On Becoming Good
“ἄνδρ᾽ ἀγαθὸν μὲν ἀλαθέως γενέσθαι χαλεπόν”
“For a man to become good is indeed truly difficult”
-Simonides
It is easy to be good. It is hard to become good. This is how, in Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates explains an apparent contradiction in the great poet Simonides. When one is already good, life is easy, and all the effort and strength necessary to do what is right come naturally. But it is hard to get there.
The question of the ideal life is one common throughout the history of philosophy and is often vastly overcomplicated in its answers. Ethical theories which focus on one kind of action or another to the exclusion of others often results in wildly lopsided lives that most people would reject. “Moral saints” are respected, though not often emulated whether they are extreme utilitarians who shun all personal connections in the name or the highest goods or saints like Francis who deliberately sabotaged his medical treatment to better suffer for the glory of God. Part of the challenge of radical ethical theories is the call to be such an unconventional person.
For now I am going to bracket this question and instead focus on something more universal: a person who most people would say is good in an enviable and emulatable way. This more-or-less follows from accounts of Virtue Ethics: when Aristotle is describing the virtues in the Nicomachean Ethics he seems to have in mind someone who most male Athenians he engaged with would consider good. Such a criterion changes with time, place, and people considered. It might be extremely important to properly worship the Gods or to fight honorably in military campaigns or to keep one’s female family members properly ashamed. I will ignore this issue and try to focus on a slightly abstracted good life, but one especially that fits a somewhat affluent secular Western capitalist.
The ideal person is kind. They do good to those around them. They are a joy to be around. They are selfless, but their giving is done with personal happiness. They are bound by responsibilities and embody their roles with seriousness and joy. They prioritize their responsibilities well. They are diligent at work, putting the good of their team above their leisure time, but if there is a friend or family emergency and if someone needs to come to the hospital they will surely be there. They are courageous, never backing down from a challenge or difficulty because they fear the personal consequences. They are engaged with the world, giving to charity when they can and participating good-naturedly in politics and public discourse. They know and learn about the world and try to do good by it. They are efficient and organized, they are not scatter-brained. They do not waste but are still magnanimous when providing for others. They are honest with themselves and with others, they do not deceive out of selfishness and fear. They are a good friend to many. They are wise with advice. They put themselves in uncomfortable positions to advocate for what is right, but do not court martyrdom. They fall to anger rarely, only when justice is fully on their side and when anger is necessary to achieve that justice. They forgive readily and fully, and only discuss people’s flaws when it is for the best. They do not gossip, do not harbor ill-will. And they are modest.
The person described above exists. Imperfectly perhaps, but they certainly exist. Such people likely benefit from a certain amount of moral luck: they are likely to be more affluent, to have the luxury of generosity to give, and no demons to escape. Such people are also almost certainly not the true ideal of moral excellence: can one live in an unjust world so casually without changing it? One can live this way while ignoring God? While prioritizing just those socially close to them? But it is an ideal that many wonderful people have been able to embody and it is possible to at least address the above problems without rejecting the ideal. Which makes it frustrating that so few people live up to it.
In the Classical era when virtue was explicitly elevated, the great men of public renown were supposed to be the ideal. Solon, Cincinnatus, Cato, unimpeachable men who were a perfect picture of virtue at home and on the world stage. We have serious reason to doubt that they were so. Any well-researched biography of a modern public-man (and now public-woman) ends up revealing an immense amount of flaws: broken relationships, people sacrificed to personal vanity, petty arguments, and needless cruelties. Any modern US president ends up looking psychopathic with proper detail, especially prioritizing ego. MLK Jr, nearly a public saint and esteemed as such, seems to have been unable to properly honor his marriage (important) or academic honesty (less so, but why would so great a man need to copy other people’s work>). Based on how these figures have gone from ideals to complicated messes due mostly to detailed historical research, I would guess that the great figures of the past would end up the same if we had the proper evidence. Cincinnatus not only upheld the senatorial status quo, but likely had plenty of shameful dealings with his family and slaves. Perhaps Confucius failed to treat his daughters with proper respect. The contemporary Catholic Church seems to have no shortage of priests who have dedicated their lives absolutely to God but end up consumed in intellectually dishonest culture war rivalry or far worse criminal involvements, so it is not impossible to think the great saints of the past (whether Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, etc) had the same frailties. It is sad but necessary to acknowledge that our real ideals are only such because of the fiction that poor information enables.
This does not apply just to politicians and highly famous and successful people. If that were the case, the idea that virtue must be sacrificed for excellence would at least comfort those of us who lack excellence. When given proper opportunity, nearly everyone will expose themselves. When a person, even or especially an otherwise esteemed person, is revealed to have wronged someone in their past, we not expect to find that they have apologized or will apologize. People are selfish and vain by nature. Scientists will defend their faulty research with anger and force even if their mistake was innocent, pundits would rather change sides than ally with their rivals who personally wronged them. Our public world has made these patterns of vanity very clear.
The ideal person is able to be above all this: when they make a mistake they concede that they were wrong, they are so generous as to thank the corrector. If people attack them, they do not strike back. When others are down, they forgive. This is someone I have rarely seen, and the peculiar honor culture of social media may make it impossible for the ideal individual to have any policy other than abstention.
What makes this especially difficult to swallow is that these personal problems should not be impossible to solve. Someone who has done incredible work to advance human knowledge does not lack the willpower or the skills to forgive someone who was rude to them once on Twitter, but that incapacity is demonstrated again and again. People at the top of their careers should actually have the time and energy to fix this personal issues, but they don’t seem to want to. Part of this is that factional conflict has made a culture of anger more morally appealing, but I believe the deeper truth is that it is just very hard to change.
The world would be better if more people fit the ideal, but how to achieve that is very difficult to say. Increasing the supply of the moral luck is likely the biggest part of it, making people more secure in their emotions and basic needs allows virtue to become a bigger concern. It would also be wonderful if somehow we culturally shifted to valuing these virtues and above-all valued their pursuit. Most people consider themselves to be good, and the idea that they have some flaw is psychologically unacceptable to them. It is easy to be good, and they want to keep things easy. But we should all accept the hard work that it takes to become good and we ought to cultivate whatever is needed to forgive those who are still trying.
I consider myself a good person. But I am selfish, I am cowardly, I am inefficient, I am disorganized, I waste, I gossip, I deceive myself, I avoid confrontation and do what is easy, I avoid addressing negative emotions at cost to others, I cause needless hurt through inaction. I pray forgiveness for these and hope that I may be better.