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nothing beautiful can last
Is it possible to qualify oneself as a “good person” or a “bad person”? To answer this, it’s necessary to think about a few things regarding these qualifiers, I will focus on two, one: “what is good and bad”, and two: “what is the purpose served by these qualifiers”. The first one helps us give the qualifiers a meaning, the second gives us an explanation about when the meaning is usually used.
The first question is an old one, ever since humans have been overthinking things we have asked ourselves what is good and bad, and the conclusion is always “it depends”. And it does, it’s the kind of thing that depends on so many things that it becomes impossible to answer. Is there some guide that everyone can vaguely agree with, even people whose sense of morality is twisted? Normally, it’d be easy to assume that there isn’t, as this would mean that there is objective morality, which we all know doesn’t exist. But let’s pretend, for a moment, that there was, and explore that option for a little. What would that thing be?
I have explored the topic of suffering and unfairness for a while, outside of this website. Suffering is a direct consequence of unfairness, and it is ultimately undesirable, and for some people, some forms of suffering are desirable because of the way in which they are undesirable. It’s undesirable in all cases, it’s just also desirable in one. So let’s set unfairness (the root of suffering) as the only objectively immoral thing.
We have just changed a problem for another one, we have Indiana Jones’d ourselves.
But it’s fine, as unfairness is also definable. I have before defined it as the result of desire and undesire causing us to have expectations about reality that are then unmet. It’s not only our desire, but also our body’s desire – when we hunger, our body perceives unfairness due to its expectation of having food. So, if evil is unfairness, and unfairness is unmet expectations caused by our desire of some reality, one can say that what we consider evil is unmet expectations caused by our desire of some reality. This is not objective at all! By assuming that there is an objective morality, we have found out that there isn’t one, but instead, we have managed to define its subjectiveness.
Let’s subject this definition to other properties of morality. Morality is different from individual to individual. Every individual expects something different from reality, so we can say that this applies. Morality is different from culture to culture. Every culture has different ideals (and thus, different expectations) as to what the world and its people should be like, so this applies too. Morality is subjet to change through circumstance – something we may consider immoral most of the time may become the right thing to do in specific sets of circumstances, different circumstances make us want different things that are more specific to our circumstances, so this applies too.
So, qualifying myself as a bad person just means that I am defining myself as a “person who doesn’t meet people’s expectations and hopes of reality as to what a person should be like”, and a good person is the same deal but the other way around.
Then comes the catch, we can’t really define people’s expectations. We are ourselves, not the people whose expectations we are meeting or failing to meet. This means, then, that “good person” and “bad person” are inherently labels that can’t be self-applied, only guessed. In order to obtain them, we must get people to be in our presence and in awareness of the actions to make the decision for us. The decision is subject to change as we change and as people get to know us better, but they are the ones that do it. It makes sense when you think about it: you don’t decide if what you did hurt or didn’t hurt someone, it’s that someone who decides. Now, we have knowledge of the things that people will generally consider good or bad, and what will hurt people. If I stabbed someone, I am more likely to have hurt the person than to not have. Like, about 100% more likely. But the final decision is made by them (or really, by their body, whose decision is much easier to guess).
If I murder someone, and no one’s around to hear it, am I a bad person? Well, if the person had loved ones, they are gonna consider me evil, even if they don’t know who I am or are even sure about what happened, so let’s assume they don’t. Well, I still would be, the person had their own judgement about things. Let’s say that one doesn’t count, that is, let’s create a hypothetical scenario where someone does something horrible with no charge of conscience and with no one’s awareness of it whatsoever. Are they bad? There is no one to ask, so who will answer?
Most people will have answered that yes, they are still bad. They are making the judgement, after all, but even when actually taking all these restrictions in consideration, it seems just tempting to say that they are bad. Is there some immaterial, abstract judge that we don’t know about that makes the decisions for those whose decisions could not be made because of some ape that was imagining situations for a website on the internet, and then puts those decisions in the minds of our people?
