How to Try Not to Be Bad

How to Try Not to Be Bad

I called my blog “How to (Try to) Be Good,” but in some ways that’s a misleading title. This post is about why I think it’s right to give (I’m still using this word ‘give,’ but I mean it very broadly—including monetary giving, but also giving time, including lifestyle choices that are made with an eye toward making the world a better place). Doing good can mean a few different things, although we don’t usually think about possible distinctions. In particular, I’m going to try to make a distinction between ‘doing good’ and ‘not doing bad’.

Some people think that these two categories are identical, and maybe they are. I’m inclined to think that they’re not, however, and although if you asked someone at random on the street they might say that they think the two are the same, if you actually tried to tease out their understanding, they’d probably draw a distinction between the two. Ok, enough abstraction for a minute, let’s consider two examples.

You’re walking down the street and the person walking in front of you is carrying a couple of big bags of groceries. One of them rips and its contents go everywhere, rolling away from the owner and toward the street. Many people would try to help this person pick up their belongings and help them to keep their things from being crushed by cars. Why would we do this? Not because we owe it to this person or because it would be malicious of us not to, but because we want to do something good, or we want to be nice.

Now that you’ve helped this poor person collect their belongings from the sidewalk, you get in your car and back out of the parking space. You aren’t paying attention as you hit the gas (you’re still thinking about that person you just helped with their groceries), and you hit a person walking behind you who also happens to be carrying two big bags of groceries. You get out of the car and see that their groceries are everywhere. Again, many people would try to help them collect their belongings. Why? Not because they want to do something nice, but because they want to make an attempt at rectifying the wrong that they have done.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that there is a difference in how we think about the good that we do for the sake of doing good, and the good that we do for the sake of not doing wrong to others. Now, to the point of this post: why is ‘trying to be good’ important for me as an individual? You guessed it: two reasons.

First, because I think that it’s good to help other people. I know I would want the same if I were in their shoes. The limits of this help are a topic for another time: obviously we can’t spend 24 hours a day trying to aid others, but we can all do something to help. In any case, part of why I give is because I think that even in a world where there is no other reason, the fact that someone is dying of hunger and I can help stop it is reason enough.

The second reason is one that more people may find compelling: we are actually harming other people through our actions all the time. Just like I think that I should stop and help someone if I hit them with my car, I think that I should do what I can for someone whose poverty I’m partly to blame for.

This doesn’t just apply to poverty either: all sorts of things we do indirectly contribute to harmful effects on others. Not doing anything to change our actions means that we’re doing wrong and not doing anything to right it. Most people have a pretty good idea of what it would be ‘nice’ to do. People know that they could do more, give more, or make life changes for the better, but they’d rather not think about it, so they opt not to. Most of us are comfortable (or just a little uncomfortable) with that option if it’s a matter of just being nice or not, but if we’re talking about people that we’ve hit with our metaphorical cars, we need to take a second look.

This is getting long already, so I’ll just give one example for now: books. Let me just say, I love books. I like to buy them, I like to read them, I like to put them on my bookshelves. Incidentally, books are made of paper, and unless the publisher of a particular book happens to be on the conscientious end of the spectrum, the books we buy are coming from paper made from the trees of so-called virgin forests. This means that when we buy books, we’re contributing to deforestation. This deforestation is happening around the world (and has many causes aside from books). Not only does this lead to the extinction of many animals as their habitats are destroyed, but it causes problems for the people (frequently poor) who live around those forests. Deforestation leads to flooding, changes in weather patterns, loss of renewable resources, and soil erosion. When I buy a book, I am hurting people. My best alternative (e-books may be better than material books, but given the substantial issues regarding e-waste, I’m not going there just yet) is probably going to the library instead of buying new—and that’s my next step in trying to be good.

I’ll talk about some other ways we harm people without knowing it in future posts.