being good is a privilege

Imagine a really good person: someone whom everyone likes, is warm and friendly towards everyone they meet, gives freely of themselves, has a deep understanding of and empathy for the human condition so that people feel genuinely 'seen' in their presence, and encourages and helps everyone they know to become their best selves. When this person dies, hundreds of people will come to their funeral, sharing loving and positive memories. Undeniably, such a a person is a gift to the world and worthy of praise.

Now imagine a child who deeply wants to be this sort of person. Maybe they understand that selflessness is rational, or maybe they want to be a force for good in the world for purely altruistic reasons. But despite their best intentions, as this child grows up they fail to develop the necessary social skills and personality traits:

• They are socially awkward: despite desperately wanting warm and intimate relationships, they just don't know how to create them.
• They experience failure and disappointment in their life, and find that it's hard not to learn from experience that their efforts are useless; they learn that they couldn't help people even if they tried.
• They don't receive loving support from others, so they don't learn what that feels like, or how to provide it themselves.
• They feel (correctly) that they have a limited understanding of the human condition. They don't believe that they have advice or comfort worth giving.
• They avoid meeting strangers, and when they do they come off as cold and awkward.

This person lives a mostly sad, bitter, and depressed life, and when they ultimately die, no one even bothers to organize a funeral.

What separates these two people? We're tempted to say that the first person is morally superior to the second. But in fact the second person started with the same moral impulse as the first, and felt it just as strongly. They tried to be good, at every stage in their life, but faced serious headwinds and fell into the wrong feedback loops. It's true that they ended up having a less positive impact, so they are less moral in the consequentialist sense that "rationality is moral", but it's not for lack of trying.

In a sense, the first person was just luckier. They were born and raised with the gifts and in a context that helped them develop into an effectively 'good' person. They may have suffered quite a bit in their lives, but were somehow given the ability to turn their suffering into a source of strength and empathy, rather than being broken by it. They may or may not come from a conventionally privileged group, but in this sense they are privileged all the same.

Society clearly needs to celebrate and reward 'good' people. But in many ways I have more sympathy for the second person. They need my help more.