Why We Center the Bad: Reclaiming Goodness from Cynicism
I believe the people who desperately try to disprove goodness are those who most desperately want someone to prove it to them -- so I’m gonna try to do something like that here:
There is such a common emotional reaction that informs the value we place on good and bad. And by that I mean that good is weak. It is corruptible.
Bad is powerful. Bad is realistic. Bad is truth.
Bad is the natural state of things, and if you believe in Good, you are naive or downright stupid. Hope, faith, wonder, and assuming the best are stupid endeavours for stupid people.
In Women Who Run with the Wolves Clarissa Pinkola Estes writes “Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good. Innocence is knowing everything, and still being attracted to the good.”
In that statement she is expressing that goodness exists, regardless. Goodness exists regardless of if you are ignorant and naive or not. Meaning that everything, including the worst evil you have had the unluckiness of bearing witness to, does not change the nature or reality of Goodness.
Goodness is as true as ever… what changes is the value we see in it.
When people back up a belief that pain and sorrow is somehow more legitimate than enthusiasm and wonder, hope and joy, giddiness and gratitude and generosity, etc. I truly believe it has to do with the fact that people have lost the ability to openly receive things.
We try to undermine, undercut, underplay, and undervalue good things because we can’t take it all in. We break it into bite-sized pieces because it is all we can stomach.
All we can digest.
All we can feel safe with.
We do not trust it or ourselves with it. There is “badness” in us... What if we break it?!
To take something in its fullness and appreciate it in its glory is cringe, or idealistic, or vulnerable - as in you are opening up to harm and therefore consenting to it.
We can’t bear to hold goodness because it is heartbreaking.
But I think the deepest reason it is heartbreaking is because we have this tendency to center bad. We look at the quality of openness or vulnerability as being “weak” because it is exploitable. We internalize the exploitation and make that which has been hurt or extorted into the proof of harm.
Good ends up serving as a reflection of Bad so we can’t bear to look at it. By doing so, we do not hold the actual guilty party and strategic wrongdoing accountable. There are numerous reasons we do this, and what I will list is by no means exhaustive.
Because we want to other that pain because it makes us uncomfortable,
Because we do not want to admit that the source exists, we lash out at the symptoms that make it hard for us to ignore its existence rather than shed light on the cause, also
The source is clearly capable of great pain and suffering that we want to avoid bringing its attention onto us, and
That source is also often a part of a very complicated system that we do not know the scope of.
Of course, and getting into the nefarious, there are people who benefit from systems of abuse and those parties will want to avoid accountability to protect their investments.
We have this belief that great suffering and pain we experience makes us strong which paints Bad that we experience as virtuous (therefore “good”).
Lastly, this sidestepping of wrong, justice, and accountability is an attempt to soothe any cognitive dissonance it creates in us (and absolves our conscience of guilt).
Whatever the reason, the effect is that we take that process of exploitation inherent in Badness, and we normalize it.:
“Well maybe she shouldn’t have been wearing that.”
“Where were their parents?”
“Maybe she shouldn’t have been walking alone at night.”
“Why didn’t she leave? She brought it on herself.”
“It’s for the greater good.”
“I can take it.”
“It develops character! Kids these days…”
We bring Bad to the center and we give it weight. We assume its reality and viability over goodness, justice, care, empathy, grace, growth.
We give it ground to stand on rather than real lived human lives - just like yours. And this act of bowing away out of fear gives the same effect as reverence, effectively placing cruelty above us as a God we must fear.
In the process of breaking things down into bite-sized pieces we can handle, we end up devaluing goodness, even if that is not our goal.
From here, we assume goodness to be feeble. Vulnerability to be weakness. Gentleness and forgiveness and joy don’t have a backbone. They collapse so easily. What do you expect? What do they expect? What do you expect of them?
You’re silly, shortsighted, naive, not thinking critically -- and then goodness is painted as unreasonable. As childish. As not maintainable. Not a “long-term solution”. As wishful thinking. And if you “side” with it, you are not a sound judge and must be managed because you have unrealistic expectations of the world, and need to be tended to because you can’t handle the hard reality of life.
People buckle when there is any truth recognized in any of those things and what could have been a constructive conversation ends up being a tactic to pick at your doubts, plant a lack of self-trust, confuse you, and get you to just shut up.
