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Nov. 13, 2025 - Dennis Prager Show
45:32
Timeless Wisdom - Why is it So Hard to Be Good
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Welcome to Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
Hear thousands of hours of Dennis' lectures, courses, and classic radio programs.
And to purchase Dennis Prager's Rational Bibles, go to DennisPrager.com.
The purpose of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur on a micro level, that is individual level, is to assess ourselves, which is not a comfortable thing to do.
I made a video many years ago, which I'm still very proud of, with my colleague and friend, Alan Estrin, called For Goodness Sake.
We went on the street, actually people we hired went on the street and asked passersby, do you think you're a good person?
And everybody said yes.
Everybody.
It would be very hard, in fact, to meet somebody who didn't think that they were basically good person.
And generally speaking, those who don't think that are good people.
They just have very high standards for themselves and think that they're still not living up to their mother's expectations of them.
But that is what Rosh Hashanah and Jon Kipper are about, this self-assessment.
And I want to talk to you about a very, very difficult subject.
Why is it so hard to be a better person?
Here is my, here is, I'm going to give you, by the way, 14 reasons.
After I'm done, you'll wonder how anybody is good.
We have before us a tremendous, tremendously difficult task, and that is the task of improving ourselves.
And I'm going to offer you, as I said, reasons why I think it is so difficult to be a better person.
And as I often say when I give speeches in lists, which is usually the case, it's in no order of importance.
Number one, you have to want to be good to be good.
It's got to be a priority.
It's got to be the priority.
And to be honest, I don't know how many people in our society, let alone other societies, really have as their primary priority for their goals in life to be a good person.
So in effect, we start off with a disadvantage if we, goodness starts off with a disadvantage.
And that is that if you don't want to be it particularly strongly, I mean, very few people want to be bad.
Okay, I grant that.
But so what?
See, if you want to be a good doctor, you work very, very hard.
Years and years of tough work.
And then the rest of your life, you have to go for renewal and you have to get your license renewed and you have to study again.
You want to be a good plumber, you got to work really hard at plumbing because there's competition.
You better be the best.
You have to smell good now, apparently.
It's not enough to be a good plumber.
You got to smell good.
I always got a kick out of that.
I never recall smelling my plumber.
But on the other hand, who am I to complain?
So, when we think about it, think about what we want to be good at and what it is we want in our own lives.
If you were asked, what do you most want to be?
How many, if I went to a college, any college in America, and I had 50 college students randomly picked of every background.
So, what do you most want to be in life?
Do you think one would say good?
And I'm not saying they're bad.
Please understand, I'm not picking on anybody.
I'm not holier than now, none of that.
I just want to honestly confront the dilemma of becoming better, a better person.
Now, remember this: the entire subtext of this talk is this: We want everybody else to make it their priority.
That's the irony.
If you'd ask anybody in the world, what do you most want from people?
It's they'd be good to me, that they treat me well.
So, if you ask any, what do you most want others to be?
Good.
What do you most want to be?
Smart, successful, wealthy, famous, rich, whatever it is.
Did I say wealthy and then rich?
No, one is enough.
I don't want to have overkill.
I mean, whatever it is, though.
So, the thing, here is the killer about goodness: the thing we most want everyone else of the other 7 billion people to be, we don't want most for ourselves.
So, how could it happen?
Unless everybody wants it for him or herself, then there's really no chance.
My wanting others to treat me well, if that's not my priority about me treating others well, but I have other priorities for me, then it's not going to work.
So, the number one, and I guess if I did have to listen in significance, this might be it.
If it isn't the biggest deal, then it won't be a big deal.
And I don't know how to make it number one.
I think it has to start very early in life, and since that's one of the 14 reasons, I'll get to that later.
But you can't be what you don't aim to be.
Very few people are good without wanting to be good.
There are a handful of people who just are instinctively so good that they don't even have to think about it, but you can't rely on that any more than you can rely on people to be great musicians and never having taken a music lesson.
