Good people - Who are they?

They are the ones who believe in the good in people and who help them to rediscover their goodness in case they forgot.

Good people try to help others whenever they can. that’s their motivation in life – instead of getting as much money/power/sex etc. for themselves as possible like so many others.

Good people are those that make other people better. Doesn’t matter how or why.

Good people look for ways to help someone else on a daily basis and then do it. My daughter comes to mind. It all comes back to her, too.

Some people are better than others at overriding their selfish impulses. This is a mental skill that requires development and exercise.

We all have primitive urges which, if expressed as action, would cause harm to others and ourselves. But we also have the mental hardware—the prefrontal cortex—to overrule those urges. It’s the prefrontal cortex that understands that our actions have consequences, and takes those consequences into consideration before acting.

Thsi was dramatically demonstrated by the case of Phineas Gage, a fine, upstanding citizen whose prefrontal cortex was destroyed in a work accident. He suddenly became an unrestrained asshole. It’s not that this asshole-ness wasn’t always there—it had just been held in check by the restraining effect of the prefrontal cortex.

Study after study has shown that the prefrontal cortex really doesn’t fully come online until adulthood, and that how effectively it controls impulses depends very much on how much it is exercised early on in life.

But self-restraint is just one piece of f the “goodness” picture.The other piece is compassion, the sense that your own well-being is intimately linked with the well-being of others. Compassion emerges when the perceived separation between “me” and “you” stops looking so solid. Then I no longer see what happens to you as being just your problem. I then want you to be happy, because that is my happiness too.

Compassion, like self-restraint, is a resource that we all have access to, but it too has to be nurtured and sensitized.

Good people do the right thing, even when no one is looking. They have a sense of compassion and empathy for others and they have a sense of morality.

People with good intentions do bad things at times. Intentions are a dubious measure of good, I think. Intentions to do good are always qualified by the notion of good for whom? Good for me may be bad for you and vice versa. If I set out only to do good for others, sacrificing myself, is that really good? Is it good to hurt yourself for others? All the time?

Good and bad are always judgments, and the result of the judgment will depend on the place the judge is standing in. Every action has consequences and those consequences affect others differentially.

Let’s say I bring food to the homeless in the park. That seems like a good thing. But what if, because I bring food to the homeless in the park, they decided to stay in the park instead of going to a shelter. As a result, they do not get meds they need and they don’t get into permanent shelter and they don’t have a chance to get well, and become self-sustaining and productive.

Instead, they stay in the park, and one night a snap cold spell comes and one of them freezes to death in the night. Because of my good deed. My intentions were good. I wanted to help. But the way I helped led to death, and the loss of an important invention this person would have made had they survived.

I don’t think we ever really know the consequences of our actions and I don’t believe we are really equipped to render judgment about good and bad. I think the best we can do is say whether something is good for us at this moment, or not.

I think people often make judgments about other—this is good for you or this is bad for you. Ok, you have good intentions, but frankly, You really don’t know. You make the judgment not to have a baby because it will have cystic fibrosis. You decide that a life full of back pounding that ends at the age of 26 is too short and too painful and you’ll save that person that pain by not letting them ever live.

I say you do not know. You can not know whether that person would rather not live. You can’t make a decision on that basis. You can only make decisions on the basis of how you think things affect you.

Good people, I think,look first to how choices affect them. They look secondarily to see how those choices might affect others. You might ask others what they think. But your first job is to look to yourself, and you want to make decisions that minimize harm to others, but you have to realize that there will be times when your good will mean harm for others and there’s no way around it.

You don’t intend harm for others, exactly, but really, after a certain point, you can’t prevent it. You can’t see it. And even that doesn’t resolve you of intent or of responsibility. Good people, I believe, will try to make things better when they have caused harm. They will take responsibility for their actions and seek to fix problems.

Good people will try to hold the good of the many in mind when they make their choices. This does not mean they will make good choices, but when they make bad ones, they will try to fix them. That is how, I think, you can tell who is good—by what they do about the harm they create.

Sometimes, people will have the best intent in the world, but because they are stupid, they will create harm, and they will continue to create harm for others when they try to fix their mistakes. For them, the thing they can do to show they are good is to stop trying to fix mistakes. They can recognize they are incapable of doing good, and perhaps put themselves in someone else’s hands.

But in the end, good and bad are not real. They are social constructs that change all the time. No one, especially not me, knows what they are talking about, I think.

I have found that most people are basically good. Some people are extraordinary like a community activist who was recently robbed and murdered in Alexandria, VA. And a few are self-centered, and thus, bad.

Well, this past Sunday I was driving on I75 from FL to GA, and when we crossed into GA we stopped at the tourist welcome center and restrooms. I like to make pit stops in those places, to pick up some maps and brochures and use the facilities.

We did our thing, and then about 90 miles north when we stopped for gas I realized I left my purse in the bathroom at the welcome center! I have never ever done such a thing. I have never left anything important anywhere. I quickly started cancelling my credit cards while my husband tried to reach local police to contact someone who might be able to unlock the welcome center (it was already nightime and it was closed by the time we realized my purse was missing) and maybe check the bathrooms and area for my bag. To make the long story short, the police contacted the person who works in the welcome center, she called us back and said someone had found my purse, turned it in, and she had it. Skipping all the details, everything seemed to be in my purse when returned. Two pairs of sunglasses, one pair were Prada, my husband money clip with $300, my wallet with over $100, and a small bag of some medication I carry with me, plus lipsicks. All my creidt cards were there also, but I did cancel them and get new numbers.