I wouldn’t say it’s immaterial. Like I said before, morality isn’t only the wishes of a person, it’s also the wishes of a culture. Culture is entirely material, but it is abstract, it’s no person but rather the average of all the desires of the people who are part of it. We are part of a culture even if we don’t find ourselves strongly present in it, solely because we are still heavily influenced by them. Culture has its own sense of morality.
Then the answer becomes “depends on the cultures the people involved were related to”. We always put the most attention on the victim’s judgement of the situation, so really, it depends on the culture of the people who was killed.
Of course this example isn’t supposed to relate to murder, because with real murder, the judgement is made by the victim before they die, by their loved ones, and by people from the communities they frequented, after all, what a culture considers fair may be unfair to some of its members – the judgement of the affected people must count. This is only meant to give understanding about other circumstances where there is only one person involved.
It also does not make sense to judge a person based on something about them that there is ultimately no control about, for example, you can’t judge a trans person for being trans, as they didn’t have the choice of being trans. Doing so is irrational. It is not an action that has an impact on people. For a more drastic exapmple, let’s say a hypothetical person has a tendency to punch people in the face – they really don’t want to do this, as they are aware this will hurt the people being punched, but it is a tendency that they have – like an intrusive thought that they have difficulty not thinking too much about. They don’t have the choice to have the thoughts. They do, however, have a choice to not punch people, or even get help about their intrusive thoughts with a proffessional who can help them. Judging them about what goes through the soup in their skull is irrational, judging them for the consequences of what they are doing, is.
So, back to the topic at hand. When a person is defining themselves as a bad person and someone is around to say “no you’re not”, what could the person mean by that? And what does that imply?
Well, let’s go back to the definiton we gave. “What we consider evil is unmet expectations caused by our desire of some reality”. The only reality the person has besides others’ is their own. So one possibility is that the person’s thoughts or behaviors aren’t really aligned ot what they wish they were. This is good, though, as it means it can change and mutate. This can be caused by a lot of things, such as a twisted understanding of reality, low self-esteem, or just genuine discontent with what one is doing. Either way, improvement is always an option.
But let’s say that being a “bad person” is self-applicable. Well, bad people do bad things, like hurting people. This means that the person can now just hurt whoever they want, they are just a bad person. It’s just a thing that bad people do, they can’t be held accountable because they are bad and don’t care – at best you can aprehend their behavior. Self-applied morality labels become an escape from the burden of consequence – you don’t have to acknowledge what you do wrong, as just saying “I’m sorry for being a bad person” is sufficient to explain everything you will ever do for the rest of your life. You don’t have to learn from your mistakes anymore! You’re bad – bad people can’t do that.
Of course this kind of “apologies” will never ever count. We know, on some level, that goodness or badness aren’t self-applicable labels, no one is going to accept “I’m sorry for being cringe and bad” as an excuse to actually, say, be allowed into a community once more, when the reason they were excluded from it was something like making members uncomfortable and being disrespectful to them incountable times. “I’m bad” is serving as a way to ignore their actions, and it clearly shouldn’t count.
Is there a similar exploit for “good person” as a self-applicable label?
Yes, but it’s harder to pull off – you need to be powerful and inspire trust in people, something that we have thankfully learnt to become wary of, after all, if someone tells you that they are good, they are most likely trying to sell you something. A powerful dictator talks about how they are a good person. A good person talks about the things they do for those around them. Not everyone is that careful, though, which means that “I am a good person” becomes an easy way to make people who haven’t been made aware of the fact that someone that talks about how they are good is very obviously trying to sell you somethin, do whatever you want them to do. It is a way to rise into power, do horrible things, and get away with it for long times. “I’m good” becomes a tool for manipulation, and it clearly shouldn’t count.
There is, thus, no reason to consider “good person” or “bad person” to be fully self-applicable labels. They are labels that other people give you based on your actions, always giving most relevance to the judgement of those directly affected by it. The best one can do is make an informed guess about them.