Smallhouse Log

First Sunday after Epiphany

Awhile back, I made the social mistake of admitting to a certain person by the name of Lucy that I thought of his brother, myself, most of our common acquaintances, and most likely this Lucy himself as bad persons. Now, I don't remember how it came up, but it wasn't an unsolicited confession. I mean, I know a lot of bad people. "Bad person" is a pretty easy definition, and a pretty easy thing to be, of course. But I can't think that being a good person is all that hard either. But defining a good person, is that hard? Or am I just so out of touch with such a state of existence that it has become a thing difficult for me, as the particularly bad person I've become?

Now, I don't mean to make anyone be all like, "Oh, you, you're not blah, you're blah blah blah; you always blah when blah." I know I sound all angsty; I may not be fully literate, but I'm not fully illiterate, either. I don't think that tone can be avoided when one, being in a state of developement, discusses that development. Thus, editors. I don't have one.

Anyway. I've been a bad person for a very long time, and I'm not sure I'd want to be a good person -or rather, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be one- in any case. People are too squishy. I think they need to be. Whatever, I'm not an anthropologist. But.

So, I've been typing out of order. Linearity is so constraining, but, as mentioned, trying to cut back on the hyperprose. I'm going to recap.

  • People are squishy, I don't want to be one.
  • Thus, some of my anti-personal behaviors, id est, being a bad person.
  • Already a somewhat bad person, I enter college. The removal of stabilizing influences allows me to become a worse person without much effort at all. Also, I meet a lot of new bad people, the company which individuals I tend to enjoy, due to the increasingly intolerable aforementioned squishiness of people in general. Surrounding myself with those who either intentionally or inadvertently shy away from personhood...
  • Actually, ignore that last bullet point. It's a load of nonsense. I just continued to be less and less personable.
  • This failed to turn me into a transparent and cold calculating machine, however.
  • Noticing this, but being -as is a common characteristic to bad people- lazy, I did not bother to do anything except descend further away from personhood.
  • It's come to my attention that this is no longer a recap. It's another common characteristic of bad people -perhaps the most common- that they don't care about things.
  • At some point in the past half-year, I realized that being a bad person is essentially unrewarding. This seems like it should have been obvious. Perhaps it is.

So then. What to do. Attempt a different tack to becoming the Ubermensch and correct my behavior only as necessary for that, or just concentrate on changing course, even at the possible cost of [returning? entering?] full-time into the human race? There is, of course, a third option, but, well, third options are for horseshoes and hand grenades.

Maybe I've just been reading too much of Il Pricipe. But me oh my, that last section is some of the most beautiful prose I've ever seen. It's a good book.

Didn't mean to end on a downer, there. It's all Greek with me.

Comments have closed.

v responded within a day.

Just a thought, but how can you objectively lump people into good versus bad? I'm not trying to poke holes in your choice of classification, but I've tried to lump people like this before and it always causes me problems because even the people who i dislike the most aren't entirely bad. Also, ever the people who I think are absolutely wonderful have flaws and sometimes do less good things. So where do you draw that line? just wondering.
Nemo responded within 2 days.

It's more of a gradient than a one-or-the-other, but I usually draw the line around "jokes about kicking puppies" / "wears something they know for a fact to be out of style".

Patrick responded within 2 days.

I think "good person"/"bad person" isn't quite what you're getting at, since you don't simply approve of the people you call "good" and disapprove of the people you call "bad". From what I can tell, it seems like you mean to talk about how socially adept and socially content a person is with all the usual forms and contexts: for "bad person" I read "misfit"/"alienated". Is that about right?
Nemo responded within 2 days.

I'm not making the distinction "people I like"/"people I don't like" here; nor am I really talking about alienation from society. What I'm trying to mean has to do with levels of humanity, though saying someone is "less human" is even more mired with negative misinterpretation than "bad person". I guess I should have bit the twinkie, made some neologisms, and defined my terms. I'll give it another go after I read a bit of Thus Spoke Zarathustra.