What it is to be a Good Person.

Not sure, but I'm having a stab at being Evil for a while, so I'll let you know how that goes for me.

I haven't decided on an exact 'job description' yet but just to narrow the field a bit I have a few definite parameters to observe. 1. Must not be a fucking tory (or the non-participatory kind either) 2. Must be a 'royalty' hating republican. 3. Must not comment on the CEO's amazing likeness to the 'only gay in the village' 4. ... oh, you get the idea i'm sure...

Well, being a Good Person is something I have recently realised I try to be a lot. This means that I am probably utterly corruptable. Being a Good Person, to me, means not purposefully hurting anybody and remember that everyone's life is just as important to them as yours is to you... therefore competitiveness and one-upmanship is pointless. However, I watched Before Sunrise and Before Sunset recently and Ethan (rat face) Hawke said a line that interested me. He said, 'I seem to have spent my whole life trying to be the Best me rather than the Honest me.' This has made me reconsider the whole Good Person thing... But being Good is good, I think. Although sometimes only Bad will do.

Oh, missi you missed one off. - Must not be fucking a tory

I like it Hayley. I try to be nice and all, and I genuinly want what's best for people most of the time, but someone told me once I couldn't be good or moral without religion. I am not religious. Therefore, according to him I am neither good nor moral. I find it's comments like that that make me want to follow Rokkitnite's example and try evil. If I had superpowers, maybe I'd be a villian. Ben.. www.thedevilbetweenus.com

That is both hilarious and heatwarming as by your criteria I'm an exceptionally good person. Ben.. www.thedevilbetweenus.com

Rita...you have to click refresh on each individual thread and then on the forum itself to see the correct last postee. A.

I think that it all starts with being honest with yourself - and from there you can make up your own mind. But if you are deeply, brutally, utterly honest with yourself then you are likely to end up being a 'good person'. Ooh, that's a quantum leap of logic but one that can make sense if you follow it through. "We are the other people We are the other people You're the other people too Trying hard to get to you." Frank Zappa

Whoever told you you didn't count as good without being religious was obviously a grade A twat. Really religious people would never say that. Good is one thing. Sanctimonious is another. Sanctimonious people are never actually good. and everybody makes mistakes, no matter what they think.

I have now decided there is no such thing as a Good Person. There is just a Person.

>>> I think that it all starts with being honest with yourself - and from there you can make up your own mind. But if you are deeply, brutally, utterly honest with yourself then you are likely to end up being a 'good person'. I absolutely and totally agree With the inimitable Mr C! (I also refer the learned gentlemen to my comments in the Stephen Fry thread on what constitutes 'good' & 'bad' art... which I think is a similar issue... although not exactly the same...) :-) * P * :-)

I think it comes down to self mortification. The less you eat, consume, masturbate, engage in extramarital sex and the more you whip yourself or sleep on barbed wire mattresses - the more of a Good Person you become. To be quite honest with you I'm quite bad AND I'm wearing Union Jack knickers AND vote tory.

Bugger...that's my chances of ever being a good person gone then.

If you think you're a Good Person, then you're probably not. :-) * P * :-)

Why?

Well, I think i'm a cheese plant and all things considered, I'm probably not. Perhaps Pepsoid has a point. I guess it had to happen eventually.

*sobs* and I have always considered myself to be a 5 ft 10, size 10, blonde bombshell... damn you Pepsoid.

But jude you were always the exception that proved the rule.

i spend a lot of time trying to be a Good Person ... and an equal amount of time realising i am Not A Good Person ... do you think they cancel each other out?

Admittedly I initially said the above without any clear reason in my head as to what I actually meant. Not to say I didn't mean it! But, exceptions aside, what I think I meant was... A Truly Good Person is always striving to be better, therefore never thinks they are Good Enough, therefore can never be Truly Good. Similarly, if you think you're insane (or Insane), then you're probably not... :-) * P * :-)

Jude's choices are so stark - surely if you go in for LESS extramarital sex you inevitably end up with MORE masturbation?? And does whipping yourself make you good? Well, it makes you a pervert for a start. I think being a Tory voter undoes all the other good in your life and consigns you to an eternity of weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth, or at least every four years on election night.

"A Truly Good Person is always striving to be better, therefore never thinks they are Good Enough, therefore can never be Truly Good." Sounds like hard work, P. And is that a paradox or am I really tired? Probably the latter. Ben.. www.thedevilbetweenus.com

even hitler thought he was doing the right thing

I am not sure that anything anyone says on this thread will please many people. I used to think that being a good person was based on all the things my parents used to tell us when we were small, 'turn the other cheek' 'everyone is equal' 'treat others as you would like to be treated' 'if you see soeone who needs help, do what you can' That is Quaker idealism for you. hmmm, magnanimous and unrealistic? I reckon it comes down to how often you look at your motives for doing things. i.e. I know a boy who always eats the last piece of cake the biggest cup of tea and the least burnt bit of toast, he is not around when shit hits the fan but is always there for a party. According to some criteria this would make him bad, but strangely he is a good person, he just does not turn himself inside out trying to fix everything for everyone. I don’t know, I think that being a good person is immensely complicated and individual. Too many people spend too much time thinking bad things about themselves, but there are also too many people whose egos make me sick. How much easier would it be if you could take a test to see how you match up against a criteria of goodness. But how boring. Span x

There is a simple "litmus" test to ascertain whether you are a Good or Bad Person and the relative degrees thereof. Just wee onto a special strip of celestial Litmus paper, the darker blue it goes, the more indicitive of a bad character and the more red it goes the more intrinsic goodness in you. Most people like me who hang somewhere in the middle will come out with a sort of medium purple.