After this bad exchange, people are at a stand still because we come to believe that we have no ground to stand on… but don’t we all have our blind spots? That doesn’t inherently make you incapable of great perspectives or critical analysis.
So let’s analyse:
This pattern of behaviour is characterized by a bias that seeks out vulnerability as a commodity -- that something existing uncapitalized is “left unprotected”; rather than being free it is unclaimed and “anyone’s for the taking”.
It’s as if Badness notices vulnerability and is baffled, looking around as if to say “Are they kidding? … Really? Is no one going to notice that? No one is going to “fix” it? No one will stop me if I take it for myself?”
It uses it as their own, and harvest the goodness or energy from it to maintain their needs or satisfy their goals.
Point being: It see the goodness. Bad is not in any way refuting the fact that goodness exists. It requires it to exist to do what it does. It requires Goodness’ inherent value.
It feel the abundance of it.
It knows it is a resource.
It is healthy, helpful, rich, and plenty.
Those characteristics are what defines good.
So when people back up the rationalization that says “Minimize any goodness in you so there is nothing worth taking” they know damn well what makes Good and what is good in them. And when people aren’t willing to minimize it, they are essentially saying “well then you deserve the pain, humiliation, and suffering.”
And in normalizing the bad like this, we are like accessories after the fact to a crime.
When we do this we are not protecting ourselves. We are not resourcing ourselves for future endeavors or challenges that will inevitably come. We weaken ourselves.
Estes also writes:
“[The] state of wise innocence is entered by shedding cynicism and protectionism, and by reentering the state of wonder one sees in most humans who are very young and many who are very old.” - and those in a state of sleep or just rising - “It is a practice of looking through the eyes of a knowing and loving spirit, instead of through those of the whipped dog, the hounded creature, the mouth atop a stomach, the angry wounded human. Innocence is a state that is renewed as one sleeps. Unfortunately, many throw it aside with the coverlet as they arise each day. It would be better to take an alert innocence with us and draw it close for warmth.”
To take that alert innocence on like a sweater -- to choose to re-enter that state that we come from... willingly? That is a part of the nature of goodness.
A part of the value of Goodness is that it is chosen.
It is accountability. Agency.
It is freedom. It’s empowering. It’s grace.
It is transparent. It is openhearted.
In it, you are no one’s bitch and no one’s whipped dog.
You are not a victim.
People give up or give away goodness because they feel as though it has forsaken them, but it will not force your hand.
This is another prime example of how we have centered badness: We expect Goodness to be forced upon us, as Bad forces itself upon us.
Yet it will never force your hand.
That is exactly what makes Good... good.
We are convinced that Good is good for nothing… but that doesn’t stop good from existing, it just stops you from seeing it. And when you don’t see it, you think it is failing to protect you from bad.
When people say that ‘Goodness can be broken down or beaten or tainted or corrupted or kill' they are saying that Bad is breaking, beating, tainting, corrupting, and killing.
When what you’re really angry at is the bad that is doing the weakening. That is wearing something down to be able to extract something.
It finds vulnerability and weakens it methodically to take something as its own.
That is what you’re angry at.
That is what is causing pain.
That is what is wounding you.
That is what you are afraid of.
It isn’t that “goodness is weak”.
Goodness is in no way unique in having blind spots or being able to be overpowered but because we view these things as inherent aspects of Good, when they are fulfilled it reaffirms a bias we have from our Bad-Centered point of view
The fact that goodness exists when pure evil exists, is what defines Goodness.
It can still be found - will be found - everywhere.
The fact that it exists despite harm, despite treachery, despite being seeked out, aimed at, hunted down and sold - the fact that it comes back big and blooming and fresh like a motherfucker has never experienced a needle prick is exactly what defines Goodness.
It is robust as fuck - and it makes it look like nothing.
That’s what defines goodness.
That is what makes it powerful.
That is what makes its power so astounding.
We need to understand that it is not from ignorance or idealism that we do not concede or consent to harshness or a dog-eat-dog attitude.
It can be with a wise and keen study of bad - as far as one can meet it - that allows for a healthy understanding, respect, distance, and germination of its opposite: Goodness.
We need to live goodness for goodness' sake.
But that means that you must choose to still see it.
You have to choose to value it - to proliferate it.
To proliferate the good. And shed light on the bad.
Originally written for SENSI: Empowerment for Pussies | Season 2, Episode 7: SENSITIVITY and CONSCIENCE
Comments