History of the Good People

We're good people. Aren't we?
Good people....

Good people get MS.
Good people get brain tumours.
Good people get cancer.
Good people die.

Good people.

Should we live our lives to be good? Or even the best?  Why is being the best so admirable? It's so painfully one-dimensional, rudely greedy. Selfish even. You sentence someone else to be second best. At best.

Some people have tough lives but live their teariest moments to the experience of posh boy Olympic champions, their gold plated opportunities and their cash hungry sponsors.
Is that who you admire when you watch the television?
Honestly? What's the matter with you?
Why? Because it only takes a nice convenient 2 minutes to see the results of their efforts.
You can take it in easily, can you?
Well done you.

Good people.

Goodness doesn't sustain. Not in itself. It's too much of an intellectual exercise. It's not pure. Not really.
It's a balance. Today you might be good but tomorrow you might be in a crash on the Andes and eat your cousin.

And isn't goodness horribly puritanical?
Five a day.
Runner beans.
Every pulse you've ever hated.
The painful, pained wan vegetarian who spends their delicate time choking down the artificial protein produced by a chemical factory. Food made by people with engineering degrees.
Giving them just enough energy to lecture us within an inch of our interest.
I can't bear it.

Goodness doesn't sustain. Not in itself.
We love stories of redemption because goodness is a special guest star. It appears in the final reel. It's contrast brings us to tears. But that is drama, entertainment, not life. Please don't confuse it for that.
The contrast is on the surface and the subtexts are too many things that we don't understand. A people we don't know. Or a culture we have no experience of. No connection with.
Yes, the common thread is the human spirit, that's fine but goodness isn't enough.

If you live your life for goodness, you're not living for you because we are human beings.
We are bad.
If television drama argues that we do good well then badness is a close silver. And we have a generation of people who find easy street a hell of a lot more appealing than the Olympic Highway.

Good people.

Someone tell me please, what is the natural  history of good people?
What happens to them, where do they end up, where are they now? Was there any crossover in their life where they were in the Venn intersection with exciting, excited people?
Perhaps the very happy people whose demeanour they questioned. Even at times tried to damage. For the greater good of course.

And if they were the same people, how long was it for? A moment or two that sustains them through the dark decades?
Because it's not enough.

Or perhaps goodness really is its own reward?
Really?
Sounds dull.

Good people. Are they smart, fit, funny?
Or just boring old good? Good, good, fuddy duddy good.

Do they ever wonder if they are living life or if life is living them?