I read a couple of quotes the other day which independently made me disappointed for the same reason. The first was from a footballer called Ian Wright who was talking about people who criticised things he had said, and calling them ‘do-gooders’. The second was from a singer called Morrissey and referred to another singer called David Bowie¹.
Morrissey accused Bowie of not being relevant anymore and said that he ‘just gave people what he thought would make them happy’. So here’s my
complaint: Why is ‘do-gooder’ an insult (for that’s certainly how it was, and usually is, meant) and how is giving people what you think will make them happy a bad thing to do?

Well let’s take these one at time, shall we? Do-gooders, of course, are people who try to do good. Worse, the swines sometimes try to make other people do good. The trouble with this lot is that they are damned inconvenient. You can’t do exactly what you want with these people around insisting that you try to be good. They’re always there, making you drive slowly, or look after your children properly, or generally act as if other people’s feelings and needs ranked equally with your own. They are anti-selfish, these people, and they get in the way of you trying to go about your selfish life. It’s a free society isn’t it? Apart from all those wretched laws and stuff.

Anyway, merely doing good is the thin end of the wedge. Making people happy, or even just trying to make people happy, is worse. Poor old Bowie is reduced to doing this because he’s no longer ‘relevant’ and for ‘relevant’ read ‘cool’. Or whatever means cool these days, I neither know nor care. In fact, I actively hope I’m wrong in using the word cool. Don’t get me wrong, if you happen simply to be relaxed, calm and easy going, well done. But if you chase after the affected coolness that can only be achieved by relentless pursuit of someone else’s zeitgeist vapour, then for goodness’ sake give it a rest.
Because the making people happy is immeasurably more beneficial to people who aren’t you. Trying to make people happy is presumably worse than merely making people happy. Because not only are your aims fundamentally dorky, you aren’t even cool enough to be doing it right.
You are a failed nerd.

So this week I have a target. It’s not a very nice way to be and I will try not to make habit of it, but I can’t get away from it once in a while. Aspiring to improve, in however small a way, the lives of other people without doing it at the expense of other, other people is the most noble of aims, the highest you can stretch. If, for whatever reason, you don’t feel able to do this, then I will tell you the next best thing. Hunt down someone who uses a second of their time trying to convey the impression that being nice, kind, polite, decent, friendly and kind is not the best way you can spend your time and tell them to shut up.

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