hard to believe i've been writing in this consistently. i struggle to remember a time i ever used a journal so regularly, especially one open to the internet and without a way to lock it to friends only viewing. there's still some cleanup i need to do with this whole journal thing (someday i will reformat the older entries to work with my new journal format... someday...) but overall i'm just enjoying this a lot more. my journal is mine, my posts are mine, no service being uprooted will make me lose my posts forever, and my journal stays in the same style as the rest of my site without me having to do any weird bullshit.
ah, looks like i forgot to set the correct Adults Only footer on my journal. sure fixing that right now.
anyway though i saw a post that's been lingering on my mind for a day or so now, and since i've finally located which of the three tumblrs i actually bother to look at anymore had it...
(source: shanastoryteller @ tumblr.com)i know kindness exists because i am kind
(source: shanastoryteller @ tumblr.com)
people aren't goodi am people. i am good
you are wrong
(source: shanastoryteller @ tumblr.com)if you are capable of it then so are others
be your own proof of concept
(source: shanastoryteller @ tumblr.com)to everyone who’s responded to this post with “people are terrible” and “people who call themselves good are bad” and “everyone i’ve ever met is awful”
this post is for you specifically
i know we all hate reading comprehension on tumblr dot hell, but this post is not about other people. it’s not about the people who have hurt you, or saved you, or the ones you’ve met or those who you’ve invented in your head
this post is about you
if you cannot find evidence of the goodness around you, if you are jaded and your existence is miserable and you truly believe no one has ever showed you kindness, then this post is for and about you
you can’t control the actions of other people. you can’t make people show you kindness in the ways you want to receive it. if you look for proof of your version of kindness in the people who surround you, and can’t find it, you can decide it doesn’t exist
or you can be your own proof of concept
you are not special
there are at least hundreds of thousands of people who are just like you
so if you can choose to show other kindness — if you can bite back your temper and hold the door open for others and overtip and compliment strangers — then that is proof that hundreds of thousands of people, who are just like you, are capable of doing the same and likely are doing the same
i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again
the simplest way to increase the number of kind people in the world is to be one
i have very mixed feelings about this whole post chain, honestly. i do agree with the general premise that everyone is capable of kindness and compassion, and that you should at least put in the effort to embody the kindness and compassion you wish to be shown. it is ultimately your actions that decide if you are "good," whatever that may mean. though i disagree people are "inherently" good just as i disagree people are "inherently" bad; we just are. there's another post i've saved as a screenshot elsewhere on my site because it was so impactful to me to read, which i'll share here as text again as i feel it's extremely relevant and also articulated so much better than i can hope to personally say.
(source: eroticcannibal @ tumblr.com)(source: dappercyborg @ tumblr.com)Baffled that there's still people out there thinking people on the whole are good. Hello have you missed the past 2 years?
(source: eroticcannibal @ tumblr.com)People are selfish and it is on us to fight that and do good. Do not be complacent. Do not assume you are doing good because you think you are a good person. Have you even bothered to consider how much harm you are causing and ignoring?
Good is not a way of being it is an active and continuous choice you aren’t born good you have to keep doing good
People aren’t good, people are people, full of their own neurosis, we can be self and crass and cruel and petty, and to say that people are by definition good absolves people of this in favour of pretending that the systematic oppression of the world isn’t caused by people and is just the natural order so can’t be changed
the last addition from dappercyborg really gutpunched me. i found myself nodding to eroticcannibal's second post, but the last part was. oof. i'd never seen it laid out so plainly why so many "people are good uwu" type posts really made my skin crawl enough i started trying to avoid them — because goodness is treated by those kinds of posts as some innate quality rather than something you have to constantly work towards and consciously choose.
and to be clear i'm not trying to accuse shanastoryteller of that; i don't agree with the entire post chain but the spirit of the post chain feels at least adjacent to the concept of goodness as actions you do rather than as a thing you are. i think it's worth saying even if it still discomforts me to read the whole "humans are good" thing, it's at least being done in a way i don't think is dismissive of the effort being Good is.
fuck. like. i do think we are inherently a social species that in its natural state forms social groups that aid one another, even those who can't care for themselves, but that doesn't mean that all aid given is miraculously what someone actually needs. i just...
