Being “good” is usually related to having adaptive, low-conflict, and submissive behavior. The psychologist Xavier Guix gives an example. You are out partying with some friends and a person approaches you and starts a conversation with you. You feel comfortable and everything is going perfectly, except for one detail: he is not your type. Even so, the night ends and you set out for a new meeting. The day comes and you meet again. You know you’re not going to fall in love, but you aspire to it. On that second date you discover that the other person is falling in love with you and wants to experience it sexually as well. He’s still not your type. The most honest thing to do, Guix suggests, would be to recognize that there is not enough physics and chemistry. But then ‘bad kindness’ appears: you feel bad for the other person. You see her excited and dedicated, while you are still full of doubts, after allowing the balloon to become enormous. You don’t know how to avoid disappointing her, so you commit yourself sexually, believing that with time, perhaps, the long-awaited infatuation will come. However, after many years, that person recognizes that that day he had never “Failed to be more sincere with himself and not so good with the other person,” says Guix.
And it’s just an example… There are all ages. Many obedient children with a reputation for well-behaved develop behavioral problems as they grow up because they do not fit into the mold in which they were educated. It happened, for example, to Xavier Guix, as he explains in his latest book, The Problem of Being Too Good (Harpa), where he warns about what he calls ‘bad goodness’. That is, the condemnation that represents unconsciously assuming orders and duties that do not fit with one’s life experience due to an irrational fear of being punished, as occurred in childhood.
Guix performs an autopsy on “goodism.” And he clarifies that being a good person does not mean having only kind, tender and compassionate feelings. Good people also get indignant, angry and filled with rage. “I still remember the Dalai Lama openly expressing his anger at injustices,” he declares in this regard.
This psychologist states that it is not about wanting to be a good person based on the family, cultural and religious canons imposed by our parents, current morality or God the Father. When a person stops being himself and becomes a follower of orders and duties that he has not decided of his own free will, he runs the risk of becoming dark. “Doing one’s duty does not make one kind. It just makes him obedient,” says Guix.
“For fulfilling one’s duty, atrocities have been carried out and wars and fundamentalisms of all kinds are still justified,” he adds. “For goodness to exist, one must act by doing good, even if it is at the cost of disobedience. And good is not only for oneself, but always for a greater good,” he summarizes.
Although there is no single profile that describes exactly what the practitioners of “bad kindness” are like, it is known that many end up being clients of professionals who are in charge of preserving mental health. Guix gives a few examples in his fourteenth book.
So the solution is to disobey? Not quite. It is not about going over to the dark side and going through the life of a rebel and an emotional anti-system, but rather about realizing that obedience is not a decision, but an servitude. “The question is not to do what you have to do or what everyone else does, but to decide how you want to live, even if you have not been able to choose the circumstances,” says this master in Contemporary Thought, who teaches self-knowledge courses at various universities.
What’s the problem with being too good?
The first of all is anguish, because the person does not experience his “goodness” as something pleasant, but rather suffers from it. The second problem is that suffering is experienced inside and not outside, so the person splits in two and splits. In the end, you are so focused on others that you disconnect from your desires and stop knowing what you like and what is your own. Being very good does not make them love you more, but rather it leads to them using you.
I understand that as a child he was an assiduous practitioner of “bad kindness”…
That’s right, I was a good child. My education was based on being very considerate of others and obeying. Whatever was needed, I volunteered to please whoever’s wishes, especially if that person was in control of the situation. But over the years I have discovered that it was “bad kindness”, because I was not so much thinking about doing good, as about looking good.
And how is this resolved? Is there a cure or does one stay like this forever?
The luck is that they are programming and, as such, they can be changed. Another thing is that they are so embedded that the process can be very long. In the end, it’s about finding yourself to build your life from there and not end up creating a character.
What is the experience of finding yourself supposed to be like?
There are two centers of gravity. The first is psychological and consists of knowing how to listen to yourself internally. The second resides in the soul and is another type of intuition, not so much related to the psyche, but to the spirit. That is, there is the center of being and the center of the self. The ability to handle both well is what allows you to live fully.
In your book do you recommend using the internal compass that we have built in as standard to find the correct direction? What leads do you recommend following?
There is a type of knowledge that is not only rational, but is that little inner voice that we could call the inner compass. We must be attentive not only to the rational part, but also to what we feel inside. The key word is discernment. The important thing is not whether we are moved by reason, emotion or passion, but that, in the face of all the things that happen to us, there is a source that decides. The danger is always that others decide for us.
He talks about the convenience of updating our character from time to time, like internet applications. How often do you recommend doing so?
In every moment! The idea is not mine, but rather Antonio Blay’s (this psychologist is considered the precursor of Transpersonal Psychology in Spain). He was referring to what had to be done, precisely, to avoid the character, that is, to prevent being simple machines that automate processes. To avoid this, Blay recommended updating potentialities.
Which is it?
Basically, intelligence, love and energy. In other words: the ability to think, the ability to feel and the ability to do. Given what happens to us at every moment, we need to update ourselves. That means that if I realize, for example, that I get angry in the same situation, well, hey, this is already an automation, a repetition, something mechanical. If it is happening, you have to take charge and update the program, so that the response is different. When I am able to update myself I am activating my potentials.
Some politicians argue that, as the philosopher Thomas Hobbes maintained, “man is a wolf to his kind.” Does the thief believe that everyone is like him?
These expressions always tell us about the filter through which we observe reality. If the filter is that everyone is a thief and corrupt, because I am too, my opinions will be permeated by this worldview. The same thing happens to a lover when he sees the color pink everywhere. In the end, it all depends on the glasses one wears, since we tend to believe what reinforces us.
And what is your opinion?
In my opinion, man is not a wolf for his kind. For me it is only one possibility among many. In life there are surely many more good people than bad. The problem is that there is no one who is considered bad. Even when one admits to being one, he always finds someone who is even much worse than him.
Is the problem that we give ourselves too much importance?
Indeed. Many times we say: but what will they think of me! But, in reality, others do not have us so present in their thoughts… Considering that everyone is completely focused on oneself is no longer programming, because we are by no means the center of the world. It is better not to give so much importance to others but also not to give so much importance to yourself.