I mean, there are such people, but you can't fill an orchestra with people who never took music lessons and who intuited how to play a violin or another instrument.
So, number one, if you want to be a good person, and by the way, let me make clear: I am not here asking people to be saints, just good, not great, not heroic.
I'm not asking you to dive into icy puns to save a dog.
Just we're talking about rudimentary, basic, ethical, moral goodness.
Number two, There's an immense confusion about what goodness is.
What I am defining it as first and foremost, how we treat other people.
Both on the right and on the left, religious and secular have other definitions often of what goodness is about.
For example, in the religious world, a lot of times goodness has been defined in very much insexual terms.
So that whatever, I'm not here to argue with any religious position.
Both Christianity and Judaism have similar positions on these matters, but I'm not here to argue the position.
I'm here to argue whether that is an element of goodness.
And there are many sexual sins in religion, including those which pertain just for the individual and him or herself.
Since there are young people here, I'm being as ginger as I can in my language.
And that's not a matter of good and evil.
Engaging in that act is not good or evil.
It may be holy or unholy, but it is not good or evil.
And I think that religion has given morality a bad name often by overemphasizing sexual sin at the price of sins of cruelty, meanness, and other things.
I'll give you an example of why I think this is biblically sound, by the way.
The prostitute, Rahab Rachav, in the book of Joshua is a heroine.
She saves the Israelites when they come into the promised land.
Why would the Bible make a prostitute a hero?
Isn't that supposedly an oxymoron?
How could a prostitute be a moral giant?
And yet that's how she is depicted.
Clearly, then, while obviously the Torah, and that, well, this is post-Torah, as the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, is not in favor of that as a way of making a living.
It does not associate it with evil.
It may be sin, but not all sin is evil.
All sin is sin, but not all sin is evil.
In Judaism, it's a sin to eat pork.
But anybody who said that eating pork is evil would be out of his mind.
It's not an evil act.
It's a sinful act.
Christianity would have similar things, and so would every other religion.
Not all evil is sin, but not all sin is evil.
Oscar Schindler saved Jews.
He is the hero of Schindler's list, right?
Yet he was an adulterer.
Do we think of him as a moral great man?
Yes, we do.
What a flawed man.
Martin Luther King was an adulterer.
Do we think of him as a great man?
Rightly so we do.
But if those two had also robbed banks, I think we would have a different view in our assessment of them.
So that's an example of where sometimes we get tripped up on the religious, quote, right.
On the left, you get tripped up on what goodness is, because for many, it's having the right position.
So you're against racism, you're for peace, you're for the environment, you're a wonderful human being.
But no, you're not.
First of all, do you know anybody who's for racism, against peace, or for pollution?
I mean, did you meet anybody?
You know, how about a bumperstick?
I love pollution.
It's an absurdity.
It's an absurdity.
You're against racism.
Do you know anybody who's for it?
I mean, seriously, I don't know anybody for it.
I never even met one.
My grandfather, may he rest in peace, he always rooted for the white guy in boxing matches.
I will admit that.
But first of all, we're talking a long time ago.
My grandfather grew up in 1920s America, and his father-in-law happened to have been murdered by an African-American.
So, you know, I'll give him a little leeway.
But all I did when I would hear my grandfather rant against the black boxer is laugh.
It was so absurd to me.
I mean, racism, thank God, is now more laughable than real in the United States of America.
So if you, you know, when you have your kid and you raise your kid to have the right positions on political subjects, that doesn't make him a good kid.
By the way, I hold that for my own position.
If my kids just have good political positions, but they're mean, spirited to other people, they're not good people.
They have good positions.
Good positions don't make you good.
Running 5K for breast cancer doesn't make you a good person.
You did a good deed, very nice, but it doesn't make you a good person.
Sitting next to the fattest kid in your class in high school who's alone during lunchtime, that's a good kid.
Not cheating on your high school exams, that's a good kid.
But running 5K for breast cancer, it's very nice, but it doesn't qualify in the same realm as the ethical and moral I just mentioned.
