Why talking about “good people” and “bad people” is meaningless
As a therapist, I often hear my clients talk about wanting to be a “good person.” Or sometimes I hear desires to not be a “bad person.”
I am here to tell you that these phrases are not meaningful, and continuing to think in terms of good and bad is unhelpful at best, harmful at worst.
Why? Well, to quote the first three minutes of this excellent This American Life episode, because “people contain multitudes.”
I won’t say that it’s impossible for a person to be all good or all bad. One of the things I’ve learned in my career as an academic clinical psychologist is that absolute rules hardly ever hold up. As I said in my last post, “it depends” is an accurate but unsatisfying response to most psychological questions. If you would like to put forth an example of someone who is “all good” or “all bad,” I’m open to hearing about that person.
But generally, people aren’t good or bad. People are helpful and selfish, motivated and lazy, kind and dismissive. Even people who are highly extraverted don’t always want to be around other people, and people who are highly impulsive can sometimes hold their tongues.
Saying that someone is a “good person” or a “bad person” is a summary, a categorization. It’s a way of classifying a person into a box without actually considering their multitudes. People shouldn’t be put in boxes. When someone sees themselves in a box, how can they climb out of it? How many “good” actions does it take to get out of the “bad” box? The TV show The Good Place tackles this problem in an inventive way (and spoiler alert: the person who does the most “good” things is isolated, boring, super weird, and seems unhappy).
My newest trend is to push people to define what they mean by a good or bad person, as I think people use these phrases without really thinking about them. My verbal pushing is not restricted to just my clients. My kids (aged 7 and 10), who are used to me emphasizing specificity of language, have actually started avoiding saying “good person.” The 10-year old in particular knows that every time he even refers to a “good person” in passing, I’m going to ask for a definition. And he has yet to provide any definition, let alone a compelling one.
If you are thinking, “My goodness, she must be an insufferable parent,” you might be right. My kids seem to like me for now, but who knows how much eye rolling is in my future?
But I also firmly adhere to the idea that the language we use reflects the way that we think. So I pick on language used by my clients and my kids (and my students, too) because I want the folks who move through my sphere of influence to develop clear thinking. I want them to know their own minds, and to be intentional in their communication.
“Good” and “bad” are evaluative words. “Good” suggests positive, something you want to be around or experience more of. “Bad” suggests negative, something you dislike and want to avoid.
But beyond evaluative as positive and negative, “good” and “bad” also conveys rules about the world. Being a “good” person means upholding the rules of what it means to be good, or what it means to do good, but is there really a general understanding of ‘good’ that everyone understands in the same way?
No.
“Good” and “bad” are subjective. What one person thinks makes a “good person” could be summarized as “upholding Christian values, going to church every week and praying every day.” Another person might think of a “good person” as “a person who brakes for animals and is friendly to strangers.” There are an infinite number of ways “good person” could be defined.
My personal favorite definition I recently stumbled into in the excellent feminist-mystery-mystic novel The Change, by Kirsten Miller: “Anyone who needs a reward to be good isn’t good. They just like rewards. Good people do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.”
Of course, people also differ in what “the right thing” is, as “right” and “wrong” are also fuzzy terms, but at least those can be traced to morals and values and are slightly clearer (but only slightly) than “good” and “bad.” I am drawn to this definition, but I recognize it’s not actually clear either.
Rather than thinking about people as “good” or “bad,” it’s probably better to just talk about the attributes that you care about. For example, I am in awe of people who give themselves to others, who will give money or time to someone who needs it, rather than holding on to their money or preserving their time for themselves. I’m also in awe of people who volunteer, like my colleague who has been “borrowing” dogs (our animal shelter apparently lets you borrow a dog for a day, kind of like taking out a book from the library) and walking the dog around town to try to help the dog get adopted. I applaud people who listen, who can set aside their own thoughts and feelings for a brief moment to really tune into another person.
It's OK to have opinions that are yours, and different from other people’s opinions. If you looked at that last paragraph and thought to yourself, “I don’t really care about those things,” that’s fine! You get to have your own compass. The problem is using the terms “good” and “bad” to summarize a person who almost certainly contains goodness, badness, depth, shallowness, kindness, selfishness, timeliness, laziness, and…..so many other things.
Dig underneath and really think about what YOU find laudable or harmful actions. And then talk about those attributes instead of making an overly generalized summary statement.