- 10 Nov, 2025 *
I’ve been thinking about the difference between not doing something bad and actually doing something good—which sounds like one of those obvious distinctions that everyone understands intellectually but somehow still manages to miss in practice (myself very much included, I should add, because I’m certainly not writing this from any kind of moral high ground).
The gap between these two positions is deceptively small on paper but unquantifiably vast in lived experience. Not harming someone is fundamentally passive; it requires only restraint, a kind of moral holding pattern where you simply refrain from making things worse, but actually helping someone—supporting them, inspiring them, genuinely improving their situation—requires initiative, effort, a willingness to ex…
- 10 Nov, 2025 *
I’ve been thinking about the difference between not doing something bad and actually doing something good—which sounds like one of those obvious distinctions that everyone understands intellectually but somehow still manages to miss in practice (myself very much included, I should add, because I’m certainly not writing this from any kind of moral high ground).
The gap between these two positions is deceptively small on paper but unquantifiably vast in lived experience. Not harming someone is fundamentally passive; it requires only restraint, a kind of moral holding pattern where you simply refrain from making things worse, but actually helping someone—supporting them, inspiring them, genuinely improving their situation—requires initiative, effort, a willingness to extend yourself beyond the comfortable boundaries of non-interference. And I think we seem to have collectively decided as humans, in some bizarre unconscious agreement, that the former is sufficient while the latter is optional, perhaps even admirable but certainly not expected.
It reminds me of something I came across in gratitude research (because, of course, I went down that rabbit hole), which found that deliberately practicing gratitude—you know, the whole gratitude journal phenomenon—has minimal to no measurable effect on mental health, meanwhile receiving gratitude from others has profound positive impacts. Which is fascinating, right? It suggests we’re fundamentally wired for reciprocal care rather than individualistic self-optimisation, that the act of doing good for others and having that recognised creates something essential that we can’t manufacture through introspection alone. Because we are not designed to simply exist in our own heads, congratulating ourselves for not being terrible; we’re meant to actively participate in making things better for the people around us, and the absence of that participation—the choice to remain neutral—might actually be a kind of slow spiritual (or psychological, or emotional, choose your framework) starvation.
My spouse said something the other night that’s been rattling around in my head ever since. They mentioned that they appreciate how when I recognise something as morally wrong, I just stop doing it rather than constructing elaborate rationalisations to continue (I’m unsure of the veracity of this pronouncement). And this observation—which was probably meant as a compliment but has instead sent me spiralling into existential reflection, as these things do—got me thinking about how normalised it’s become to live with these massive contradictions between what we claim to believe and what we actually do. Not the contradictions per se (we’re human, so moral failing is inevitable), but the intellectual dishonesty of refusing to acknowledge them. The deliberate burying of one’s head in the sand.
There’s something revealing about that gap, I think—not the initial moral compromise, but the refusal to see it clearly. We’ve somehow decided that maintaining cognitive consistency between our values and our actions is naïve or unsophisticated, that truly mature people understand that moral integrity is optional, that everyone’s doing it so what’s the big deal. But there’s a stark difference between genuine humility about moral complexity (which I think is necessary and wise) and simply avoiding accountability to your own convictions because accountability is uncomfortable.
And what’s the actual benefit of this self-deception? I still don’t understand. Your conscience nevertheless knows. The people around you often know. So who exactly are you fooling? I suppose the answer is that we’re trying to avoid pain, loss, or a wounded ego—the discomfort of admitting we’ve failed by our own standards. But isn’t it ultimately more prudent, more sensible, to simply acknowledge the failing and correct course? (I’m not saying it’s easier—it’s definitely not easier—but avoiding the problem just creates more problems, and then what? We sit in the fire we’ve made, complaining it’s hot?)
This connects back, in a roundabout way, to that initial distinction between avoiding harm and actively pursuing good. Because I think we apply the same intellectual dishonesty to both: we tell ourselves that not being actively bad is sufficient and that neutrality is a morally defensible position, when really we know—somewhere beneath all the rationalisations—that we’re capable of more, that we’re meant for more, that the boundary between mediocrity and genuine goodness lies precisely at the point where we stop merely refraining from negative action and start consciously manifesting care, attention, and effort directed toward actually improving things for other people.
It’s a delicate balance, refusing negativity while manifesting positive qualities. But I suspect many, if not most, of us have been living on the wrong side of that balance for so long that we’ve forgotten what it looks like to tip the other way.
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