The Violence of Being Good
Goodness as spiritual defiance: why betraying yourself is easy, and protecting your soul is war.
“Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point.”
— C.S. Lewis
You need a genuinely raw, soul deep orientation and stubborn preference for goodness if you want to be a good person, because this world structurally incentivises succumbing to your lowest nature to obtain what you believe should rightfully be yours.
You have an entitlement, and that entitlement need not even be sinful or delusional. It can be just, for by any sensible conception of karmic accounting you can be owed a great debt by this world for your good deeds that is not only perpetually unpaid, but actively punished. And so if you are good because you like to be, because to be so is strongly your preference - that does not mean you should endlessly suffer for being so. Those who choose goodness for its own sake less than anyone deserve their suffering, and yet it is they who suffer most through their self-restraint in choosing principle over predation.
And so you are stubbornly good despite all else, for no reason other than because you want to be - even if it costs you everything - your peace, your contentment, and your very sanity.
To be a good person is dangerous, because it is unsafe - because it is thankless, because unless you love being it for its own sake as an apex value in alignment with the divinity of beauty and nothing else, it will ruin you when you incur so much agony and forego so much reward to stay loyal to it and to you in optimising for the purity of your soul, rather than the acquisition of power. And so to conquer your own soul is to preserve it, protect it, and keep it properly aligned and well oriented, and so to preserve it you cannot let either the desire for prosperity or even justice conquer the throne in your heart. To be good, then, truly and deeply in your core fiber, is an act of extreme spiritual violence, for it is both irrational and radical.
You are like a candle in the void, a piercing glint in the cosmos - your spirit embodies the singular rallying defiance against practicality, efficiency, profit - all things that whisper to and seduce you into eroding, sacrificing, and turning upon the very essence of who you were, are, and are meant to be. And the greater your capacity, the more you see, sense, and taste the tainted edges of those desires on your finger tips, brushing against your top lip, invading your every sense like a distinct ancient aroma, seductively enticing you to forego your resolve. The trap calls out to you, and it makes a compelling case for itself.
Why should you struggle so much? Don’t you deserve to be happy? Why should you be good in a world that makes you suffer for your virtues, that is all too ready to reward you for your sins in the name of power and efficiency?
Why be good in a world that extracts from you, and punishes you for being everything you truly long to be - a good man, a good woman, a purehearted and giving soul - that gives you the capacity to get what you want quicker and with greater certainty if only you are willing to betray your every moral instinct, whispering seductively to you, screaming angrily at you:
“Take it, take what you want, you are powerful enough, so why don’t you? You know you can have it and bind it and make it yours, so do it, because the universe won’t just hand it to you - God won’t give it to you for good behaviour, for there is no reward for purity other than the avoidance of suffering born from desecration, you’re not guaranteed your due from good behaviour alone, so take it and make it and compel it and do what is required to get it by conquering it - or live without it and console yourself with your purity - because that’s all you’ll have” - although your one and only (soul) is your everything, don’t you see?
That voice is the righteous rage of the justice seeker inherent to your goodness seeking restitution in a world without guarantees or assurances, which structurally enables and rewards those willing to be ruthless enough, cold enough, and self-betraying enough to bend their souls - for in spite of its beauty, this fallen world values results and efficiency over decency and integrity, and is too frequently more than willing to sacrifice the latter for the former, and in doing so normalises a type of sterility in the heart that gets defined as success.
But “I did what I had to do” right?
You make deals with the devil, or with God. The devil will never stop knocking, and sometimes, in your lowest moments, out of greed or shame or terror, in desperation or exhaustion you will even let him in. But the line that runs through the hearts of all men and women - our cherished principled ideals, the moral standard we wish to hold ourselves to as a true soul deep orientation and preference - when survival, trauma and vengefulness don’t plague us and undo us by consuming us - this is who we truly are - which is hopefully for you, not an unlived self, but one you honour.
The eternal spiritual war rages within, so may you get everything you desire without losing yourself, because you don’t “find yourself”, you lose yourself, and it is your duty to remember you.
I read this aloud. It should be noted that I read this aloud; you have to understand how palpable the experience was that I could only long for more, to be immersed in this world of monologue, yes: the performance was very much audible to my soul. Beautiful piece.
To be good, or to not be good. To "not be good" isn't necessarily an equivalent to "be bad" I must say. I try to be good, but I would be lying if I say that I try because I love being good. Fundamentally, nobody does. I try to be good because I want to be and remain divine. Still, I often wonder if the divine is good, at all. I often wonder if he is above the moral identities we assign to deeds. As far as I know, he is good. Yet I wonder. I still wonder.
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