“Who Wants to Be a Good Person?” April 23, 2023 Dr. Roger Ray
Zoroastrianism defines a good person as some who can: Think good thoughts. Speak good words. Do good deeds. Humata, Hukhta, Hvarshta
I will readily confess that I spend way too much time correcting people on social media who post memes that attribute trite modern proverbs to Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, or other ancient Greek philosophers. People see a quote that somehow warms the cockles of their hearts, and they want to share it with others but to make it seem more important, they try to plant the genesis of the saying 2000 years ago in the mouths of generally recognized great minds from the dawn of philosophy.
I don’t think that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle really need for me to defend their reputation but sometimes it just seems like I need to explain to this generation that Plato doesn’t give a damn about the cockles of your heart, and you should just stop lying about him.
But I was surprised by the reversal in this commonly shared meme that attributes the saying, “I was in darkness, but I took three steps and found myself in paradise. The first step was good thought; the second, a good word; and the third a good deed" to Friedrich Nietzsche. That saying is not trite, in fact, I would say that it is on a short list of the most important pieces of wisdom in the world. It is just that Nietzsche not only never said that, but he also never got out of the darkness. He did say that “thoughts become deeds” but that is obviously true, so true, in fact, that he can’t really claim that it is statement he would have any right to claim was unique to him.
What I encounter daily is people trying to attribute a trite modern saying to an ancient philosopher. In this case, someone tried to attribute an ancient piece of profound wisdom to a modern philosopher who never would have said this and, in fact, might have said something quite the opposite. So far as we know, this idea of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds being the three elements of a good life, or if you into rewards and punishments, these are the three steps to eternal bliss, comes from the ancient Persian prophet, Zoroaster, who probably would have been a contemporary of Moses, presuming that either actually existed as a single person. But the idea is at least foundational to ancient Zoroastrianism.
It would be rather more difficult to say if the 19th century philosopher, Nietzsche, would have been willing to even discuss what it meant to be a “good” person. He was concerned with what he called the “ubermensch” or superman. Nietzsche lived in a time when the Christian religion was losing the social power that it had held in previous centuries in Europe. Many people were happy to see the role of religion diminished and others were increasingly just indifferent about it. For Nietzsche, the decline of Christianity was both a good thing and a dangerous prospect.
His ubermensch was not a superman of comic book powers. He just believed that people should begin to rise above the values of outdated religions and even social norms. That to become the ubermensch we need to become the best version of ourselves, opening our minds and hearts to all that we could experience and become. Of course, one of the dangers of knowing just a little bit about philosophy is that you can misinterpret or over-interpret what a philosopher is trying to say.
Many people take Nietzsche to be something of a selfish libertarian, and, admittedly, there is a way to see that suggestion in his writing, especially if you are a 19-year-old college student who is tired of living by their parents’ rules anyway. But he was not a precursor to either Ayn Rand or Adolph Hitler, though both liked to claim Nietzsche as an inspiration. Hitler and Rand should have read a little deeper.
Nietzsche was concerned with each of us charting our own path and becoming our best selves, which was primarily a selfish concern, but he also warned against the chaos that could come from the collapse of religion. He is often credited with declaring that “God is dead,” but it would be more accurate to say that Nietzsche accused society of living as if God were dead, that is, living without a moral compass, a sense of personal responsibility, and some sense that what is good for me cannot cause great harm to others.
Look, most of us would likely quickly agree that Mother Theresa was a good person and Charles Manson was a bad person. And if you wanted to make a really bad grade in my introduction to philosophy class, you might even try to argue that Mother Theresa was the embodiment of Zoroaster’s injunction to “think good thoughts, speak good words, and do good actions,” and Charles Manson was the ultimate ubermensch because he certainly overcame religious and social inhibitions to live by his own standards. But let’s face it, not many of us are made of the kind of stuff that would make living Mother Theresa’s life possible and I hope that none of us have any real potential of engaging in the kind of ritual cult murders associated with Charles Manson.
We do not live at the extremes of either sainthood or demonic character, even if, in the most literal way, we all contain the potential to be either one. We tend to live more in the middle, with a certain amount of altruism, being empathetic and good towards others, and at times being selfish and self-serving.
Like Nietzsche’s concern about his peers in the late nineteenth century, I am worried about my 21stcentury peers just losing interest in even striving to be good. I am afraid that we no longer really value being people of character or even striving to be good people.
Listen, in November of 2016 I was in Belize, scuba diving with my daughter and a couple of friends. We went to bed on election night, confident that there was no way that a corrupt con man like Donald Trump could win the presidential election. We were all sure that his nomination was a one-off, a fluke, just a national embarrassment. But he won.
My daughter cried. My friends drank all of the liquor in the house. And I sat in shock and in horror but as the days went by and reality of it all set in, I consoled myself with the conviction that no one like Trump could survive in office for more than a few weeks. I was certain that his constant lying, his corrupt deals and immoral relationships would have him impeached and out of office in a matter of weeks. That was the last time that I allowed myself to believe in the basic goodness of America.
Because over the following months and years we saw what kind of person that Trump was, a man for whom cheating on his pregnant third wife with a porn star was, quite literally, among the least of his offenses . . . to the point that even Evangelical Christians continue to say that there was nothing wrong with what he did and that he is the president chosen by God for our time. The people who wanted to run Bill Clinton out of office for an extra marital affair in the early 1990’s, seemed to have become completely immune to moral outrage 25 years later.
