When speaking of a virtual stranger and asking a trusted friend who knows them as well, and upon being told this person is "good", is your mind set at ease? Do you then adopt "good" as a way to describe this person you've not even met?
"Good", in any context is, at best, only a positive catch-all, a generic term for whatever the user would define as coming under the heading of "OK by me". "Good" tells us nothing and yet upon hearing it applied to someone else or even ourselves, it has power.
Just as the child who is told to "be good" is likely confused, perhaps wondering just what this particular adult would lump under that broad and ambiguous umbrella, I also must question what must be present in a person's make-up in order to elicit that description from me. I've used it, it's true, even as I find it a lazy substitute for a real word, a better word, and likely a whole slew of words needed to describe this person deemed just now as "good".
I have applied this very term to many simply to indicate my approval, but those earning that privilege from me have certainly been varied and different and quite diverse. The only thing that I can say in my own defense is that it is a way for me to say that, in my eyes at least, they possess more positive than negative qualities. If one hearing me say such a thing trusts me as a person, perhaps also finding me to be a "good" woman, then i suspect they will take that to heart, maybe even so much so as to now describe this person as "good" themselves.
For me personally to use that one word description of someone, they should possess at least some of the following, have demonstrated certain behaviors directly to me, or I should have witnessed them first hand or at least know them to be true. They might include such things as ...
Honesty...
But would that be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, or only the basic tendency not to lie without shame? Hmmmm...
A positive outlook...
But would that mean that a depressed person can't be "good" or that it's "bad" or wrong to not be optimistic? Another Hmmmmmm...
Compassion...
Those who care for others are and should be admired, but what of those who sacrifice all so that they then become useless to any that depend upon them? I think there is certainly a balance to be achieved, a limit to how much one gives. I wonder just where that line is.
Humor...
I like to laugh. Now whether that is a characteristic that makes someone "good", I don't know, but I do know that quality in a person does influence me, make me see them in a more positive light, but then how could I not, if I'm laughing?
Courage...
Not the kind seen in the movies where the strong head out unafraid, but that quiet thing that some people have where despite personal fear (and fear MUST be actually present) they press on anyway. But then do we often even see that in a person? Know they are afraid inside as they try so hard to face what frightens them?
Generosity...
I'm not horribly impressed with those who have much and give much, but far more with those who have little and give it all. Such people though are often modest as well and would never let us know that they now are tapped out, just because they so generously saw another's need to be greater than their own. Yeah, generosity is a "good" thing.
There are more: loyalty, fidelity, a good work ethic, perseverance and dependability, the ability to love and love well, understanding and empathy and the list goes on.
We may all agree on many of these characteristics as "good", a kind of collective and mass idealism where the character of human beings is concerned, but I do have to wonder just one more thing...
Might it not be better not to make that judgment of others? Not to take the sum total of what we have seen and then make a final statement as to their "goodness" or lack of it? Might it not be better, and then only if we HAVE to, to make the smaller assessments such as, "I've seen him be a very attentive father to his children", and so allowing our fellow humans to be positive things and to be negative things, to actually BE human, flaws and virtues and "good" and "bad"?
Maybe more of that would lead to a more tolerant society, one that doesn't require so much judging of one another, so much criticism in the end, but some understanding, some empathy and eventually the realization that we are all essentially "good", each and every one of us, in most ways, and only struggling to do what we think right at the time.
I find us all precious, all quite rare human beings, not one of us replaceable in this world. And those are, in my opinion, such "good" words. I hope they can be said of me as well.