Are People Good?

I’m no angel. I’ve done some bad things in my life and made some poor decisions. I believe that I am not alone there. But does that make me a bad person? What does it mean to be good, and why does it matter? There are plenty of people out there who routinely do bad things yet still seem to amass enormous wealth and power. So, is being good all it is cracked up to be?

One of the great joys in my life is singing in a community choir. The music, the challenge, the camaraderie has all stretched and rewarded me immensely. This term, our set list includes a song called ‘People Are Good’ by Nic Barrell. It is a hopeful and uplifting number with beautiful lyrics and a glorious melody. But many in the choir, me included, have felt prompted to ask, “Are people good, or only some of them?” Sadly, trying to secretly squeeze “some people are good” into the melody sounds really bad, and doesn't pass the eagle ears of the choir leader! Maybe Luke Bryan was savvier when he wrote his country song, “Most People Are Good” in 2017.

We can all recall people from history whom we might categorically claim to have had no redeeming qualities: devoid of humanity, spurred on by hate, with a megalomaniacal thirst for supremacy and unquenchable greed. And it seems that those traits are still in evidence today, wreaking havoc between countries and peoples, destroying lives, profiteering off other people’s misery.  There is plenty of badness in the world perpetrated by bad people.

Not an angel!

However, one of the difficulties in determining the distinction between doing bad things and being a bad person, or doing good things and being a good person, is that we can only see the behaviour not the intention. Even if someone attempts to explain their intention, we might not believe them. Only they truly know why they did something (and sometimes, even they don’t know). We are left to form a judgment based on a person’s collected actions and repeated behaviour.

I’ve learned that, as a rule of thumb, assessing a person’s attitude to and engagement with learning is a good marker of ‘goodness’.  It’s not unsurprising, perhaps; for over half of my life, I have operated in the world of Learning and Development. This has been guided by my underlying belief that everyone has potential, and you don’t have to be ill to get better. If we stay curious, keep testing our assumptions, and go looking for knowledge and understanding, we can iron out some of the wrinkles we were born with or the bad habits we have developed; and we can grow as human beings that can contribute positively to our places of work, our families and our communities. 

Refusal to learn, self-reflect, seek out, question, revise, or think critically inevitably leads us down a dangerous path. Without learning, we are doomed to repeat the same errors, hang on to redundant ideas, wrap ourselves up in tight knots as we seek to fend of the real world and human evolution. And the more removed from reality and humanity we become, the easier it becomes to do not just bad things but evil things. What is more, there is no remorse; no appreciation of how wrong the behaviour is; as morality is eroded and genuine human connection is lost. That’s when doing bad things turns you into a bad person. A monster, even.

I’m fundamentally an optimist. I believe in the ability of humanity to correct itself. I assume the best in people. I am drawn to people and find them fascinating, stimulating and (mostly) kind. I accept that some people are probably so broken that all vestiges of goodness have been expunged from them. But if we continue to engage with each other and open our minds to learning, I have faith that goodness will prevail. Whether this is a delusion or not, I find it preferable to the alternatives.

We are all capable of goodness and doing good deeds. The question is, can we make that the norm? When we see people thriving off bad deeds, it’s tempting to try and join them, but the price might be selling your soul to the devil. Even a saint has an off day, so keeping the goodness vibe going is always going to be a stretch, but repeatedly demonstrating good behaviour has to be better than repeatedly doing the bad stuff, even if the halo slips from time to time.