I USED TO THINK I WAS A GOOD PERSON. I was caring to my friends, my partner, my family; I gave to charity and I volunteered; I wasn't racist, homophobic or sexist. Boxes: ticked. But when I started training to become a therapist in the NHS, I began to understand that however much we might like to think of ourselves as good people, we don't actually know ourselves very well. We don't know what's really going on under the surface; why we do the things we do.
I learned about how we might, without consciously realising it, deny the feelings and motivations we consider to be bad, pushing them down into our unconscious and projecting them out on to others, so they become the bad people.
I learned that deep in the human psyche, alongside love and kindness, run currents of rage, need, greed, envy, destructiveness, superiority - whether we want to acknowledge them or not. Goodness me, I thought. How terrible - for everybody else.
But of course, it is not just true for everybody else. As a patient in psychoanalysis, I've now discovered all this so-called badness exists in me, too. Unconsciously, perhaps I had tried to cancel out these judged-as-bad thoughts and feelings by doing good and helping others. Now I see that as hypocrisy and avoidance. Real goodness grows from accepting that the capacity for badness we abhor in others and in our institutions also exists within ourselves. If we can tolerate and understand this, then we can see and repair the damage we inevitably do to our loved ones and others. This is how we can grow into better adults, partners, parents, neighbours, citizens, travellers, friends. I asked experts in "goodness" what it meant to them. Here's what they told me.
How to be ... a good citizen
Matthew Bolton, executive director of Citizens UK and author of How to Resist: Turn Protest to Power
Denne historien er fra January 06, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Denne historien er fra January 06, 2023-utgaven av The Guardian Weekly.
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Starlink's conquest of the Amazon leaves Brazil in a dilemma
The helicopter swooped into one of the most inaccessible corners of the Amazon rainforest. Brazilian special forces commandos leaped from it into the caiman-inhabited waters below.
Dalai Lama's mountain town feels the strain of tourist boom
SUVs and saloon cars pass slowly along McLeod Ganj's narrow one-way Jogiwara Road, blaring horns at pedestrians and scooter riders and playing loud music.
'I am all the world' The brutal rule of a West Bank settler
Palestinians tell ofblacklisted Yakov's reign across the Jabal Salman valley and heisjust one of many violent bosses
Stormy waters New flashpoint emerges in South China Sea dispute
Hopes that tensions in the South China Sea might ease have been short lived.
'Justice delayed' Why trust in public inquiries to bring closure is fading
After the final report of the Grenfell fire inquiry was published, Hisam Choucair, who lost six family members in the blaze, said: \"We did not ask for this inquiry... It's delayed the justice my family deserves.\"
Celeriac soup with almond pangrattato
I'm not ashamed to say that as soon as September hits, my stick blender comes out. Just as I embrace salads when the clocks go forward in the UK, I wholeheartedly throw myself into soup season once the summer holidays end. Autumn is approaching in the northern hemisphere and I'm ready with my ladle. Celeriac is one of my favourite soup heroes, because it gives the creamiest, silkiest finish with little effort. You don't have to make the almond pangrattato, but it is a wonderful addition.
Are smoke signals telling me to make an oil change in the kitchen?
Should you that is, not can you) cook with extra-virgin olive oil? Antonio, Atlanta, Georgia, US
Going underground
A darkly humorous encounter between an American spy-cop and the members ofan eco-commune she is hired to infiltrate
All work and no play
Hard Graft, a powerfulnew London exhibition, focuses onworkers’ exploitation, from the ruined hands ofa washerwoman to mothers forced to sell their bodies
What the princess and the shaman tell us about hereditary privilege
It should have been an Instagram-perfect wedding image, but it turned out to be something more embarrassing.