Am I a Good Person?

What constitutes a good person? You might think you are one, but what if you are wrong? What if you could be much better? What if you're not really trying hard enough?

In a world where the most successful people are also the most selfish, it is hard to become a successful person without sacrificing your benevolence. Everyone seeks to dominate, conquer, and succeed no matter the cost. In a world where seemingly everyone seeks power, how can you be a good person?

To answer these questions, we need to dive a little bit deeper into the gray zone of morality. In my opinion, being a moral person is subjective. While my perspective is a bit nihilistic, I learned that it has a surprisingly positive spin, at least to me.

Most people in our society have an inner moral compass, an inner machinery that tells us whether we did something right or wrong. Why is that compass important? Even though religion and philosophy have their say in it, according to evolutionary biology, we need it to survive.

From the era long before our own, the first humans depended on one another to survive. We formed the most intricate language on our planet just to be able to communicate with as much detail as possible. We needed a way to describe where our food is located, and what fruit we can and cannot eat, but also to communicate our needs and desires. One theory suggests that the reason we became the most dominant species on the planet is that we were able to form complex bonds and social structures. Other animals also form bonds, but neither is that large nor that complex.

We learned early on that we cannot survive alone. Those who were egotistical were left behind. Instances like this can be found in Dean Haycock’s book “Murderous Minds”. Haycock explains how there were people with signs of psychopathy in early societies, but they were quickly cast out of the group. From this, we can conclude that being a psychopath wasn’t the best strategy back then. What about psychopaths in today’s world?

We often hear how two groups of people that have the highest number of psychopaths are CEO’s and surgeons. This statement is wrong for two reasons. Reason number one is that for someone to be diagnosed with psychopathy, they need to commit a criminal offense. CEOs and surgeons are the least likely groups to commit a crime, at least a violent crime. The second reason is that the statement is factually incorrect. Although CEOs and surgeons have psychopathic tendencies, they are not psychopaths in the real sense of the word. The number one group of people diagnosed with psychopathy is those incarcerated. That makes sense since they committed a serious criminal offense. We can argue that in today’s world, psychopathic tendencies do help in making progress in your career, but they help only a small number of people. Those who are capable of being cold and calculated benefit from these traits, but only if they understand social boundaries, i.e., they don’t go too far and commit a criminal offense.

Psychopaths (or sociopaths) are made with a combination of nature and nurture. There probably exists some gene that predisposes a person to become a psychopath, but for that gene to be expressed, the environment has to provide a trigger. We can say that almost all of us have intrinsic moral guidelines that help us navigate the social world. These guidelines are half-written in our DNA, but our parents are those who need to provide an environment for the “good genes” to be expressed.

There are notorious cases of terrible parenting where children were left locked away from society, and the results were nothing short of terrifying.

One such case happened in California, where a girl nicknamed Genie was severely neglected by her parents. When she was two years old, her parents left her in a room without any contact with the outside world. She had almost no exposure to spoken language, and as a result, her brain didn’t develop properly. When authorities found her, she looked more like an animal than a human girl. She didn’t understand any spoken words and could only growl when she was hungry or thirsty. Because of this, children from similar cases are nicknamed “feral children”.

Thanks to many psychologists and linguists, she made huge advancements in non-verbal communication, but she never acquired her first language.

Cases like these are found throughout the world, unfortunately. From these extreme examples, we can see that our environment plays a huge role in our development. If we are left without normal social contact, we become more similar to animals than humans. This also applies to psychopathy. You can be born with a much lower threshold for empathy, but being without any emotions requires both bad genes AND a bad environment.

One of the most disturbing facts I have ever read was that there are many more pedophiles than we suspected. Some statistics claim that sexual attraction to children is found in between 1 and 5 percent of the general population. The number of child molesters is much lower, meaning that most of the pedophiles never act on their desires. Many of those people seek help because they are afraid that they will commit a crime in the future.

Just like psychopathy, pedophilia seems to stem from a combination of factors, such as genetic makeup, early sexual development, and childhood trauma.

So, what can we do to be better people?

If we are unlucky and dealt a "bad genetic hand", we must be careful how we raise our children. There is a chance that those “bad genes” are transferred down to our children, so we must provide them with a safe, loving environment.

Our children are our future. In this fast-paced world where we focus on our careers too much, it is easy to neglect our kids. There is even a term on the internet for emotionally unstable, aggressive kids with short attention spans: the iPad kids.

Ryan Holiday, a famous author, once said what really stuck with me when it comes to raising children: “We hire people to take care of our kids instead of our business. We are trying to outsource arguably the most important people in our lives.”

Maybe being a good person starts with doing the opposite.

Summary:

The idea of being a “good person” is complex and subjective. In a world driven by ambition, selfishness often leads to success, making it hard to balance morality with achievement. Yet, morality is deeply rooted in human survival. From early humans, cooperation and empathy were necessary for survival, while selfish individuals were excluded.

Psychopathy illustrates the tension between morality and success. While traits like coldness and calculation may aid in modern careers, true psychopathy is rare and mostly diagnosed among criminals, not CEOs or surgeons. Both genetics and environment play a role in shaping empathy and moral behavior. Extreme neglect, such as in cases of “feral children,” shows how crucial social environments are for human development. Similarly, conditions like pedophilia also arise from a mix of genetic and environmental factors.

Ultimately, being a better person starts with how we nurture the next generation. Even if someone has “bad genes,” a safe, loving environment can help counterbalance them. In today’s fast-paced world, neglecting children in favor of career success risks raising disconnected and unstable individuals. As author Ryan Holiday suggests, instead of outsourcing our children’s upbringing, we should prioritize them. Perhaps that’s where true goodness begins.