Whatever Happened to Just Being a Good Person for its Own Sake?

I was having an interesting discussion earlier today about human behavior and what we believe in.

As the conversation continued we touched on one of the points that has always been a bit of a mystery for me. That is, people who have a strong belief in God but who also admit quite openly that without having "a fear of God" they wouldn't be nice people.

So you're sincerely telling me that the only reason you're not out raping and pillaging and stealing from your neighbor is because you have a fear of God?

I don't know what that says about the human species as a whole, but it surely can't be a good thing! Alternatively, maybe I am just excessively naive about true human nature...

The whole train of thought came about because I was reading a friend's essay for a contest submission in which he was telling a story from his youth in which he had been out trying to get signatures on a petition for clean water where he lived in New Jersey, and he was having a hell of a time getting anyone to sign the petition.

As it turned out, he had been mostly going around a fairly affluent and somewhat conservative neighborhood where there were also a lot of traditionally religious people. And what eventually revealed itself was the fact that (this was all right before Y2K) a lot of these people sincerely believed that they were in "end times," and because of that they saw no reason to care about clean water.

Which struck me essentially as a metaphor for "I have no reason to be a good person simply for the sake of doing right, I'm only going to be a good person if there is some kind of incentive being given to me for that."

The disturbing part of that particular line of thinking is the fact that when we turn it backwards what we're saying is that human beings' "default setting" is to be shitty, and that being "a good person" is an artificially created construct.

Now, I get that our biological imperative is "survival of the species," but survival of the species tends to typically work better through cooperation than through confrontation. And so I would hazard to guess that you're more likely to survive as a species if you just (by nature) would like to have clean water as opposed to only have clean water because you're going to be rewarded for saying yes to that.

In turn, that made me think about some of my own thoughts about alternative energy and clean energy that has developed in recent years. There tends to be two camps in that particular arena, and one of the camps are generally the people who don't care much about reducing emissions and what pollution might do.

My point here is that my "soapbox issue" isn't whether we are fighting global warming or not, but very simply that I like to breathe clean air. And whether your stinky diesel truck that's "burning coal" is contributing to global warming or not is less my overarching concern than the fact that I don't want to breathe the stinking fumes coming out of your truck!

Of course we end up with a lot of people (particularly here in the USA) saying "well it's my right to be dirty!"

To which my answer is "WHY do you want to be dirty?" I don't care whether it's your right and I don't want to take your right away I want to know why you want to be dirty. And if the only sincere reason you can come up with for that is that you "don't want the government telling you what to do", then I'm not sure I want you to be part of the same gene pool I'm in!

Yes, I realize that's all a bit harsh... but sometimes people frustrate me because they engage in some variation of cutting off their own noses despite their face. Just be a good person! It's not rocket science!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of your week!

How about you? Do you believe in being a good person? Are you authentically a good person? Or do you only do good from a fear of judgment? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2023.12.20 00:45 PST
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