Why I'm Good, You're Bad, And You Need To Do Better

I’m going to say something that a lot of people need to hear, and that almost nobody is brave enough to say with the care and precision it deserves: I’m good, you’re bad, and you need to do better. I say this with tremendous compassion for everyone willing to accept it without making me explain why.

Me good. You bad. Bad is bad. I’m good cause I’m me and me is good. Some of you will want a footnote for this, but I have already done the work of making it accessible. I used short words because I believe people deserve entry points to complicated conversations, provided they enter from the correct side.

When I say me good, I mean that my intentions are good, my impact is good, and any impact that appears not to be good needs to be evaluated in the context of my intentions. When I say you bad, I do not mean you are beyond growth. I mean growth begins when you accept that you are bad, and that disputing this assessment is further evidence of how much growth remains. These are different standards because we occupy different positions in the conversation. I am explaining it, and you are being explained. Hope this helps, little buddy.

A few people have proposed a third category called we both made mistakes. I examined it and found that it would require me to put my own conduct beside yours for comparison. Comparison can flatten important differences. For instance, when I raise my voice, I am making room for a difficult truth; when you raise yours, you are taking up room that belongs to difficult truths. The same words can do different things depending on who says them and whether that person is me.

Me good. You bad. You do better. I have written this on a whiteboard with two circles, arrows, and a small star beside my circle to denote the work I have already done. The arrows point from your circle toward mine. During the workshop, someone asked whether an arrow could ever go the other way. I took a moment to appreciate their curiosity before explaining that an arrow in that direction would defeat the purpose of the diagram. The room was quiet afterward, which I interpreted as progress. See? Big feelings, little arrows. We can do hard things.

This framework also helps with the common objection that nobody is entirely good or bad. Of course we contain multitudes. I contain good multitudes; you contain bad ones awaiting supervision. The labels describe where we are right now, except that I have been where I am for some time and expect to remain there. You can eventually join me if you begin by agreeing that you are currently the sort of person who has to ask whether you can join me.

Yesterday, a person in a shared space said something. Several people saw it. I will not reproduce the words, because repeating harm is harm, and I will not describe the shared space, because that would center the location over the impact. What matters is the larger pattern, which you can recognize without particulars if you have been paying attention. I recognized it immediately. This is one of the differences between us. You needed something to happen before you knew whose side you were on. I did not.

Someone in the replies asked what was said. Errrmmmm, checks notes, you need me to hand you a transcript before you’ll consider the possibility that a thing was bad? That’s a very revealing standard of evidence to have in the year we are currently living in. I am exhausted by the expectation that I provide an example every time I make an accusation. If the example is what makes you care, you have already told me everything I need to know about you.

I have been sitting with the discomfort of witnessing a dynamic, and now you need to sit with the discomfort of me telling you I witnessed it. Bottom on chair. Feet on floor. Listening ears on. We are going to practice having a feeling that does not immediately become a question for Morgan. I can see you opening your mouth. Did we say it was mouth time? No, bestie. We said it was sitting time. Thank you to everyone who already knew how to sit.

Me feeling bad means something bad happened. If you made me feel bad, you did the bad thing. If you feel bad because I said you did the bad thing, that is your bad feeling and does not count. This is quite elementary, though I understand that elementary concepts can be challenging when you are implicated by them.

Predictably, somebody said “I think you’re talking about me, but I honestly don’t know what I did.” Let’s look at what is happening in that sentence. First the person centers themself by assuming my post is about them. Then they demand emotional labor with the phrase “what I did.” Finally they position honesty as a shield against accountability. I have underlined all three parts in the screenshot I sent to my friends. If you still need context, please consider why you are so attached to context. Do you need me to cut the context into little pieces? Should I make airplane noises while I bring the context to your mouth?

I want to extend grace to this person, but grace has to meet people where they are, and right now they are in a place where they keep asking me to say what happened. My DMs are open for a sincere apology. A sincere apology should acknowledge the harm in the terms I’ve used, without making me relive it by identifying it, and should commit to a concrete plan for change. I will know whether the plan is concrete when I read it. If I say it is vague, please do not ask what would make it less vague. We have been over this, apparently with one of us not listening.

Another commenter suggested that two people can disagree without one of them being morally deficient. Um, okay, sure, and while we’re at it maybe there’s this little guy called HITLER whom you’d like to hear out because he “has a different perspective”? I am not comparing anyone to Hitler. I am asking why the concept of a comparison makes you uncomfortable. Many people seem eager to litigate the name while remaining conspicuously silent about the thing I have not specified.

People have accused me of using the word “violence” too broadly. I find this objection violent in a broad but entirely appropriate sense. Language has consequences. So does insisting that language have definitions before you let me use it. There is a long history of asking people to be specific in order to make them feel small, and I won’t make myself small for an audience whose main contribution to this conversation has been requesting the actual topic of it.

I know I’m good because I stopped myself before typing the person’s name. I also know I’m good because I took a screenshot, cropped the name out, and posted it beneath the phrase “some of you need to sit with this.” Since then, three people have apologized to me for separate things I wasn’t talking about. That is the reach of this work. Imagine how many more might apologize if they weren’t waiting for a reason.

If you’re reading this and feeling defensive, sit with that. If you’re reading this and feeling nothing, interrogate that. If you agree with me, thank you for modeling the kind of receptivity that makes a community possible. I have turned off replies to protect the space for reflection, although the restack button remains available for anyone ready to take action.

I have seen people try to complicate the distinction between good and bad by asking whether I have ever made someone feel the way I feel now. The answer is that when I do it, there is a reason. The reason is that I am good. Please stop making me draw the circles again. I gave myself the star. You do not get a star for noticing.

Paid subscribers receive my framework for telling which people are good and which people need to do better. It is a diagram of two circles. I’m in one of them.