The good, the gooders, and those who think way too much about both
So I’ve been sitting (read: nursing, burping, bouncing, bathing, changing, cooing, getting peed upon) with the question I asked myself in the last post – the question about whether there’s something I’m wanting to do that maybe I’m not doing because I’m afraid of getting dirty. And I’ve come up with something. But I don’t want to write about that yet.
I want to write about a question that helped me get there.
Why try to do good in the world? That’s it. Why try to do good? Simple enough, right? Riiight…
I know this can be answered a hundred different ways, but as I’ve pondered some of them, I’ve realized I don’t like a lot of what’s available.
Guilt, for instance. I know it can be a good catalyst in certain situations. It isn’t all bad. But to me it seems life-sucking as a primary motivator. I think it poisons good with a kind of self-centeredness, an objectification of the people or environments in which the good is done. Such things become tools, merely, for making the gooder (person doing good) feel better.
I don’t know how to get completely away from guilt. My life is privileged, so far as race and family and finances and education and a body that works well are concerned, and I’m well aware that there are lots of the opposites everywhere. I didn’t ask for what I’ve got, and I’m pretty sure others didn’t either, and yet here we are. Disparities galore.
But here’s the rub: Maybe it’s this very thing – this very fact that no one asked for what they’ve got – that makes guilt not make much sense. You think?
All of life’s disparities could lead to a kind of ethical motivation for doing good, then, I suppose: good is just the right thing to do. I, for example, am capable of doing good. I’ve got a nice bundle of resources to work with (the privilege I talked about). And let’s face it: good is needed. Everywhere. Why not do it?
Something about this moves too much in the direction of guilt for my liking, though. At least for now, as I continue detoxifying from the stuff. It introduces obligation. And not just obligation, but obligation with a ball and chain attached to it, shaped conspicuously much like an uptight judge. He waits vigilantly for you to squander your life or talents or money or time, and even when he isn’t officially on your case for something, it feels like he is. Because the “good” you do is always getting held up next to the million “bad” or selfish things you sometimes (regularly?) do instead.
No, “it’s the right thing to do” isn’t invitational or inspiring or soul-expanding at all for me. It makes my soul shrink. And my courage, too.
So I’ve thought a lot about the interconnectedness slant for doing good. About how doing good for others is really a way of doing good for myself. And for everyone. Eastern thought has a lot of great things to say about this. And physics, too. And I’m filled with wonder as I consider how true it is, and how magical. And how it makes me more patient and compassionate where I might not otherwise be.
But I have to admit that, here too, the idea falls flat for me. Maybe if I spent more time meditating, and got myself more viscerally in touch with my connectedness with everything and everyone, I’d be spontaneously inspired toward positive action. But until that happens, the idea gets stuck in the logical, unfeeling parts of myself, and doesn’t have the soulful steam of feeling to make my self go anywhere. As interconnected with everything as I believe myself to be, I just don’t live in awareness of that very often, and the guy begging on the corner and the tree in the next complex over and the dog that yipped at my heals this morning don’t feel like parts of myself at all. Caring for the earth or for the homeless or for animal rights or any other rights a person might care about because we’re all interconnected all consequently slip into that last category for me, the “because it’s the right thing to do (because we’re all interconnected)” category. They’re less about genuine care and more about a concern that I’m trying to drum up because an abstract principle in my mind is telling me I really should do that kind of drumming. Yesterday. And you know how much I appreciate that kind of judge.
So how about we propose a psychological angle. What if I try to do good because I want to be a person who does good. And if I don’t actually do good, then I feel a disconnect between who I am and who I want to be. Dissonance. And I don’t fit in very well with the gooders I really want as friends. I don’t have good gooder stories to tell when I’m with them and I can’t even get on soap boxes or high horses with them, either, because lord knows I was sitting on my couch last night, too, and I’ve never even been tempted to write my congressperson for anything. Sigh.
No, trying to get rid of dissonance or spin a character or reputation or set of friends to be proud of just don’t feel like compelling reasons for me to do good, either.
And here’s what really trips me up: I’m not convinced you can clearly define good anyway. Snap shots can make good and bad appear simplistically separate, simplistically clear, but really, aren’t the two more often mixed up? Sometimes it’s the most awful things, the most ugly or evil or extraordinarily pathetic, that lead to positive action. Don’t they? Like figuring out tough class or race-related things in Katrina’s aftermath. Like wounded people turning into healers. Some of history’s biggest embarrassments have been the reason why myriad smaller tragedies haven’t happened, or have actually gotten cared about.
And sometimes it’s the most well-intentioned things ever – the ones dreamed up by people doggedly committed to making the world a better place – that really, really screw things up. Think manifest destiny. Think over-protective parenting. Think any number of technological “advances,” and the Hiroshimas and global warmings and massive oil spills pluming in their wakes.
So. What does it mean for me to “try to do good”? What do I presuppose in even asking such a question?
