- 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.
- A definition of a good person:
- The sincere desire to do the right thing.
- The belief that every person is equally worthy of having a good life.
- The willingness to do one’s social duty to help everyone have an opportunity to live a good life.
- What goodness is:
- Realizing that everyone wants to be good.
- Understanding that being good has to be learned.
- Understanding that many people never learn or they were never taught how to be good.
- Understanding what a person learns about how to be good, may not be what you learned.
- Giving understanding and compassion to everyone. They need it as much as you do.
The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good. Samuel Johnson