> we are all 'good' human beings. Barring a few exceptions, agreed, but: * 0.0001% of the population leaves a LOT of jerks in the world - jerks that tend to r

> we are all 'good' human beings. Barring a few exceptions, agreed, but: * 0.0001% of the population leaves a LOT of jerks in the world - jerks that tend to rise in power and influence by exploiting social systems made for non-jerks. > thanks to self-help advice Pretty sure the world had jerks and insensitive people prior to self-help advice. As _I've_ grown older, I've learned a lot about how "being a good person" is NOT about having good intentions. Treating someone a I want to be treated isn't enough, if that person isn't me. Someone telling me (male) to "smile more" gives me an inherently different experience than a woman that is told it. I've said that to people when I was younger, and my intentions were all rosy-good. But I made a bad experience. Being a good person is not "do I mean well". It is not "I should only have reactions based on what others intend, not how I actually feel about it". Being a good person means caring about the impact of my words and actions AND working to make those better. We won't always succeed (I certainly don't!) but we should try. Consider: When someone points out that we've offended them, our natural reaction is to defend our intent - we are worried about ourselves and how we are perceived. We are NOT first worried about the fact that we made someone feel bad. I think if we got over the idea that we're basically "good", and stopped acting like creating some small sadness in the world is a claim we need to defend ourselves from, if we just focused on reducing that number of small (and occasionally large) sadness/rage/jealousy/shame that we create, THEN we'd actually be "good". I'd rather treat people the way I'd want to be treated if I were actually them, than to treat them the way I would treat myself and expect that that should work for them.