A good person is not one who treats animals well.
Of course you should treat animals well.
Anyone who mistreats animals is a mean, bad person.
But not everybody who treats animals well is a good person.
So let me tell you a little law here on goodness.
Anyone who mistreats an animal, there is a direct relationship between mistreating animals and mistreating people.
But there is no correlation between treating animals nicely and treating people nicely.
None.
The Nazis banned all experimentation on animals.
They allowed medical experimentation on human beings.
Their good treatment of animals, and nobody was as preoccupied with animal rights as the Nazis until modern America, until contemporary America and contemporary Europe.
And look at how they treated people.
So it's very important to know what goodness is.
Also, it is not about religious piety.
There are pious Jews, Christians, and Muslims who are mean-spirited human beings.
You can be very pious.
You can pray three times a day in Judaism, five times a day in Islam.
You can wear a hair shirt in medieval Christianity and be a particularly mean person.
One of the greatest rabbis who ever lived, the Vilni Gon, Orthodox rabbi, in Vilnius, in Lithuania, he said, the Torah is like rain.
How so?
Rain brings forth poisonous weeds and beautiful flowers.
Said it about our own Torah, or Orthodox Jew.
There's no guarantee that even a Torah-observant person will be a good person.
And finally, it's not about intentions.
Good intentions don't mean a thing.
The number of times my generation baby boomers have been described as, well, they may have been wrong on a lot of things, but they were sincere.
They were idealistic.
So what?
All evil, all great evils in the world are done by sincerely idealistic people.
Sincerity and idealism don't amount to a hill of beans unless the sincerity and idealism are about good things.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Number three, even if you want to be good and you know what goodness is, how do you know how to do it?
How do you know how to be good?
I would argue that it is easier to be a good surgeon than be a good person.
You know why?
Because, among other things, you have a lesson.
You go to medical school and you learn surgery.
Where do you learn goodness?
They're a goodness school.
Can you get a PhD in goodness?
You can get a PhD in medieval Hungarian poetry, but you can't get a PhD in goodness.
Now, why is that?
Why do we study everything under the sun except how to be good?
The truth is, we did study how to be good in the past in America.
That's exactly what colleges were founded to be.
Universities were founded to produce people of good character.
That has died along the way.
Part of the reason is we can't agree on what good character is, so we decided not to try.
But think about it: where do you learn how to be good?
Where did you learn how to be good?
Where do your kids learn how to be good?
They will learn a whole host of things, but they don't learn how to be good unless they study specifically in places that teach you character building, and there are very few places, and they're all in religious schools, and not all religious schools by any means do it.
But think about it: where's the instruction manual on how to be good?
Who will be my teacher or my coach in goodness?
Where can I take goodness lessons?
So that's number three.
We don't know, we don't learn how to be good, and you do have to learn it.
You can't intuit it.
That's the problem.
People think, I'll just follow my heart.
I am basically good.
Everybody else is basically good.
We'll follow our hearts and we'll do good.
But we're not basically good.
It's one of the major teachings of every great religion, including Judaism.
Number four, we think too highly of ourselves.
As many of you have heard me note on the radio, and I learned this on the radio from a major criminologist who has spent his life interviewing and studying violent criminals.
You know who have the highest self-esteem in the world?
Violent criminals.
The self-esteem movement was a disaster for character.
If a six-year-old thinks he's wonderful, it's bad.
Every good person I know, in fact, I now do this as a sort of routine.
I ask the nicest people, the kindest and finest, finest people I know.
I asked them if they had high self-esteem as a kid.
Not one said yes.
High self-esteem as a young person is a bad thing in terms of character.
The self-esteem movement has been truly a disaster.
You know the famous story.
Koreans and six other countries, including the U.S., were monitored for their high school students, were monitored for their knowledge of mathematics.
U.S. students came in last, seventh.
Koreans came in first.
The Koreans came in last in self-esteem, and the Americans came in first in self-esteem.
In other words, self-esteem about their math knowledge.