The Washington Post actually kept a daily counter of how many public lies that Trump told. By the time his presidency ended, their counter was over 30,000. That’s 21 a day! I honestly don’t know how they kept up . . . it would be like trying to keep count of how many people John Wick shoots in a three-hour long movie. For both Trump and Wick, I can tell you, it is more than your fingers and toes.
And the religious right and many people in the Republican party, after seeing all of the corruption, emoluments, all of the misogyny and racism, all of the tens of thousands of lies, they just didn’t care. And Lindsey Graham still wants us all to send this pretend billionaire our money for his legal defense fund.
I don’t want to waste any more of my time talking about Trump, but I mention him here to illustrate what kind of culture he has held the door open for.
All three Supreme Court Justices appointed by Trump, in their Senate hearings, referred to the nearly 50-year-old Roe v Wade court decision that made access to abortion legal in the United States as being “settled law.” In fact, the 48-year-old, slender ardent Catholic, Amy Coney Barrett, said in her 2020 Senate hearing that, Roe was one of those “Cases (that) are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling.” Lying is now acceptable for a “good Catholic” if lying helps her to impose her personal religious convictions on the 80% of us who do not agree with her. Not a single Catholic priest, bishop, or cardinal has even mentioned the fact that on this crucial issue, Barrett lied like a cheap rug. I think that is disgusting, but the Church seems to think that this kind of dishonesty is worthy of praise. It appears that Nietzsche was right, we are living as if God was dead, especially the Roman Catholic Church. Please forgive me if I seem a bit disappointed about this.
I get that religious people are going to passionately disagree about many of the moral decisions to be made in our society. I understand that Mormons are opposed to smoking, they don’t drink alcohol, and they don’t even drink caffeine. But Mormons are not trying to make it illegal for me to have a cigar with a Red Bull and Vodka for breakfast. Now, I should hasten to say that I have never had a cigar with a Red Bull and vodka for breakfast, but should I suddenly be struck with the urge, Mitt Romney is not going to send the police to my kitchen to stop me.
But when it comes to a woman making her own decisions about her own reproductive health, good Catholics and Evangelicals do want to send the police over to your house to put a stop to that.
And since that is a decision that would have to come out of the Supreme Court, prospective justices have felt that it was totally within their rights to lie about it in order to be put in a position to cast that vote.
They have every right to disagree with me about whether the embryo in a woman’s womb in the first month of pregnancy is a person or just a potential person. But can’t we agree on the basics that we have to tell the truth about it?
People have been all exercised about impeaching Clarence Thomas because he has accepted millions of dollars in gifts from right wing Republicans who are clearly bestowing these gifts on Clarence and Ginny because they are advocating for their causes in the court. And I agree, it is obvious corruption, and I think that Thomas should become a footnote in Law School classes for the rest of American history. But what about the justices that lied to the Senate during their confirmation hearings? Justices shouldn’t take $500,000 vacations on billionaires’ yachts but what about the Justices who lied about their upcoming votes in order to get a lifetime appointment to the court?
When Justice Brett Kavanagh voted to strike down Roe v Wade after promising Republican Senator Suzie Collins that he wouldn’t, the only person alive in America today who was surprised was Republican Senator Suzie Collins. Perjury is so common place now that we typically don’t even react to it but, seriously, why have a Senate hearing at all, if they can make up any answer they want to give at the moment and never be held responsible for their lies?
Michael Cohen was sentenced to jail for lying to congress about paying off Stormy Daniel to stay quiet about her affair with Donald Trump, as if anyone would ever want to admit that in public anyway?
But what is that compared to taking away constitutional rights from millions of women?
I have a modest proposal, folks. Let’s make lying wrong again. Maybe you won’t be seated on the Supreme Court if you tell the truth, but that should be a small price to pay compared to selling your soul to the devil by lying to get a job you don’t deserve.
And I can’t mention this topic without mentioning the 34 year old newly elected member of Congress, George Santos. This guy is the same age as my daughter and yet he claimed to have graduated from Baruch College, worked for Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup, started an Animal Rescue charity, and even produced a Broadway play. The problem is that he didn’t do any of those things. His entire resume was made up and yet he thought he should be able to get away with it and even after being exposed he has refused to resign from Congress and his fellow Republican members of the house have refused to remove him from office because, admit it, lying is just not considered to be a big deal in our culture anymore.
And yet, people still get mad at me when I tell them that I invented the iPhone and wrote the music and lyrics for the Lion King! And my wife, Hallie Berry, is so angry about it she doesn’t even want to be seen in public with me anymore!
Seriously, I think that our society has become spiritually sick. We are not all going to be and Honest Abe Lincoln, we are not all going to be a self-sacrificing monk, and, you know me, I don’t think that you should be weighed down by religious guilt. I think that you should free yourselves from outdated religious standards and community prejudices, I just think that while you are rising up to become the best version of you, that you should also be striving to be a good person.
While most of what you will read on the internet that is attributed to the second century stoic, Marcus Aurelius, is more likely to come from Dr. Phil than it is Marcus Aurelius, he actually did say: That which is not good for the beehive cannot be good for the bees. And he said it in book 6 of his Meditations, saying number 54. Which is to say, we cannot do for our own gain, that which will do harm to the rest of the society. If we do harm to the community, ultimately, it comes back to harm us. To accept selfishness, corruption, dishonesty, in our individual lives only makes the whole hive sick.
You do not have a good society unless it is made up of individual good people. We are in a time of gathering darkness but, thankfully, there is a way out of that darkness, it takes three steps, good thoughts, good, words, and good actions. So let’s do that.