shit
this is so much like how it is with art
people make a big deal about "talent" but innate "talent", whatever people are using that word to mean, is maybe 2% of what improving at doing art and getting better and making "good" art actually is. being born with better hand-eye coordination will make the path of digital painting easier to start out with than for people who don't have that affinity, sure. but it's just starting on the second stair instead of the ground level on a long staircase. you still have to familiarize youself with your art program, still will benefit immensely from deep studies in form, advanced color theory, value, how to use negative space and draw the viewer's eye intentfully along a piece, etc. you have to put in the work, and that is exactly true with people as well.
just the want to do "good" doesn't make you good. it's a start. it's the first step. (and a lot of people would benefit from realizing even being born without that drive doesn't mean you're doomed to be a "bad person.") you still have to listen to what people need from you. you have to listen when people tell you you've wronged them and why. embodying the goodness you want to be treated with is so much an immense fucking effort. it takes a gargantuan amount of energy to bite your tongue when someone is being spiteful and petty to you unprovoked, to treat even the most wretched of people with dignity and respect. our caretaking for other humans stretching back tens of thousands of years as a species only means exactly that; it does not mean the caretaking is flawless. plenty of people are cruel, spiteful, and even abusive and tell themselves they are good caretakers because the cruelty is "for the good" of the dependent they claim to be caring for. plenty of horrific and unspeakably harmful things have been done with good intentions; does that make those things good? because those people were convinced of their goodness while doing them?
i want to see that talked about more when people write about the "goodness" of people. because the effort of making sure you're actually doing right by other people is so often glossed over if not left entirely unsaid in favor of this Christian puritanism ideal of goodness as an inherent trait. and goodness-as-a-trait is dangerous! it's very easy to let that become thought-terminating, for that to manifest as "well i'm a Good Person so i can't Really be abusive like my children claim. they're just ungrateful brats." so goddamn many people fall into this that at this point it just makes me extremely uncomfortable and wary of anyone espousing goodness-as-a-trait.
and this isn't even touching on how people setting you up with Goodness as a trait then means they have something they can strip you of as a form of control that can become abuse. it's a form of setting someone up on a pedestal so they can be knocked down, or threaten their Goodness being taken away. this is incredibly common, especially in western Christianity as far as i've seen... how many people have grown up being crushed by oppressive households and social groups in the name of Christ been punished with "you are a Sinner for doing (x thing we don't want you doing and will twist bible verse to apply to our authoritarianism) so therefore are no longer Good"? how many times have we seen queer people punished with being branded Evil Sinners (amongst many other, much worse things) for daring to exist? this is where Goodness as an inherent trait goes. it will always be used by the powerful to strip people of their humanity for nonconformity, sooner or later.
it is with great tiredness i think about anyone finding this entry, as i've known for years the reading comprehension on the internet is abysmal but only recently learned the extent of how bad it is, particularly in North America, and i really don't want to deal with people who read not even two sentences of all this and go so you think people are all evil and bad huh?? huh??? asshole!
(which. abysmal internet reading comprehension is also another post for another time.)
but like. seeing goodness as acts you do is so freeing. i still am not sure i can ever really see myself as a "good" person, even using the sum of my acts as a metric, but the shackles of "Inherently Good vs. Inherently Evil" are heavy and casting them off actually makes it easier, in a sense. the effort of trying to make the choices that are least harmful is honestly still immense and sometimes overwhelming (another thing people never want to discuss that i may talk about some other time: that many, many people end up in shit situations with no good options and that WILL wear you down until you lash out, and while people shouldn't hurt others like that nobody is above being grated down until they react that way either.) but it is still worth trying, and honestly even for people who have been ground down so far they can't even see themself as "good," that's okay. maybe someday you'll be able to let go of feeling like a horrible person, but even if you never do it's your actions that define you.
we are all capable of good, because goodness is in what you do and how you treat people, not some inherent quality. even the thought of this fills me with some shred of hope, that even if i can't see myself as a "good" person, i can still try my hardest to do good, no matter how difficult the journey is. i would like to believe that other people can also find comfort in this, too.