Not self-esteem in general only, about their math knowledge.
There was no correlation between reality and self-esteem.
Maybe, by the way, it's good not to have too much self-esteem.
Maybe having to prove your worth.
I joked earlier about still having to prove to your mother.
I'll never forget a New Yorker cartoon.
It showed a general on a horse in a monument.
There was a monument built somewhere, and it had General so-and-so and so-and-so, whatever name he was.
And then it listed the campaigns he was on, that he was first at West Point, that he was the general at the youngest age, that he had fought in three wars, and then on the bottom, and still a disappointment to his mother.
Maybe because he had always felt that he had to be very impress mom, he was that good.
Maybe that is a good thing.
Maybe all this unconditional everything isn't such a good thing.
Maybe you get further having to impress your father or your mother your whole life.
So maybe we do think a little too highly of ourselves.
Maybe, as our survey for our film, For Goodness Sake, showed, everybody thought they were terrific.
Number five, people think that if they're good, they will be vulnerable and therefore be hurt and be taken advantage of.
This is a, I get, I never realize this, but because I talk about these subjects, I get questions that awaken in me what people are thinking.
A lot of people are afraid.
I have gotten this question frequently: why should I raise my child to be particularly honest?
It's a dog-eat-dog world.
My child will fail in this world if they're honest.
Parents have said that to me.
Now, if they think that of their child, they must surely think of themselves.
Hey, if I'm such a nice person, I'm just going to get what's, I don't know what's the non-gross word for crap down, so I'll just leave it at that.
But that's what people think.
I'm just going to get dumped on here in life.
If I'm a nice person, I'm going to get hurt.
I'll be taken advantage of.
I have three comments on that.
Number one, that only happens if you're around bad people.
If you really do act decently and nobly and ethically, and you are getting dumped on, you are not around good people.
Good people don't dump on good people.
Bad people dump on good people.
So it's time for you to rethink who you allow into your life.
But it's not time for you to rethink your goodness.
It's time for you to rethink those who dump on your goodness.
Isn't that the more logical conclusion?
If your house keeps getting robbed, you don't join the robbing group.
You make your house more secure against robbers.
By the way, you surround yourself with good people, you will be better.
Who you choose as your friends is as important a choice as you will ever make in your life.
There's a beautiful statement in the Talmud: you make for yourself a friend, and you have acquired a teacher.
Rav or rabbi means teacher in Hebrew.
If your friends are your teachers, you are a very lucky person.
Might I say, it's been the blessing of my life.
All my friends have been my teachers.
And I hope that I play a similar role in my friends' lives.
A friend is not someone you just see movies with.
A friend is a person who influences your life, and everybody who is sensitive to his own or her own behavior knows you act differently with different people.
Some people bring out the good in you, and some people don't.
Some people bring out the cynical in you, and sometimes even the mean.
There are people you might even have in your life you're embarrassed to talk about your goodness to, because they'll laugh.
That's truly a case for quietly and decisively exiting from that person's sphere of influence.
It's a very big deal about being a better person who your friends are.
Number two, you won't be taken advantage of if you're good, as a general rule.
You are taken advantage of if you are weak.
Goodness demands strength.
The association of good and weak is a very unfortunate one.
I often tell my Christian friends the way Jesus has been depicted in movies in the last 20, 30 years, I don't know why anybody would follow him.
It's, I call him the nebish from Nazareth.
That's the way he's depicted.
Oh, hello.
I am sweet.
Are you sweet?
We are all sweet.
That's how he's depicted.
I assure you that is not true to the New Testament's depiction.
You can't be good and just some pablum thrower or some weakling.
Goodness takes far more strength than badness does.
It's easy to be bad.
It takes strength to be good.
And finally, I will admit, if you're really a good person, you might be a little bit taken advantage of, especially in a family situation, because you can't pick your relatives.
You can pick your friends.
And you may, in fact, be taken advantage of in family situations.
My argument here is: if I may cite Jesus here, turn the other cheek.
