family support their loved ones whilst on trial for gruesome, horrible crimes. We support businesses that have committed unethical crimes against millions of innocent people.

4. Good people do bad things

Good people can do the wrong thing without the intention to. They can hurt without intention. They can defend the wrong people, they can make the wrong decision. But it can be under the guise of making the right decision. Good intentions and all that.

But it’s possible for good people to do bad things intentionally. Apart from a select portion of society, most people know the difference between right and wrong. They understand the difference between ethical, moral and legal wrongs. But this understanding doesn’t mean they can’t be bad. They aren’t immune from the capability of doing something with ill intentions.

For all the times my aunty and I defended my best friend, there is nothing to say she didn’t do it purposefully. There is nothing to say she didn’t wake up one day and decide to bully, ridicule and torment me.

The person running the red light may have intentionally run the red light to inflict pain on incoming traffic. The person defending an immoral business did so to gain financial reward from their support.

It’s unreasonable to think that people good people don’t do bad things. They aren’t superheroes or characters from fairy tales. For as long as they have conscious thought over their actions, everyone can be bad.

5. There are no good people

How do you define a good person? If we asked everyone on earth that question, the definition of what makes a good person would differ. There would be some overlapping qualities, sure, but we would never reach a consensus.

Everyone values different things. And with our differing values, we attribute differing qualities to what is good and what is bad.

Between myself and my friend, I’m sure she would think I’m a bad person for dumping her. Yet, in my opinion, she’s a bad person for all the occasions she’s let me down. Even between two people who’ve shared experiences, upbringing and education, the meaning of ‘good’ differs.

The good people in this world are the people we attribute this honor upon. Granted some are self-proclaiming good people, but most are those we choose. The good people aren’t born ‘good people’, and there isn’t an accreditation to certify their ‘goodness’.

We attribute goodness based on what they do. And if their actions meet our values and beliefs, that means they’re good. If their action go against our values, we label them bad.

But their goodness and badness is a value judgment made by the people around them. It isn’t a measurable quality. We can’t inject more good into someone. We can’t siphon out the bad.

What this means is there are no good people. And there are also no bad people. We simply have people. Or to put it another way, we’re all fundamentally good and bad people.

And as soon as we realize everyone can be bad and good, we will live a little closer to reality. We will stop idolizing the idea of becoming a good person, a fictional hero that doesn’t exist. And perhaps we will be a little kinder to ourselves when we do something bad.

It’s possible we will accept everyone is human, and that is ok.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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