Let Go of Trying to Be a 'Good Person'

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:01]We live in a society that is obsessed with being good but not inherently good rather performatively good. So everyone is virtue signaling their you know trying to outwardly express that they are a virtuous or noble individual but they're not concerned about actually inherently being that or acting like that person. They're more so concerned about the court of public opinion. So, a couple days back was the Met Gala. And the Met Gala every year always makes me laugh because I just think it's so it's so jester. It's so it's quite ridiculous where you have these super rich people that try to act like they're really good and they always most of them try to make some sort of political statement, right? So, there was this one actress, I'm forgetting her name, but she wore this dress where she had like a a dollar bill over her eyes, and the whole idea was like tax the 1% or like or like she hates the 1%. You know, and it's like you are the 1%. Like, do you not understand how ridiculous this is? So, the virtue signaling is so obvious. It's so ridiculous. And obviously stuff like that is easy to call out because you know if you're a famous actress who's going to the Met Gala it's you know people are going to know who you are whatever but this happens with everyday people and you know NZA talks a lot about how people that are sort of on the bottom of the totem pole of society and they haven't seen a lot of external success in life they like to move the goalpost towards you know internal virtue but what's weird about internal virtue is to them that's other people perceiving them as a good person as opposed to actually internally.

[00:01:54]What I'm saying is that everybody is doing this nowadays. Your middle school teacher is doing this. Your neighbor is doing this. Your coworker is doing this.

[00:02:02]Everyone is doing it where they just try to seem like a good person. Now, here is why that's so twisted. If you know anything about history, you know that as more as time goes on, it's well established that the general public opinion was wrong, especially as it relates to morality, right? It's like slavery back in the day. Like at that time, some people thought it was wrong, some people thought it was all right, whatever. But even the people that didn't like it, it wasn't like the biggest deal. It was still part of the norm. And now hundreds of years later, we're like, "Yeah, that's that was terrible. Why why were those people thinking that?" But there's going to be an equivalent of that in a hundred years from now where they're looking at some of the stuff that's popular in our culture and they're going to be like, "Yeah, you're these people are idiots for thinking this." Like it's it's there's a lot of mental illness. There is a I I'll put it like this. What you see is people who haven't worked hard for anything and don't have anything to show for their life at least materially.

[00:03:02]They love to claim that they are an empathetic person and they tr and I believe that they believe they are an empathetic person but really what they've done is they they've divided the world into a two-faction system. It's either like the the super virtuous noble people that are just like them and then it's the devil. Like if you're not with them, you're you're just the devil. And this is what these people do. So they haven't done anything in their life.

[00:03:26]Then they claim they have a lot of empathy. And then they only see life through a binary lens of either somebody agrees with you or someone's the worst person in the world. And when this happens, empathy is selective and it's it's almost like it's weaponized because you're seen as this virtuous person. The moment you agree with like what is trending, the narrative, and if you go against it, you're terrible. But it's like, have we not read history? Have we read no philosophers? Have we learned nothing from even if you don't believe in religion, the commonalities that are shared amongst all the major religions, it's like the crowd is always wrong.

[00:04:05]Time and time again, the crowd always, you know, conforms and they do what makes them feel comfortable, not what's right. They don't operate in the truth.

[00:04:14]Like, I swear, these people are just so brainwashed and it's exhausting. That's why I say you need to stop trying to be like trying to be a good person.

[00:04:23]Instead, you should just be a good person and don't feel the need to tell anyone.

[00:04:27]Marcus Aurelius has a quote where he says, "Don't waste any time talking about a good m about what a good man should be. Just be one." I'm kind of paraphrasing that, but it's the idea is like so many people are like constantly like talking about different ideas or like ways they want to change the world.

[00:04:44]It's like, bro, shut up about it and just do it. That's the best approach to this. But when you try to be liked, you lose yourself.

[00:04:54]And you know, Dosyki h what book was it that he said it in?

[00:04:59]I'm trying to remember, but he said the easiest people to manipulate are those that um feel the need to fit in. And what he meant by that is that if you are trying to be perceived as a good person by everyone else, you know, in this case, that's what I'm that's what I'm relating to, you know, trying to fit in, then you're actually doing yourself a disservice and the truth a disservice and you're going to be so easily manipulated because like all the like in 10 years from now, the public perception on something will be completely different. For example, right, when Obama first ran for in his first term for presidency, him and Joe Biden were like against homosexuality. This is like, you can like look it up, right?