In family situations, by and large, unless we're talking about horrific conduct, don't count the insults.
You'll do a lot better.
Well, who called who last Rosh Hashanah?
Did I call my child or did my child call me?
Did I call my brother or sister or did my brother or sister call me?
If you keep track, you're doomed.
You will just be unhappy and you will have a less happy life with your relatives.
So if you end up being the good guy most of the time, be the good guy most of the time.
Okay?
What does it cost you?
Number six: if you haven't had a personal role model in a parent, a sibling, or among friends of goodness, it is very hard to be good.
Human beings need role models.
And if you don't have it in a parent, and if you don't have it in a sibling or among a current friend, maybe you will have it in history.
That's why it's so good to read the history of noble people to your children.
Maybe that will be the place.
Maybe, as our dear friend Dr. Stephen Marmer told us the story of a patient he had whose father was a traveling salesman, came home on weekends, and all he would do is spend time with mother.
Spend no time with the kids.
He basically never saw his father.
So, where did he get male role models?
At the movie theater.
But this guy grew up in the 40s.
Today, you're not going to get good role models in the movie theater.
The human being needs human beings in order to know how to live.
It's too abstract without seeing it in the life of somebody.
That is why stories are so powerful in the Bible.
Stories.
Oh, so that's how Moses acted.
Ah, then maybe I should emulate that.
That is why, by the way, I'm a very big believer that every adult has to try to be a model to young people.
My generation of baby boomers has resisted growing up, so they like to be on the same level, a peer of young people rather than an adult.
Most of you have heard my show, and you hear how often people will say to me, You're like a father figure to me.
And I am, it's a burden to be honest, because believe me, a lot of people would say, No, no, not me, no.
I am honored by that, and every adult should try to be a father or a mother figure.
That's exactly what we're supposed to be, vis-a-vis kids.
Is a figure worthy of emulation.
That's what we should aspire to be.
Not high-fiving 10-year-olds, but rather giving them a handshake into manhood.
Number seven, people don't believe that there are rewards for being good, right?
There are rewards for being a good surgeon, honor, money, there are rewards for being a good athlete, right?
A lot of rewards: fame, money, rupees, a lot of rewards.
What's the reward for being good?
Be a very interesting question for you to ask yourself.
What's the reward for being a good person?
There's a reward for being a good plumber.
What is the reward for being a good person?
I would argue that, in fact, there are a number of rewards.
I'll give you five.
Number one, more inner peace.
I am absolutely convinced that the decent have more inner peace than the indecent.
Number two, you will trust other people.
This is a very, this I learned from a crook.
He wasn't in jail, though he came close to being imprisoned.
He was a businessman who was a crook.
I did not know that until later on, but then a lot of things made sense.
Whenever I spoke to him, he would tell me, don't trust that guy.
This guy, he's going to rob you deaf, dumb, and blind.
Everyone he met, he was convinced, was going to cheat me.
There is, in people who hurt others, who cheat others in particular, there is the very understandable belief everybody is like me.
I'm a schmuck.
Everybody's a schmuck.
That's exactly what they think.
So they don't say that.
They wouldn't say that of themselves, but that's exactly what it is.
I cheat everybody, so obviously everybody wants to cheat me.
Don't be naive, Dennis.
Come on, Dennis.
You trust too easily.
I do trust people in my life.
I have been burned very, very few times in my life.
And I have always said it is far better to be burned a couple of times than never to have trusted.
But you can't trust if you yourself are not trustworthy.
That's a built-in fact.
So it's a pretty lousy way to go through life.
Number three: a good person will be more liked and more respected by people.
It's a nice thing.
Now, you shouldn't aim to be liked because then you may compromise when strength is necessary.
But nevertheless, I have found, and you have found in your own lives, good people tend to be more liked and more respected.
The bad will get psychophants.
That's true.
The bad and powerful will get people who will want to shine their shoes to be around them for their own reasons.
But there are their own reasons, and then they will stab the person in the back, as so often happens, as you know.
