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- Stages to developing a mature understanding of goodness:
- First step, babies and children equate receiving approval with being good.
- Second step, older children will begin to understand, vaguely, that being a good person requires more than just receiving approval.
- Third step, starting with teenagers, is the realization that being a good person and receiving approval are two separate things. Sometimes they overlap, often they don’t.
- Often a person will get stuck on the first or second step.
- What goodness is not:
- Defending family, friend, or coworker even though you know they are wrong.
- Arbitrarily fighting the other group or tribe simply because they are other.
- Never backing down without considering if perhaps you are wrong.
- Being better than others at doing something.
- Being tougher and stronger than others.
- Being first to do something.
- Displaying certainty about something.