[00:05:39]This is an undeniable fact. And then, you know, years later, they switched it up and it's like, well, what made them change? Oh, they just conform to the crowd. And I get it, they're politicians. That's like the thing that politicians do. But they're totally two-faced. They're they're objectively f They literally went back on their word like undeniably. There's video proof of this and they did it because they want to appease the masses and so they were so easily manipulated where it's like you know who knows in another 20 years from now something that we all can agree is just absolutely terrible I would say like I'm going to give you an example incestual behavior or relationships I think that that is completely um I think that's completely terrible immoral sinful it's disgusting right but In 20 years from now, literally with the way that our societyy's going, I wouldn't be surprised if people are like, well, you know, that's okay. Like, we think we should support that. And you're going to have a big switch up from a lot of these, you know, major politicians. But more than that, once again, it's ordinary people like your co-workers, your neighbor, etc., etc. And we and this trend has continued over time. Now, as somebody who has studied philosophy for much, well, I shouldn't say much of my life, but I've, you know, studied a lot of philosophy. I always go back to the Greeks because the Greeks are really my favorite. I mean, Aristotle is my favorite Greek, but if you anyone that studies philosophy knows that like Plato is kind of like the the philosopher of which every other philosophy in the future was built off of. But Plato talked a lot about the idea of, you know, the crowd is always wrong. The masses always vote for what makes them the most comfortable. They like the politicians that are the most charismatic and promised them the most not you know what is the truth and that's why you know Plato believed that you know philosophers should be the rulers of the land but it's interesting cuz I think that's true even in a non-political sense of even in the social sense where it's like people like whoever is charismatic in the sense that they make other people feel good about themselves. So the yes man can can like climb his way up the social ladder. He can climb his way up the uh any any structured ladder of any industry very easily by just being a yesmen and playing his cards right. And the problem is those people they don't have a bone. But once again it's the psychology of the yesmen is game optimal theory where it's like I want to ruffle the least amount of feathers. I want the most amount of people to like me so I can get proximity to wealthy or powerful individuals or people that are higher up on the social hierarchy. And then by proxy I also become more powerful, more wealthy, seen in in higher regard socially and then they just sort of repeat this process. And so many people fall for this trap because so many people are desperate for validation. And then once again it goes back to to doki, you know, they just want to be liked so badly that they're easily manipulated.

[00:08:49]Good people like good people, they avoid the hearth's truths.

[00:08:55]So sometimes the right thing is uncomfortable. Most of the time the right thing is actually uncomfortable.

[00:09:00]You know being honest can make you look bad and so in the short term it's just not worth it for a lot of people and then you know growth often requires friction and so you know you can't have constant niceness. It's just not going to work. I would say like what I want to tell people is just let go of the label in the like neverending desire to be good because here's the thing about being a good person or or like um in the societal sense or being viewed as a good person is it's a never-ending cycle where you have to show up every day and continue to virtue signal, continue to be performative, continue to try to adhere to the masses and it's exhausting. And if you slip up once, people are so unforgiving, it's just not worth it. But more importantly, I think what actually matters is the real merit or the the ontology of like what it actually means. Like like actually the substance of who you are as a person, your soul, your heart, however you want to phrase it. Are you actually a good person or not? That's what matters. Not are you perceived as a good person by society. And so so many people fall into this trap and then it's like they just they're getting on a roller coaster that they can't get off and they just have to ride the ups and the downs and and they never truly identify themselves. But if you look through history, the avant guards, the people that push society forward are the ones that like looked genuinely insane and crazy for the longest time and no one liked them. And then eventually people had no choice but to be like no whatever is going on right now in the world is not working. So we need to pivot. And they end up pivoting to the to the people that all along, you know, were willing to go against the grain.

[00:10:50]And so yeah, you got to you just got to be willing to be disliked. Just focus on integrity instead. Do what you believe is right, even if it's misunderstood, even if you're going to get hated on.

[00:11:01]you know, start to align actions with values as opposed to approval.

[00:11:09]There are some things that I believe very strongly that are not public opinion or that are not common with public opinion. I'll give you guys an example. I am completely against capital punishment. I think it's terrible. Um I don't believe that humans are what's the like not conscious, but I just don't think we're intelligent enough to fully judge another human. I just I truly don't believe so no matter how bad like somebody no matter how bad an act that somebody committed I just truly believe it's like instead just go to life in prison and I think it's like something like 86% of humans disagree with that. So me saying that right now there's probably so many people on this video that disagree and I'm just like completely okay with that. I've learned to just develop being disliked because that's what I truly believe in my heart.

[00:11:56]I don't believe that it's um that it's okay to take the life of another human, you know, outside of a like self-defense or like one of those type of contexts, right? I just don't believe in that at all. And if people are like, you know, they can say whatever they want to me, but like that's something I believe and it's not popular and I can, you know, ride that wave and when I die, I just know that I I'll feel good knowing that I made that decision out of integrity and was okay saying that. And so whatever it is, and I'm not it doesn't even have to be something super emotionally charged like that. It could be something like a lot simpler like like one thing I've realized is like let's say you're a part of a community that really likes a certain video game and everybody in in the community loves one aspect of the game and you don't really like it, you shouldn't be afraid to voice that. Now, you shouldn't be negative Nancy. I'm not saying that. But you should be able to speak speak your mind even if you know that it's going to make you be looked at in bad regards.

[00:12:55]Whether that's in a very serious topic or a very light-hearted topic, it doesn't really matter. But stop trying to be a good person and just be one and don't feel the need to perform for others.