Number four, the obvious, you will make more friends.
And I don't know how you go through a life without making friends.
It's a very, very lonely existence without friends.
And finally, God will reward you in the afterlife.
Now, since so many people in our modern society don't believe in an afterlife, they don't believe in a God who rewards or punishes.
Many people don't believe in a God.
Many people don't believe God judges.
And many people don't believe that even if God judges, he rewards or punishes.
What is the latest famous book, Everybody Goes to Heaven?
If everybody goes to heaven, God is a twit, in my opinion.
If Hitler went to heaven, I hate God.
I hereby announce on Rosh Hashanah, if Hitler's in heaven, I hate him.
I will not be here next year.
I will be at a movie theater, Rosh Hashanah, at night.
What a stupid idea.
Why would that bring anybody any comfort?
Hitler's in heaven.
Wow.
I really, it's one of the things I don't quite get.
Of course, God judges.
If God doesn't judge, then he's not good.
I wish I had brought Benjamin Franklin, who was considered a deist.
Benjamin Franklin's statement of faith is predicated on an afterlife.
Jefferson and Franklin, the so-called deists, believed in a God who rewarded and punished.
It was the essential moral belief they held.
And it is the essential moral belief of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that God rewards and punishes.
Number eight, a lot of people lack empathy.
And on this one, my friends, I admit I have no solution.
I don't know how to inculcate empathy.
I don't understand why people do not see others' pain as being as real as their own.
I admit it.
I just don't get it.
So for people who lack empathy, that's the definition of a sociopath.
And I don't know if that's curable.
The only thing I can say is if you are raised with the religious belief that everybody is created in God's image, it's a big help in believing that this person deserves decent conduct.
I have often been with difficult people.
I don't mean morally difficult, just difficult.
And my yeshiva training that everybody is created in God's image would be something the words would formulate in my mind and it would affect the way I treated them.
Number nine, we're lazy.
It takes incredible effort to be a good person.
It does.
Why?
Because you have to battle your nature all day, every day.
Only when you're asleep.
Do you not have to battle your nature?
But that's what you have to do because our nature is not so good.
So you got to fight it to be a good person.
Judaism has a great phrase on this.
Three of the difficult areas, the most difficult areas on how you can judge a person's character.
Kiso, Kaso, Koso.
Kiso, you see how they sound similar?
It's a play on words.
Kiso means his pocket.
Koso means his cup.
Kaso means his anger.
See how a person acts with their money?
How he acts or she acts when angry and when drinking.
And you know the person's character.
Those are our tests.
They're the toughest ones.
And I would argue that anger may be the toughest.
Because when people get angry, they lose all moral compunctions.
I mean, I'm telling you the number of people who have written to me and spoken to me on the radio after divorce, where one parent is angry and tries to alienate the children from the other parent.
It's just a perfect example.
They're so angry that they harm the children.
Forget the harm that they're doing to the person they were married to.
The harm that they're doing to those children.
And the extreme one is where, you know, it happens rarely, but it happens.
Where you kill the children.
You're so angry at the other, at the ex-spouse.
Why should they have the joy of these children?
Anger.
Anger is a killer.
Number 10.
Another reason that it's very hard to be good is we're preoccupied with thinking about other matters.
I'm going to bother worrying about how I treat everybody when I have so many problems, right?
Why do most people spend the day thinking about when they're not having to concentrate on work?
They're problems.
So if you concentrate on your problems, how could you concentrate on doing good on a daily basis?
You know, I'm always amazed when, and my wife will laugh at this because she doesn't think that I am the single most courteous driver in America.
I think I'm one of the 10 most courteous.
I don't think I'm number one.
But in any event, when I let somebody in and they don't just wave thank you, it drives me nuts.
And there's a reason.
There's a reason.
They're not trying to hurt me.
A, they don't know me from Adam.
Why would you be allowed to go in?
Somebody stopped for you to make a turn, right?
Why would you not wave a thank you?
