I hate good people. Have you ever met one? I sincerely hope not. Quite frankly, good people are some of my least favorite inhabitants of our little planet. When I’m in a particularly bad—or maybe just clear—mood, I would honestly prefer a bad person to a good one. Though I can’t say I enjoy either. The only people I tolerate are people. They’re not good, bad, or neutral. They just are. They’re how I strive to be.

I’m light-years from originality when I say that good is a controversial term. I would call it useless if it hadn’t been so overused for the past several millennia. Naturally, I feel similarly about bad—the term’s cousin. Ethical relativism goes back to the Sophists. Friedrich Nietzsche went beyond these terms in 1886. These days, in addition to them being employed while discussing examples as mundane as Star Wars, they often come up as identities we enjoy placing upon ourselves and others. 

When we judge ourselves, we rarely put in much thought. No one wants to be bad, so we are all self-identified good people. We get to be more creative with everyone else. Sometimes we even use phrases like “deep down” or “at the core” when we really want to emphasize just how accurate our judgments are, regardless of how little they’re substantiated. But that’s a topic for later. I want to start with the very generous assumption that everyone is right about themselves. If everyone is an accurate self-judge, and we all think we’re good, it follows that we must live in a wonderful world where everyone acts ethically. This is good to hear as my door doesn’t auto-lock. I might as well throw out my key. 

However, I can’t help but notice that even though I’ve chosen my school well, and I’m often surrounded by people I like, I still run into the occasional asshole. Today I got a single notification from The New York Times. Upon reading half of the headline, I remembered that asshole-ism seems to be a rather rampant issue. There must be a problem with our premises. Let’s begin a new argument. Everyone thinks they’re a good person. Therefore, as mentioned previously, if everyone is an accurate judge of themselves, then everyone must be good. As we’ve discovered, however, there are assholes among us. It follows that our self-awareness isn’t actually so infallible and we have a number of assholes running around who think they’re good people. I’m sensing an issue. 

Putting aside my pedantry (my personal favorite form of asshole-ism), this assumption of one’s own goodness is a serious problem. We all want to be good people, but we don’t put anything into that desire. Once we’re good, we’re done. Good people don’t need to change their ways. They don’t need self-reflection. They don’t need push-back from anyone. When good people do bad things, they either don’t realize what they’ve done, don’t care, or ignore it. We end up in a world of people running around causing harm guilelessly. Dorian Gray never needed a painting. He just had to truly believe he was right.

The issue deepens when we begin to make judgments of others. We see people as objectively good or bad and never look further. How many people have been hurt by so-called good guys? How many allegedly bad people have been pigeonholed by a label that doesn’t reflect who they are today? I’m not arguing for a suspension of moral judgment—far from it. I argue that we start judging people by what they do and think, not what we presume them to be. When we remove the masks of goodness and badness, we are left simply with people and a new freedom to view a world closer to the truth.

Another issue is that when someone does something good, it’s often at least partially in an attempt to be a good person. I find it disturbing how self-centered most ethical systems are. To me, ethics should be about how we treat others not what we get out of it. Even someone who doesn’t believe themselves to be an unwaveringly good person is still working towards gaining a higher level of quality within themselves. 

I fear that I’m appearing to lean toward utilitarianism or some other system that focuses on a more quantitative approach to ethics. I promise I’m not. In fact, a solid critique of my argument comes from that school of thought. Why does it matter if someone does something good for a selfish reason? They still did a good thing. This is perfectly valid. It doesn’t really matter on the individual level. The real problem is in breeding a culture focused only on the well-being of oneself. We’ve already established that people do plenty of shitty things. I feel that the best solution to this is to encourage empathy. Promoting ethical systems based around empathy and the other is absolutely necessary. I see the removal of good and bad as labels as a small first step towards this goal. I don’t know how to make people really care about each other, but I do know that removing this one barrier will help.

I’m not solving any moral conundrums. Being a trolley conductor will still be a complex occupation. I do think, however, that eschewing good and bad as labels makes such conundrums a bit easier. When presented with an ethical dilemma, I used to worry about whether the decision would make me a good person or a bad one. These days, I try to center myself less. I try to make judgments based on my perception of the situation at hand, not by my own ego. That’s much easier said than done. Even my belief that this piece is worth writing is based on some egotistical idea that I know something about ethics that other people don’t. Regardless, I urge you to forget about good and bad people. Be honest about what those around you do. Be even more honest with yourself. You’re not a good person, and neither am I. We’re just people who would like to do right by the world and its inhabitants.

Bennett Gottesman is a member of the class of 2027 and can be reached at bcgottesman@wesleyan.edu.