TOO GOOD
[A friend recommended Baltasar Gracian's The Art of Worldly Wisdom. Gracian was a Spanish scholar of the 17th century who set forth a series of maxims for ethical action. From time to time I'll write about one of his maxims.]
Gracian warns us against becoming bad from too much goodness. He tells us that we should not let the desire to be a good person eliminate emotion, lead us to avoid feeling strongly about things. I'm often guilty of suppressing feelings, trying to be moderate and even-handed, even bending over backward to forgive. Maybe Gracian has something to tell me but there's a fine line to draw to follow Gracian's advice.
On the one hand, we don't want to be overly passive, we don't want to suppress our morality, our judgment of right and wrong. On the other hand, we don't want to let our emotions run away from us, allow strong feelings to override our analysis, our view of reality. Somehow, we have to let our emotional reactions out without giving up logic and observation of reality as guides to our conduct.
To be a good person is to do good things for other people. I believe in approaching other people with kindness, generosity, forgiveness. I believe that loving the sinner and hating the sin is a good way to think about conduct. But we may not be doing people any favors by concealing how strongly we feel about things. It may not be kindness to avoid delivering warranted criticism.
I guess the answer lies in approaching even our feelings, our emotions, in a thoughtful way. If we recognize when it's important to disclose our strong feelings, we'll find a way to communicate them. We can still be a good person, revealing our feelings in a constructive way, approaching issues with kindness. We won't confuse strong feelings with anger or animosity, we won't let emotion become an excuse for discourtesy or intimidation. We can help other people without giving up on our deep feelings, our strongly-held views.
The word "civility" comes to mind. If we express ourselves with civility, the strength of our feelings will be visible and we'll maintain our kindness and generosity. In that way, we won't be "too good", we'll help others by virtue of our thoughtful communications.
3-3-03
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