If the only thing keeping you a good person is the threat of punishment in the next life or a promise of reward. You're not a good person, you're just a turd in denial.

This gets to the question of whether or not intent matters.

Ah of course asking ridiculous simplified questions is going to give anyone the answer to one of the most profound and confusing un answered questions about the human psyche, that's been making religion, science, philosophy and psychotherapist, scratch their heads since complex thought.


Doesn't matter if intent matters if you can't read their intent. to you and anyone else they did good and they did actually do good whether they wanted to. Does that make them a good person? Not if all they want to do is bad. I could live in one of the most dangerous 3RD world ghettos and to survive I will have to kill, cheat, steal but I do this because I don't want to starve, I don't want my children to starve all I have ever known is These people in the ghettos I have grew up with, lived with. Does that make me a bad person because this is my only option?

I could be a total PoS in life but give my organs up for donation when I am dead and in doing so save lives. So does that make me a PoS or someone who wants to save someone's life? Or does it just make me human with thoughts, experiences and subjective insight completely different to yours

a voluntary charity worker that gives out food on their day off, helps the red cross on the weekends, and they burgle a house are they a good person or bad?

You can be a bad person and do a lot of good, you can be a good person and do a lot of bad, to put people in the category of just good and bad is a ridiculous over simplification and is completely wrong nobody is totally good or bad. What you see and what they are thinking doesn't decide what they are, this is just personal perception.

/r/Showerthoughts Thread Parent