The person who turned in my purse, the police, and the woman who worked at the center are all good people. Also, my husband for not freaking out at my mistake.

Good people are those who can put themselves in other peoples shoes, who treat others as they would want to be treated.

Nobody is truly Good, but some are better than others. Generally, a “good” person is one who puts the well-being of others ahead of his own now and then.

@marinelife What’s so extraordinary about being robbed and murdered?

I’m one.

“Good people” are those who consider others to be as worthy of love and respect as they themselves are. “Good people” are those who teach this to their children. “Good people” are those who work hard to provide for their families, who try to treat others as they themselves would like to be treated, who try to help others in need as they are able to do so, and who evaluate others by standards of behavior as opposed to skin color, the language they speak, or any other superficial characteristics.

Sartre said that we create a moral code through our actions. He said that the question was not whether or not we are good but whether a person applies the same standard to himself that he applies to others. If I do not lend a hand to someone in need then I should not expect help if the circumstances were reversed. If a person lies and steals then the person is not in a position to complain if others do the same to him. The question then is not so much of goodness but of consistency.

“Good” people are those that practice honesty and integrity in their dealings with others, have enough self esteem to handle confrontation and take responsibility for their actions. They are relatively free of serious neurosis and mental/emotional health issues and strive for good communication and win/win solutions. They are self aware and don’t confuse their stuff with others.

“Bad” people are low of self awareness, unconscious and mostly oblivious to how their words and actions effect others. They often have unhealed emotional wounds that cause them to behave in harmful and childish ways, have horrible communication skills and taking responsibility is only a concept in their minds, not an affirmative action.
Most “Bad” people are victims of untreated mental and emotional health issues and while still responsible, really, they are so in the duh that how they behave is the only way they know, therefore, most of the time their behavior is not intentionally malicious ( there are exceptions ) and more a product of their extreme disconnect from self and lack of motivation to work on their issues.

Short of sociopathic drives I think it best to re-frame “bad” as ignorant and unconscious.

Good people are those that treat others as they would wish to be treated, and have a positive self image.

All people are good and bad… kidding
I think the good ones are the ones who do good things, namely:

Be kind
Share what they have, and know
Give up occasionally and let other people win because other people like to win too.
Support their friends in the things the friends find important, mostly in the way the friends want, but sometimes in other ways.
They make excuses for their friends acting badly, but not for themselves.

Like that.

You, I and everyone else. Basically, we’re all good at our core. Obviously I don’t mean that everyone always acts on this and it may very well be the case that many people have blocked that part of themselves off.

I gave someone whom I didn’t know a ride to NY, and she prepared snacks for the trip, had a pleasant disposition, and apparently had made a mental list of subjects for chit chat along the way, she struck me as a genuinely good person: Considerate, personable, and interactive.

<—- Good people.

A good person is a loving person with no evil intentions. Your right that you can still do something bad without intending to but the same goes the other way. Just doing no wrong, doesn’t make you a good person either.

A good person is someone who does things with the puriest intentions of bettering the lives of those around them. Even if it means having to make a sacrifice of something they feel will make their lives happier.

Example. There are people who give money for the homeless but only give a portion of what they have as assets because they want money to spend on unneccessary items. No this does not make them bad. But it doesn’t make them a saint either.

Then there are the people who do give all their change in their pocket. and know it may be a bit of a struggle but they know someone else needs it worse than they do, or if they don’t have much to give at all, than they will volunteer or raise money for the homeless. That is truly a really good person.

If it were easy to be good than everyone would be good and there would be no hatred, or wars, or anger in the world.

Good people do not covet their neighbors donkey. lol

I determine a person is “good” by the fruit of their spirit. Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness and temperance.

Good people are those who help others without hesitation. They treat others with kindness, even those they disagree with.

.. dichotomies like good or bad are, to me, problematic. We like it because it’s clear-cut, it’s shiningly exemplified, like in the comics universe where criminals are all bad and Batman/Spiderman/Superman clearly exemplifies the good. But it’s morality assumed from whose point of view?

Prompt by circumstance, all of us have the potential to yield full expression to any behavior imaginable. Are we all good or are we all bad? Are we both or are we neither? Who punishes whom? Are you bad if you don’t pay tax to corrupted government? Are you unkind when you lie to protect someone’s feelings? What if you steal for sustenance because you truly, genuinely believe that you do not have a choice? Are you evil because you eat pork, something the God in your neighbor’s religious text says is wrong to do?

Shifting the focus of the discussion a bit, I think a more pragmatic guideline would be whether you are harming anyone, whether you are keeping a personal responsibility for your thoughts, words, and actions. In other words, you do not spill the toxin. In which case, maybe you’re not a “good” person—you can call it however you want—but from your action it’s evident that you are responsible and accountable.

And of course, a step further would be to relate to other people’s universe, to their point of view… “Do to thy neighbor..”

A good person is a person who asks himself at the end of each day:

How did I behave today?
What I did today was really good?
Do I need to be better than others? or I should be same like I am and I was.

A “good” person gets up at 2:30 in the morning to go wander around the woods with a flashlight looking for their wayward cat who didn’t come home. She who sacrifices her beauty sleep in the name of small furry animals. lol ( Yes, I found him, and now it is a delightful 4:31 am and I am coming down off the adrenaline fueled moonlight trek.haha )