If you don’t agree with the concept of good or bad people, you dont have to answer just down vote. If you think a person is good or bad based on where they were born and live you don’t have to answer just down vote.
Everybody has the capacity to be an asshole once in a while. To asshole is human.
But in general, people who go out of their way to stir shit up, or be an asshole/intentionally rude about something, then play the victim when they get called out for being an asshole. Waste of fucking space and energy. Just go live on a fucking island with all the other passive aggressive assholes.
The book “Sapiens” does a good job framing this. Humans are social creatures. Our social groups define their own norms, mores, values, etc. To be “good” is to align with those values. Clashes happen when groups with vastly different values interact. The old adage “if you were born where they were born, and you were raised how they were raised, then you would believe what they believe” applies here, even though this isn’t always true.
The Internet makes this problem more stark. Our groups aren’t based on location anymore; our neighborhood, our school, our church. We can find our group(s) that align with and reinforce us any time we want. It’s also upset the typical way we define our values, and our society is struggling to catch up.
So long way of saying, good or bad relies on context and the values of those you’re close with.
But fuck people who don’t return their shopping cart. They’re just plain bad.
Honestly, I just kind of pick up on it.
Most people aren’t good and they tend to get worse with age. The people who are good tend to have a hard time because of how awful the rest of us are.
Through their actions.
Empathy
Yep. Real fucking easy answer for me.
If someone tells you a story about how they lost their dog, if that person tries to one-up them, dismiss them, or hurts them… They’re a bad person. No negotiation.
What if someone tells you a story of how they lost their spider?
I would be sad. I’m an arachnophobe, but Spiders are magnificent.
Spider warning
Most people are good. Most people forget to be kind to others sometimes.
Some people forget to be kind to others more. I kinda don’t like that.
Some people need to cause others discomfort to feel like they are in control of their lives. I dislike that.
Some people feel that they have the right to or even should cause others discomfort because they have some kind of birthright granted by their religion, how aggressive their ancestors were, or some perception that they’ve worked harder than others. I feel that such people should either be rigorously reeducated or in some way removed from access to other humans entirely.
two things.
- how they treat other people
- what they don’t say
first one is pretty easy. don’t treat other people like pieces of shit, or you’re a piece of shit.
second one, when they see something happening that is wrong and do nothing. you’re a piece of shit.
How do they treat those that are “beneath” them? Customer service workers, pets, kids, etc. Anyone that they should have some sort of authority over.
This and the shopping cart test tells you a lot about a person.
In addition, how quick they are to declare others to be beneath them.
THIS is the answer. You can tell a lot about a person on how they treat people that they cannot use to make themselves richer or look better.
When you die, you will bring no money with you. You will bring no material items. Your words will be forgotten. Your name will eventually crawl its way back into the abyss of non-existence from where it came along with all the others. The ONLY thing that will have mattered in the slightest in your measly and momentary existence is how you made others feel. To live a life with any sort of self-importance is to rob yourself of the only thing that matters in the entirety of the known universe.
That’s definitely a big one for me.
It’s all about empathy. If they lack empathy or kindness then fuck them. I don’t want them in my life and I prefer not to interact with them.
Thats fair
One of my tests as I’ve grown older is whether or not that person is capable of treating someone else’s children as their own.
Both my father and step father did, so I didn’t realize how rare of an attribute this is, nor did I realize how evil not having this attribute can make some seemingly good people behave.
are their actions based on how they benefit them?
I also find it important to consider what they think of as “benefitting themselves”.
If good vs bad is dependent upon their actions, then someone extremely selfish can be seen as “good”, just if they have enough ability to think long term and desire a future that would end up making them act “good”.
If good vs bad is dependent upon their thoughts, then good luck finding out what people think. What they say will be completely different from what they think and a lot of them just realise they can easily get away with contradicting themselves as long as they do so in front of someone powerless.
If they harm other people, intentionally or not, physically, emotionally, etc. And they could stop but choose not to, then often they are a bad person.
Fair
Easy. By what they say and do.
I assume everyone is good by default, and I’ll usually let a tasteless joke slide once, because we all occasionally put our foot in mouth.
If their actions and words don’t mesh with my own moral compass, they aren’t a person I associate with any more than necessary.
Id agree
Although philosophers who embrace moral realism will have different views, my takeaway is that it is much harder to be a virtuous moral agent than the layperson assumes.
That said, if I find that a person often puts their own interests above those of everyone else, this is a good indication of questionable character.
This you?
Ha! In a few ways, yes.
This is why everyone hates moral philosophy professors
That makes sense
It’s not all or nothing, and small things are universally tolerable. Gluttony isn’t good but most people have someone fat/obese they love and even admire. Excess vanity isn’t good but to a certain degree most women are somewhat vain and that doesn’t make them bad (and men enjoy looking at women when they’re done up too), right? It’s impossible to be perfect, and virtue will be disregarded at times, but I think it’s not that difficult to be above the threshold we all naturally understand (unless you’re an amoral perspectivist): don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t be coercive or aggressive, don’t mistreat others, take your vows seriously (raise your kids and try to make things work with your partner), be generous when possible, etc etc. And you can always repent and make amends when you fail too, people understand.
It’s impossible to be perfect, and virtue will be disregarded at times, but I think it’s not that difficult to be above the threshold we all naturally understand
This is a practical mindset to have but allow me to say more about where I think the difficulty lies. 1) We commonly do immoral things. 2) The right thing to do isn’t always clear. Let’s consider each in turn.
- Many practices are so commonplace in our time that we no longer feel their moral implications: even when we know that the action is wrong! For example, I eat meat that comes from factory farmed animals; I know that the animals are essentially being tortured, but it’s easy to let price and gustatory pleasure outweigh the moral considerations because everyone else is doing the same. Similarly, I know that the minerals (e.g., cobalt) used to build my cellphone come from literal slave labor of miners in the Congo. Yet instead of buying a Fair Phone, I bought the cheapest phone that served my own needs.
- There are also cases in which our virtues come into conflict. In such cases, the right action to take is not always so straight-forward. For example, is it okay to tell my wife a white lie if I know it makes her feel better? (Deontologists like Immanuel Kant would emphatically answer “no”.) Or, if I have a set amount of money to donate, should I give the money to a random unhoused person, donate the money to someone (who I cannot see) in an even worse position in a poorer country, or give the money to a friend/family? Moral realists (e.g., virtue ethicists, deontologists, consequentialists) all agree that there are definitive answers to these questions, even though they will disagree on what the actual answers are.
To be a morally virtuous persons, it seems you have to be willing to go against the common practices of your own time and you must also be knowledgeable enough to make correct moral judgements. This is a tall order for most of us to achieve.
If they lie all the time, they are probably willing to do other awful things as well.
If they are willing to steal outside of a desperate situation, if they treat someone who’s been good to them awful, if they treat those beneath them awfuly, if they judge based on location, race, etnicity, etc. If they put whatever fantasy world they live in, over reality (antivaxxers and such, and yes religious people).
If they co-operated with Jeffrey Epstein, they only belong in the woodchipper.
I’d mostly agree but would need to hear more about your view on religious people I guess.
Antivaxx mom let’s baby die of mumps, because God wanted us to live (and die) natural lives, India citizen drinks infected, dirty lake water, because “holy water can’t be dirty”.
Ok, so you found some way to cope with life, and you believe in some deity or whatever, that’s a you thing. But then, you start getting people killed over what is a belief, when you can clearly see with your own eyes that it is not working.
Was it really worth it?
