Define “good”.

I’m not Fred Rogers good. I know that much.

Negative, I am a meat popsicle.

Chaotic good

No. And I’m highly suspicious of anyone claiming to be.

I would say that I’m a good enough person.

I do the things that good people do because it feels like the right thing to do, up until the point where I feel like I’m risking overextending myself and then I stop doing that.

I feel bad when I do not do a good thing.

At the same time I know I have done bad things. I have accepted my fault in those situations and apologized to the people that I have hurt in the past and I am still trying to become a better person. So I am good enough to pass for a good person, but I am not an objectively purely good person.

But then again, no one is.

God, no. But I’ve been much worse.

I make it easy for someone to argue that I am.

But I’m also difficult and hard to connect with.

Overall yeah, I’m a pretty good person. I care about others, I give my time and money to those less fortunate, I try to be kind, non judgmental and helpful to everyone not just people I like. I’ve struggled a lot in my life mentally and physically, I grew up ugly and disabled and as cliche as it is to say it, it’s made me a better person.

What qualifies as good? Mother Theresa was seen as “good”. May she rest in piss.

I think my impact on the world is a nut positive. I make it a point to help other people when I can, I’ve given a bunch of strangers a jumpstart in the parking lot, helped them change a tire, gave a stranded bicyclist a lift home when his pedal broke, clear my schedule to help my friends move, put my shopping cart back the right way and even sometimes straighten out the ones that were carelessly pushed in the general direction of the cart corral by some degenerate, and generally try not to be a bother to others.

As for whether that makes me a good person, I think that’s kind of up for debate. At my core, my motivations tend to be pretty selfish. I do those good deeds because I want others to do the same kinds of things for me. If I need help moving, I can count on a small army of friends and acquaintances showing up to help me because I’ve always made time for them. I want to live in a world where other people treat me the right way, and if I’m not even willing to do that, why should I count on others to do that? Not that it’s all a 1:1 transactional thing, I don’t expect every good deed I do to directly come back around to benefit me, but I do kind of hope that I’m sort of kicking off a chain of “paying it forward” that maybe inspires even more people to do the same and eventually I get to be the recipient of some random acts of kindness.

So a lot of the time it’s not really some sort of selfless altruism that drives me to do the right thing, which is a big part of what people imagine when they think of a “good” person.

No. I’m a piece of shit.

Leonard Cohen’s last song released days before he died was called “You Want It Darker.” One of the verses is:

“They’re lining up the prisoners and the guards are taking aim, I struggled with some demons, they were middle class and tame, I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim, You want it darker, we kill the flame.”

Anyway, that’s me, in the middle class. I could be better, but however bad I am, I’m still on the tame level.

No, but i try.

Yes. I’m not perfect but I try to do positive things and minimize the harm/impact of my life on the world around me.

Most of the time. I work at being good, kind to strangers, kind to service people,kind to myself.