I reckon I might be mauve. I don't like mauve. span x

When the first video games came out that offered you moral choice, I would always take the 'good' path, unable to bring myself to be cruel or selfish even when I'd decided I'd try it out beforehand. Some weird morality stayed my hand, even though the consequences were only being played out in a world of multicoloured pixels. Now when I play those games, I'm always resolutely evil. I don't know if that means anything.

Although an atheist, I’d probably go for the Gospel according to Matthew type stuff to define a good person. Though Hobbs (I think) said humans are not intrinsicly good. He believed our motives for doing good were purely selfish, that we only did good deeds to make us feel better about ourselves. (But then, unless we had an intrinsic notion of what ‘good’ was, how would we know what actions would make us feel good about ourselves?) Anyway, I suspect most people do possess an instinct to be good at least, because evolution wise, more of our species end up alive than dead that way. Of course, that argument doesn’t make any other species feel less nervous… As far as me being a good person goes…. How long did St Augustine get away with his tag line, Jude?

Ooh, the whole 'every action is selfish' argument! Just to throw another side dish of debate soup out there, can anyone think of any action at all that can't be said to be selfish...? :-) * P * :-)

An honest smile. Also my theory for niceness. You can change a persons day with a well placed grin. Try it on a stranger, works a treat. Also when somebody looks down, ask if they're okay. You'll be surprised at their reactions. From amazement to anger to tears.

It's easier to list the traits that make a person bad in most peoples eyes, surely? For me the worst possible of all traits are; Deceit Conceit Lying Greed Meaness Disloyalty Untrustworthyness Being a tory (Jude excepted) Being a 'royal' There's at least two of these I have never been afflicted by, and the others rarely.

You know if you live your life trying to be a good person, you never get what you want. Is that a good thing? I dunno. I'll tell you when I'm old and regretful.

The good person is the guy/gal everybody wants to be but nobody wants to hang out with. The evil person is me. Gwahahahahahahahaha!!

I think a well placed gin can change a person's day...

hmm - been thinking about this lately.... it's virtually impossible to ascertain what is 'good' -- the world is a minefield of people's motivations and upbringings. Your parents abused you, so you abuse your kids - so this make this person 'bad'?? there's so many varying contributing factors... you can be honest, for example... but what if your truth hurts someone?? I agree with Missippi, as long as you don't actively set out to hurt people then that is the best most of us can do. 'Do only unto others what you would do to yourself' Most of us would admit that we are a flawed and inept species... And surely most of us aren't decietful and greedy becuase it would hurt ourselves and our conscience... another self serving and 'bad' trait. All we can do is be highly aware of others, and feel for them as we do for ourselves and not knowingly cause other people pain if we can help it. In addition, if we see a way to help someone -- we should. www.wordhead.co.uk

I was reading an interesting story in a science book about the brain. Phineas Gage was the foreman of a railway construction crew working just outside Cavendish, Vermont. He was the company's most capable foreman with a well balanced mind and shrewd business sense. Gage was tamping an explosion charge. A tamping iron is a crowbar-like tool used to compact an explosive charge into the bottom of a borehole. The tamping iron used by Gage was 43 inches in length, 1.25 inches in diameter at one end, tapering over a distance of 12 inches to a diameter of 0.25 inches at the other end, and weighing about 13 pounds.Tamping involves packing of a charge into as small a space as possible at the point chosen for the explosion. An accidental explosion of the charge Phineas Gage had just set blew his tamping iron out of the borehole and through the left side of his skull. It entered a point first under his left cheek bone, exiting through the top of his head and landing some 25 to 30 yards away Gage was knocked over but may not have lost consciousness. Most of the left frontal lobe was destroyed. Miraculously he survived! Despite his horrific injury Phineas recovered. He could walk, speak, and had normal awareness. Despite exemplary work before his accident, his employer would not return him to his former position. He had become fitful, irreverent, grossly profane, and showed little deference for other workers. Impatient and obstinate yet capricious and vacillating, he was unable to proceed with any plans. According to friends he was "no longer Gage". It seems that a lot of what makes up our temperment is at the mercy of the frontal lobe of our brain rather than anything spiritual, moral and intangible. What makes us good? Is it biochemical and organic??? It is one area where me the scientist and me the Christian sometimes struggle against one another. So many of our traits have a biochemical basis. Are we at the mercy of our brains or do we really have as much moral choice as we perceive we do? j