Because you're preoccupied with other things.
That's exactly my point.
Goodness needs a place in your brain.
And eventually it becomes habitual.
You think, what's the right thing to do now?
What's the right thing to do now?
But that's the only way to be a good person is to keep thinking, what's the right thing to do now?
How am I making this person feel?
So it's tough.
By the way, that's one reason happy people treat people better.
They're spending less time thinking about how miserable they are.
Right?
Would you rather meet somebody after they just lost a lottery or won a lottery?
No, I'm talking about your wanting money.
Just would you rather be seated next to them on an airplane?
Number 11: Obstacle to Being Better Person.
Hey, I have been so hurt.
Why should I go out of my way to be good to others?
Others have hurt me.
Why should I be good?
Every human who thinks of him or herself primarily as a victim will never be a good person.
Even if you are a victim, you can't, you won't be good.
Victimhood breeds anger.
Anger doesn't breed goodness.
It's a major obstacle to being a better human being.
Number 12: a lot of people were not raised to be good.
They were raised to be happy, brilliant, and successful.
I always ask parents to ask their kids if your kid is 50 or if your kid is five.
Doesn't matter.
Ask, what do you think I, your dad, I, your mom, most want you to be?
Happy, successful, smart, or good?
Not what do you most want to be?
What do you think I most want you to be?
Happy, successful, smart, or good.
And you know how much premium I place on happiness.
But if you're not raised to be good, it's a tough, it's tough.
It just is tough.
Number 13.
A lot of people, when in their most formative years, like high school, they never saw good being rewarded.
I remember when I was in high school, the biggest jerks got the most beautiful girls.
Drove me crazy.
I would think, don't you see he's a jerk?
But then I realized later, 15-year-old girls love jerks.
They're their favorite boys.
Are they going to love me?
I was learning how to conduct brahms.
It's not, and I remember, you know, I never had a good pickup line.
And gee, what do you do?
Oh, I write on ethical monotheism.
Whoa.
Let me go home with you.
And, you know, these twits were getting these girls, and I just, so it's very tough.
I'm serious.
Think about it.
Is goodness rewarded in high school?
Give me a break.
It's the last thing.
You don't even want to be known as good.
Right?
Oh, Jerry Cohen, very good, good man, good-hearted.
That's it?
That's it?
Is it good?
It's boring.
It almost sounds boring.
Forget nice.
Nice was the killer.
I know when my mother, on two occasions, she gave up after that, tried to set me up with a woman or girl, as we call them in those days.
She's very nice.
I thought, uh-oh, I'm out of here.
I mean, I could have lived with kind, but nice, nice for some reason was the kiss of death.
But when you think about it, you know, the most popular kids in high school are never popular because they are really good kids.
They're popular for whatever reason, it isn't goodness.
So, in the most formative years of how you perceive the world, the most important thing people could be is the least rewarded.
And number 14, finally, psychological blocks.
With all of these things, there are still psychological issues that prevent people.
I hate to admit it, I wish it weren't true, but there is a relationship between psychological health and goodness.
I think both directions, by the way.
I think that if you act more good, you'll get more psychologically healthy.
But at the same time, you know, just as an example, it's hard to be good if you're very insecure.
It's hard to be good if you're a drama queen or drama king.
It's impossible to be good if you're narcissistic.
So, what is the conclusion?
I gave you 14 big barriers to goodness.
14.
After I prepared this, I realized that it doesn't fill you with optimism that the world is going to get good very soon.
I mean, any one of these is enough to be a barrier to being a better human being.
But at least if you're aware of all of these, and if number one matters to you, yes, I really would like to be good.
Not a saint, not Mother Teresa, I'm not asking that of anybody, but better, but be a more good person.
If that is your desire and that is the resolution that you take, the Rosh Hashanah resolution, it can succeed.
You will not only be liked by others more, you will like yourself more.
And I think that that's a big deal.
I wish you good luck on the greatest journey you can take in life.
This has been Timeless Wisdom with Dennis Prager.
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