My second entry: Morals, intentions and whatever else that I come up with while writing this.
Intention and morals; this is a subject I think I've been wrestling with for a while, at least since my prepubescent years. This is something that has majorly impacted my mindset, how I act and what I believe in.
Keep in mind, these are my thoughts, and it's fine if you disagree with me. This is just how I work.
To me, intentions are very important. Regardless if society considers your actions as good, it won't decide if you are actually a good person. In my opinion, if you only do good things for your own benefits, you aren't this hero that should be upheld as an example of how a person should be in society.
Because regardless of your actions, your intentions by the end of the day were selfish. And that is fine, this is how the world works. The economy is driven by self-interest, the drive for consumption, and so on. We don't have to ignore this reality to acknowledge the fact that doing a good thing doesn't automatically make you a "good" person.
Yes, you can be nice, but how do we usually define what a "good person" is?Your definition may be different from mine, but this is my list of characteristics of what a good person is;
- Regardless of what society thinks, does what one thinks is the right (moral) decision. AKA principled.
Now, keep in mind that when I say "a good person is xxx", I mean all these characteristics combined. A person can act nice, and still not be a good person. A nice person CAN be selfish. A person doesn't HAVE to be principled or empathetic to ACT nice. Because "nice" is something we see as a behaviour (although "nice" behaviour-wise may change depending on culture).
When we combine kind with selfless, this person is truly somebody who cares about others and isn't just kind to exploit others. When we combine kind and selfless with principled and empathetic, we see a person who does what he or she thinks is right out of kindness and empathy, and not because they think they will get something out of society or because they otherwise are afraid of being punished by society.
To ME, this is a good person. And this is something I TRY to live after. Of course, there's countless of other characteristics that you can add to this to make a good person even "better", but this is just my general frame of how to define a good person.
So now, if we go back to what I said, that it's fine that you're not a good person... today, it has become really important for people, companies and organisations to express their morals, how good they are, how "right" they are and so on. Are they truly good when they have to scream how good they are? Or do they do this for the benefits they may gain from society?
If a company says that they sell items and that xxx amount of dollars will go to donation, is the company truly good, or is this a way to get more people to buy their product so they can get more profit? Sure, a company could be driven by values, but by the end of the day, a company will not survive and/or grow unless it profits.
Now let's apply this to people. When people say "I did [insert good cause]!", is this truly because they want to spread a message and encourage others to do the same, or is it for the attention they may get for being "such a good person"?
Yes, you could scream and say "What does it matter as long as the results are good!?"
Well, what if we blindly supported a cause to look good without looking at the consequences? Some may be screaming “but the results are good” without even looking at the results.
This is where the problems come from.
Example: Donate your clothes to Africa! You don't even need to know what happens in the clothes! But you feel good, knowing you "did the right thing". Who knows? Maybe you can put out a picture of you doing it on social media?
Consequences: Local small businesses in Africa lose customers because customers can get free clothes from a nearby organisation, leading to further poverty as small businesses have to close down and more people end up unemployed, which means the locals are even more dependent on NGOs.
Yes, your intention here may be a good thing. But a lot of people may not have been here to do the right thing. Maybe they're just here to give themselves an ego-boost so they can give themselves excuses when they do something bad.
Now, I think it's fine if you want to do the right thing, or if you want to do the right thing purely for the ego-bost. But when we uphold "good" actions, which are truly selfish as heroic and the way to be, it becomes problematic. Because then, everybody is busy being the hero, without knowing what happens behind the scenes. Without knowing how they impact society as a whole, not only in the countries they live in, but also, abroad.
If you really want to help, donate responsibly. Look up the organisations and what they do. Look at research-data. See what the long-term impacts of the organisations' work have been in the local area where they are stationed. Don't just donate to whatever organisation that looks good because it looks good.
So hopefully, you're able to follow my post. Sometimes, I tend to jump from one subject to another, and sometimes others don't seem to get how I connect my dots. It's just that today, we're all so busy being SJW, PC or whatever, we don't even stop to think if what we're doing is actually good, or if we're doing it to just look good and be "woke". Do our actions really make a good change in society? With good intentions, we should care if our actions have impacted others negatively. But if we're so busy being "woke", SJW, PC, or whatever to realise what we're doing to others, then we're not heroes. We're not good people. We're just having our heads too deep stuck up our asses to see that we're harming others, and not helping.
We're too busy looking good.