There are no good people. There are no bad people. There are simply people
My thoughts on why classifying people as good or bad does a lot of harm
A while ago I wrote about my aim to not call or think of people as assholes, or other shaming words, because I was done with shaming others, just as I was done with shaming myself. For the most part, I’ve been pretty successful with that and I like that I seem to feel less anger. This change in perspective has had me reflecting on the problems I see with categorizing people as good or bad and I’ve come to the conclusion that this practice is one of our culture’s biggest mistake for three reasons: it keeps us from believing that people we have categorized as good can make cruel choices (and vice versa), it keeps us from believing we can make cruel or good choices, depending on how we are categorize ourselves, and it encourages us to ignore our own needs in the pursuit of being good.
It distorts how we view others
When we categorize others as “good”, it makes it hard to believe they could do something bad. This seems to happen every time a celebrity, or at least the white male ones, allegedly commits a crime. ‘Brad Pitt couldn’t have been violent towards his family because he is a good man’, seems to be a common belief among people who have no intimate knowledge of the situation or family. Rickey Henderson was one of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, so we will all stay silent on the fact that his sister accused him of raping her as a child.
And it works the other way too. Blake Lively was unlikable for various reasons, such as her decision to have her wedding on a plantation site. This unlikability made it easy to pile on her last summer and believe she was the problem on the set of her movie, not the man who had noticeably lost the support of all the women connected to the making of the movie. She was “bad”, so for many, it felt impossible to even consider that she could have been experiencing abuse.
Sometimes we re-categorize a person from good to bad so thoroughly that we rewrite history, such as the people who are now talking as if Neil Gaiman’s books and other creative output isn’t masterful and beloved by many, because they now see him as a monster. Like many others, he made beautiful art while at the same time, allegedly, raped many women. I think it would be a disservice to me to pretend like I haven’t loved his books and found comfort in them. But it would be a bigger disservice to pretend that the comfort I’ve felt from his books is more important than what he has reportedly done to many women.
It's tempting to simplify and flatten people. But I’d rather see the situation clearly and be a person who judges actions rather than people. I don't want to shame others AND I don’t want to fall victim to someone repeatedly hurting me because I consider them good and incapable of harming others. I don’t want to put others in danger by putting someone on the “good person” pedestal. Me liking or admiring someone doesn’t prevent them from hurting others.
It distorts how we view ourselves
This is similar to the first point, but now it’s how we perceive ourselves. I have previously categorized myself as bad. I’ve been in therapy sessions as an individual and as part of a group where others were trying to convince me I was a good person. For the longest time I couldn’t be convinced that any of the good choices I had made could make up for the bad choices. My opinion was simply that I was irredeemable and a fake good person who was tricking anyone who thought otherwise.
Later I swung to the other end of the pendulum and believed that I was good. This lead to an existential crisis when I realized that I was both disabled and had ableist beliefs. “But I’m a good person!” I thought to myself. “I don’t think less of disabled people!” I wailed to myself. But when interrogating my beliefs, I found that in subtle ways I did think less of the disabled, including the disabled parts of myself. I still have to work at believing my needs are worth considering and accommodating. Sometimes when I’m in a Zoom meeting, I need my lights dimmed lower to prevent migraine or headaches, but I don’t because that would make it harder for others to see me. I long for the day where I don’t have to convince myself I am worthy of fully being myself, even if that means asking others to adjust so I can be safe and included.
I have witnessed others react with a strong defense too when they are confronted with their ableist, misogynistic, anti-queer, or white supremist beliefs, so I know I’m not alone in this. We have absorbed messaging from our culture that says some people are more important than others. It doesn’t feel good to know that I’ve internalized messaging I intellectually disagree with, and I assume it’s the same for others. But I don’t think it means we’re bad, shameful people.
I want to challenge those beliefs and messages so I can try to live according to my values, and to do that I need to first acknowledge them. To acknowledge them, I need to not base my identity on being a good person that will repel any evidence that says I might not be so good. I need to be secure in my worthiness as a human being, regardless of the mistakes I’ve made. I’m a complicated person who is neither good nor bad, but hopes to live in a way where I make more choices I’d be proud to see reported to the world than not. I’m finding it easier to be that person while giving myself unconditional love and compassion, outside of the good or bad classification.
It leads to ignoring our needs, perfection and burnout
In my pursuit to prove that I was a good person, I made a lot of choices to be a good student/employee/girlfriend/family member/friend that meant I ignored my own needs. This repeatedly led to burnout, depression, and anxiety. I went above and beyond - gave 110% - because that’s what good people do. I went to work and school sick because it would be bad for me to disrupt the day for others. I didn’t complain when I was exhausted, because to be good meant to work hard and play hard. I prioritized the interests of others rather than pursuing my own.
I didn’t think very hard about what it meant to be good, but I think I thought it meant to not have anyone mad at me. So when I inevitably did crash and burn into a depression, more often than not I cut all ties because I couldn’t bear being thought of as bad rather than good. In retrospect, that’s a lonely way to live that I don’t want to repeat.
I’m now trying to be clear on what my values are, and to live according to them as best I can. I value living within my energetic needs and not going into energetic debt. I value community and sharing resources. I value the belief that all people (including me) are worthy of a dignified life, even those who require more expensive accommodations to give them dignity, and that society should, through government payments like UBI, ensure everyone has the ability to live with dignity.
I value having a curious and open mind, with the flexibility to change my beliefs, thoughts, and actions as I learn more about the world. I value creativity. I value learning from mistakes. I value respecting boundaries and needs, whether they are mine or someone else’s. I value gratitude. I value compassion. I value hope and optimism.
I’m not going to focus on being a good person anymore because I don’t think the general definition of “good” has my well-being in mind. I don’t want to beat myself up for my failures. I also want to be open to criticisms without the feedback destroying my self-worth. I’m not going to think of the people I like as good either, because I don’t want to get into a(nother) situation where I excuse, ignore, or otherwise condone their harmful choices. A decision that I consider harmful won’t necessarily make me like or love them less, but I don’t want to have to pretend it didn’t happen because I’ve decided they are good and incapable of bad. Finally, I’m not going to think of, and treat, the people I don’t like as bad, because I don’t want anyone to believe they are irredeemable. While I strongly believe in consequences for our actions, I want everyone who has ever hurt another person to feel they are capable of making kinder choices with each new day. My boundaries and needs might mean we can no longer have the same relationship we once shared and I will take steps to try to protect myself and others. But I always want the possibility of redemption to exist.