While I won’t try answering that, I will give my conclusion. You ready?
I know that “good” and “bad” are difficult to separate sometimes, and that the “good” I try to do may actually harm someone, or mess up something better. But I’m thinking that’s par for this messy life-course. And I’m certainly not excited about doing nothing because I convince myself that no matter what I do (or don’t do, as the case may be) is part of life’s yin and yang.
So my conclusion? I want to try to do good in the world because that’s what I like to do. I like it. It makes me hopeful. I like it better than doing nothing, and I like it better than knowingly doing bad. And heck if I understand my complex mix of motives better than that.
I just like it. [And I’m looking forward to diving into the fray so I won’t have time for this kind of reflection. :)]
But how about you? Why do you do good? I’m genuinely curious.
October 7th, 2005 at 4:45 pm
Why do I do good? At first it probably starts with selfishness…seeking approval of others. Then trying to bribe approval from God. But after a while, since virtue has its own reward, it becomes addictive.
Here’s the rub I face–WHICH good should a person do? If my family was taken up in the twinkling of an eye I might run to San Francisco and join the Green Circus Kitchen and serve hot meals to homeless Deadheads. But I feel an obligation to a different good…to provide a stable environment for my family. Reading Drieser’s *American Tragedy* left me with the haunted question that a missionary life might not be the best for children. I don’t want my daughters to murder anyone with a camera.
So I get paralyzed and choked off by the weeds and cares of this world.
October 8th, 2005 at 11:56 am
Phil, you’ve raised such an important point. “Which kind of good?” There are so many kinds, and, like I began exploring in the post, probably all of them carry with them at least some share of bad. I guess each of us has to figure out some way of discerning which good is worth it, and which bad just isn’t worth the possible good we could do alongside it. I’m imagining that a lot of not-worth-it bad has been done throughout history because people haven’t become mindful that this kind of discernment is possible. I haven’t read American Tragedy, but it sounds like it might be an example of this very thing.
October 10th, 2005 at 11:03 am
Good conclusion. I’d just add that the good we’re most good for - and that we find most energizing to do - isn’t arbitrary. As a quick example, some research scientist who is doing good work - well, I suppose you could argue that he/she should drop everything and work to feed starving children.
But this is an aspect of the world’s messiness that you mention. And it’s not bad. It’s just what is. The research scientist who’s enthusiastic and gets a lot of research done because that’s where his/her gifts are, will do a greater amount of good in the end than as a tired, bored, guilt-ridden soup kitchen worker. Who would just get burnt-out anyway, as opposed to someone who is enthusiastic about that kind of work.
October 11th, 2005 at 1:40 pm
And then there is the person who makes butterflies out of tissue paper. Is this person a good-doer?
It’s hard to measure the worth of paper butterflies against saving lives in quake-racked Kashmir…yet how do we know the glory and weight of God without exploring the farthest reaches of his creation?
But I must admit that I probably would have been one of the grumblers when Mary annointed Jesus’ head and feet with expensive perfume.
October 16th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
i do good because i am compulsive and not that centered and can’t help myself and am addicted to the great feeling i get from being helpful. :) we’ll know the universe is going to much better off when i stop all together and just take care of my own damn self.
isn’t co-dependency beautiful?
:)
October 21st, 2005 at 6:59 am
Good thoughts. On a simple level for me it’s– Do good because you can. And there are reasons. To start because it makes you feel good– but it requires the ‘right’ kind of good or it’s not good at all. (Sounds like a Plato discussion) To do good for another can’t be just intended to make you feel righteous (they call that enabling) but genuine– help them up good– that’s the kind that makes you feel good even when you have given it anonymously. There is another reason for doing good that impacts the world at large but will probably sound metaphysical. The world is made up of vibrations and good sets off one sort and bad sets off other sorts. I believe that the more good we do, the more we impact the whole feel of the world around us. This starts in our own home– living with some order, kindness to ourselves and others, helpful words, balance and beauty when we can provide it and it extends outward from us to those who come into the home and then all the ones they impact. It spirals outward and even upward is my belief. The more people that think this way, that do good and don’t even remember later what they did, do not expect thanks or gratitude for what they did, the more the world will be changed and, of course, vice versa.
October 22nd, 2005 at 11:09 am
Wow, Rain, I really like what you’ve said - our good rippling outward and upward. That rings for me. Thanks for your comment.
Jen, if you only knew how much I can relate with what you’ve said.
Paul - YES. I totally agree with you.
And Phil, another really important issue - this question of whether some kinds of good are just a lot more important than other kinds of good…or at least a lot more urgently needed. Certain comparisons make the answer seem so obvious. And yet, something in me says it isn’t so simple. Lately I feel a check inside when I begin pronouncing in my mind whose suffering is worth caring most about, for example. Or whose is less urgent. A “don’t be so presumptuous” bell goes off.
Anyway, obviously more to think about. Thanks to all for getting all these wheels turning.