a quick thesis on morality

recently i saw a post on my bluesky feed that i thought was... quite enlightening. it was a post i reposted myself but it was talking about how the user found a lot of posts similar to a twitter post which read...

"if i had tourettes my tics would be shouting "trans rights", "vote", and black lives matter" because i'm a good fucking person"

besides the inherent absurd nature of a post like this, and the partially offensive nature, this post was very eye-opening as to a problem with morality i don't see enough people discuss: what does it mean to be a good person? on a surface level it could be as simple as not being a pedophile or bigot, but being a good person is a lot of things.

being a good person can involve spending time with your loved ones, caring for them, trusting people who want the best for you, treating your fellow human beings as you would yourself, and just generally trying to not engage in actions that would bring emotional or physical harm to others or yourself. that's what i believe personally, and while this is something inherently easy on paper, it's actually quite difficult to be a perfect person, because you can't.

every human being will inherently make a mistake at some point in life. i should know, i've made mistakes in private that i'm not proud of, but when i make a mistake, i know where to grow and try to be better. this post really shows an inherent problem some people have, where it's easy to care more about being a good person on the baseline idea of not being a bigot pedophile genocide supporter over your aspirations in life, like hobbies, quality time with loved ones, or just generally being happy. that's not to say you should be a bad person, of course, but don't just be hyper-aware of your morality at all times. it should be important, but your life and the fun you have with it should be prioritised, with exceptions where you should absolutely think about the morality of what's happening in a situation you or somebody else is in.

this is a general principle i've tried to apply to my own life, as on bluesky i generally do like posts that're in regards to ongoing issues, with rare exceptions where i'll end up reposting something i may find particularly important to spread around. i respect and admire people who post or repost posts about these issues often, but cannot imagine being that kind of my person myself. i feel like being serious on the internet is good, but i think it is just as important to contrast that with humour. if i'm going to quote-retweet a post about an ongoing issue, i'm obviously going to criticise the person involved if it's an article about the actions of somebody (i did this with ed sheeran's stance on the genocide in gaza in a post i still think is really funny while still being critiical of him). i don't want to just format my quote-post the same way most people do.

this is something that the sane side of twitter's userbase does really well, oddly. obviously you shouldn't quote-retweet a post about a serious ongoing issue with a meme, that's stupid, but people on there have been more than keen on making fun of tim sweeney while criticising him. i think being able to criticise big industry shitheads while being funny is a talent more people should have.

i just wanted to input my likely flawed if earnest thoughts on this that i wanted to share. if anyone would like to rebuke me, i'm all good as long as we're being chill about it.

🛁