Abolish the Good Person
In recent years, there is a growing demand to abolish oppressive structures such as the police and settler colonial nation states. To abolish means to formally end or do away with a practice, system, or institution. I would like to suggest that we also abolish the Good Person.
Defining the Good Person
First, what is a Good Person? This concept is ambiguously and widely defined to include characteristics such as honest, polite, moderate, and generous, as well as behaviours such as calling parents regularly and smiling (see here and here). Right away, we can observe the cultural influences in these definitions that value certain ways of being above others. I am not saying that these characteristics are bad or wrong. However, we must remain critical about what is deemed “good” because conceptualizations of “goodness” have significant impacts on how we regard ourselves and others.
Interestingly, the Good Person is mostly considered in dominant society to be a static quality; either you are a Good Person, or you are a Bad Person, and in this way, it becomes an unreachable goal that demands perfection. Both perfectionism and binary either/or thinking are tenets of white supremacy culture. White supremacy culture is defined as the norms or standards that prop up white supremacy, which may show up in the beliefs and behaviours of anyone regardless of race. For example, anyone can expect people to strive to be perfect as any missteps are viewed as marks on a person’s character. It can also show up as expectations that people always say the correct thing and use the right language. While it could be motivating for some, this can foster fear of messing up, including in social justice movements.
Perfectionism is directly related to binary thinking because you are either flawless, or you are flawed, at least in appearance. Binary thinking also creates stories about the difference between Good People and Bad People with no crossover. One way I notice this happening is in the train of thought that follows the logic of: Being Racist is something Bad People do, but I’m a Good Person, so I am Not Racist. From my experience, this tends to lead to defensiveness and an unwillingness to engage in critical conversation because it is considered threatening to one’s sense of self.
Consequences of the Good Person
The idea of the Good Person is not neutral. It can have real life consequences. As described above, it continues to uphold white supremacy culture and ethnocentric conceptualizations of goodness. This particularly impacts Indigenous, racialized, and other marginalized peoples who have been demonized as uncivilized and/or “backwards.” The way we are pressured to aspire to being a Good Person with certain cultural connotations flattens the richness of our full personhood.
This dynamic is further complicated by racial hierarchies and power structures that expect racialized people to be subservient or submissive to white people. Several times over the course of my life, a white person has quickly deemed me a Good Person to a Bad Person because I spoke about racism or challenged their white privilege. Often, it does not matter how kindly, gently, or rationally I do so because the very act of speaking about racism is often construed as inherently impolite or aggressive.
In addition, I fear notions about and desires to be a Good Person get in the way of liberation. With the emphasis on being a Good Person, I notice people are distracted by optics and the appearance of being a Good Person rather than participating in justice-oriented actions and relationships. Not only do people focus their attention on being viewed as a Good Person, but they also seem to be paralyzed by the fear of being labelled a Bad Person. As such, from my observations, this fear stops people from making any movement to avoid making a mistake or misstep.
Alternative Models of Being
First, I want to note that I offer these alternatives as possibilities, not prescriptions.
Dialecticism. This is a fancy word for both/and frameworks rather than either/or. It is common among East Asian Confucian belief systems and allows space for the acceptance of contradiction, fluidity, and constant change. For example, Yin and Yang symbolizes how two things that are seemingly opposites can co-exist together. Rather than working to be a Good Person, perhaps it is more useful to recognize that sometimes we are helpful and sometimes we are harmful, and that is part of being a person. Dialecticism encourages us to consider people more holistically and in context. Thus, individuals are neither good nor bad, but rather much more complex with multiple truths.
Transformative Justice. Transformative justice is a way of responding to transgressions that does not rely on punishment; rather, it endeavours to get to the root of the conditions of harm. As such, it assumes that everyone has the capacity to transform through accountability, consent, and community. Transformative justice knows that every person is capable of causing or exacerbating harm because it is a very human thing to make mistakes and hurt others. Instead of emphasizing who can be deemed a Good Person or a Bad Person, transformative justice invites us to build relationships of accountability so that when we do inflict harm, we move to intentionally repair that connection.
Fractals. Fractals exist all around us in nature and are an important part of Emergent Strategy, a model of changing complex systems through relatively simple interactions. Just as each individual cell in our bodies creates the entire systems of our bodies, each of us as individuals create larger systems together. Every fractal is significant and the whole is greater than the sum of all parts. As such, we contribute to so much around us, even just by existing. Rather than focusing on being a Good Person, perhaps we can understand ourselves as containing many parts and that the everyday acts of care we embody are more meaningful than trying to fit on one side of a Good Person/Bad Person binary.
Reflections as a Counsellor
The entire concept of being a Good Person is particularly significant to me as a counsellor. In addition to bringing the values of dialecticism, transformative justice, and emergent strategy to my relationships, including counselling relationships, I also focus this practice with myself. For a long time, and sometimes even still, I have questioned whether I am a Good Enough Good Person to be a counsellor. Despite my ability to think logically about it, I felt shame, guilt, fear, and grief when I considered if I have done too many bad things to be worthy of being someone’s counsellor.
From my experience, counsellors and other helping professionals can be put on pedestals with expectations that we act from higher morals. I understand this often comes from a place of trust and expectation that the people who help us are Good People. However, I worry that it does not give us, practitioners and service receivers, room to be human.
Over time, I have very intentionally worked on these feelings and the wounds that poke at this insecurity. I remind myself that I am a human before I am a counsellor. I have hurt people, including people I love immensely. I have acted from a place of trauma in destructive ways, and I can be certain that I will cause harm again in the future. I take deep breaths as I accept and respond to these truths; I take deep breaths as I gently remind myself that these truths do not disqualify me from being a counsellor, advocate, or community member.
I invite you to also show up as fully you without fear of trying to fit within the category of a Good Person. I invite you to also show up with all parts of you.
Conclusion
The concept of being a Good Person has stories, structures, and industries built around it as people seek to reach Good Person status. However, I worry that the Good Person causes more damage than we might initially assume and it ultimately does not serve us. With careful reflection and critical thought, I offer this humble blog post as an outline of why I believe we ought to abolish the Good Person. Instead, I hope we can make space for our whole, complex, messy selves through relationships founded on mutual care, accountability, solidarity, and emergence.
What are your thoughts and feelings on this?
PS thank you Natasha V for editing this piece! :)
Frog leaf, an introduced plant, reminds us the importance of relationship and care.
