“Am I a bad person?” It seems to be a fairly common question. Searching for that question on Google yields 263 million hits. I’ve also seen it raised in the blogosphere. Regardless of what the answer may or may not seem to be, though, is it a valid and/or useful question?
What exactly is a bad person?
I have a pretty analytical mind, and I like things to be clearly defined. What exactly is a bad person? What are the attitudes/behaviours characteristic of a bad person? How do you differentiate between a bad and a good person? How does one measure badness of personhood? If a term isn’t clearly defined, it means whatever whoever happens to be using it thinks it means. That makes the answer to the question entirely arbitrary.
Even if one wanted to define “bad person”, is it possible for someone as a whole to be “bad” or “good”? The answer may depend upon your worldview, and how you see the relationship between a person or their behaviour. My own view is that behaviours can be good or bad, but not people as a whole; with established patterns of egregious behaviour, that distinction between person and behaviour may become blurred, but that’s another issue.
If people could be either good or bad, what kind of spectrum are we looking at? If we’re talking Adolf Hitler towards the extreme of the bad end and Mother (now Saint) Teresa pretty far towards the good end, that’s one huge gulf in the middle for most of us average people to fall into. Even if you were somehow bad, you’d still be light years from the Hitler end of the scale.
Where’s the question coming from?
The “am I a bad person” question may well come from the voice of the inner critic, who is extremely poorly qualified to make that kind of evaluation. If your inner critic would tell you that you’re a bad person even if you were on track to be the present-day version of Mother Teresa, it doesn’t deserve a seat on the self-appraisal judging panel.
Maybe the question is from guilt, shame, or perfectionism, and getting caught up in the bad person question serves as a distraction from addressing those underlying issues.
Sometimes the bad person question may come up in relation to thoughts, such as in OCD. Does having a really icky thought mean you’re a bad person? Most of us don’t have a lot of access to the innermost workings of other people’s minds, so the only frame of reference is our own assumptions about others’ thoughts. But it’s very normal to have bad thoughts float into one’s head; the question is whether you let it float right out on its own, or whether you latch onto it, inadvertently leading to it sticking around longer.
Does the answer make a difference?
I ask myself if I’m a bad person seldom, if ever. Part of that is a decent foundation of self-esteem. Also, the answer to that question just isn’t useful in my life in any way. I am who I am, whether that be “good”, “bad”, or anywhere in between. Even if I was “bad,” so what? Does it change how I sit within myself or move through the world?
For me, the most useful yardstick for behaviour is congruence with my values rather than a vague global appraisal of goodness or badness. And maybe if it comes down to making a decision about how to deal with a particular situation, “would this make me a bad person?” isn’t a very relevant question. Perhaps “how well does this action in this particular situation fit with my most important values?” is a more meaningful avenue to explore. It’s a much wordier avenue, granted, but one that’s more likely to lead somewhere other than around in circles.
Embrace Acceptance: A Guided Journal draws on concepts from acceptance and commitment therapy to help you move towards a place of greater acceptance. You can find it on the Resources page.
I liked the values point you made. When you act according to your values, it is ‘true’ for you. We don’t know what is good and what is bad, it all depends on context, morals, cultural views. Actually the question could be: How well do I fit in in my community and with my own morals and values?
Good post to think about for a while!
I agree, culture makes a difference, although one’s community may view it as acceptable to cause harm to certain kinds of people, in which case fitting in with the community isn’t necessarily a good thing.
I agree.
I’m a ‘bad’ person today because I ate too many sweets 😮 xo
Yum!
I didn’t discover sweets until in my mid 30s lol.
I’ll always remember going to the corner store as a little kid and stocking up on 1 cent candy.
I was into cheese biscuits then. Didn’t have a sweet tooth at all.
Mmmm, cheese biscuits…
Seriously, I think you have too really worry about being a bad person if you don’t worry about it to begin with… if that makes sense…
Yes it does!
Them charming psychopaths…
Yup.
This is a question I often ask myself. I am not the nicest person when I overthink. I get mad easy and make sure anyone around me knows it. I also have low self esteem. I feel like just presence isn’t welcome and feel bad for being around that person.
I think we’ve all got out ugly sides, but keeping perspective on that isn’t necessarily easy.
I feel also that for me the question of am I a bad person comes back to my values and how I carry myself.
Yeah that really does seem like the core of the issue.
True.