House of Eratosthenes

Goodperson Fever (n.) is an obsessive-compulsive disorder involving the demonstration of certain positive attributes to strangers, for purposes of self-validation. It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle if these positive attributes don’t really exist, or if there is a great need to achieve this validation for purposes of acquiring social status, contrasted with a much lower level of confidence that these attributes really exist.

The fever has one distinguishing symptom, the recognition of which provides a conclusive, undeniable diagnosis that the fever is in its advanced stages: The more that has been achieved as far as getting the word out that the patient is a Good Person, the greater the impulse to do it again.

Eco Cup Lesser symptoms include: Expressing one’s political beliefs about something when the topic of conversation is different or unrelated, and when nobody inquired; isolating classes of people as targeted beneficiaries of one’s helpful efforts, for purely obsequious purposes, such as “women” and “minorities”; excessive concern about the environment, but purely as a social issue and without any regard to cause and effect — such as drinking coffee out of a “green” eco-cup, but then commuting to work in a Ford Explorer or Toyota Tundra. The litmus test is that the incentive to do these good things that good-persons do, suddenly dissipates when it is perceived that nobody is paying attention.

In government and in other positions of authority, Goodperson Fever is the cause of nearly every bad law in human history. Someone, somewhere, wanted to demonstrate to strangers what a good person he or she was.

There is very little that can be done to treat Goodperson Fever, since ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, and providing the validation that is so desperately craved by the patient, just makes things worse. Experts say there are lots of things we can do to prevent it though. Some significant responsibilities for potential victims in the childhood years, will give them an opportunity to measure their self-worth from within and therefore mitigate the need to go seeking such validation from total or near-total strangers later on. Also, Goodperson Fever epidemics take hold most often in social circles and in geographic regions where there is little work to do, or what little work there is, is done by “everybody” with little or no opportunity for individuals to distinguish themselves. It seems to be a natural consequence of propagating the “Together We Can Do This” meme with a little too much zeal. People start to hunger for ways to establish an identity and ultimately fall into the trap of proving themselves to be the “Most Extraordinary Ordinary Person” around.

Some say our susceptibility to this may be a holdover from thousands of years of evolution, from when man lived in villages that operated as a commune. The theory is that after a bleak harvest season, when food and other resources became scarce, people began to look for ways to prove themselves worthy in case the sustenance on hand was insufficient to accommodate everyone, and some villagers would have to be cast out for the survival of the rest. According to this, those who were less inclined to engage this vicious cycle of proving themselves, were the ones who were ostracized. They died off, and were thus removed from the gene pool. Those who are alive today, therefore, are descended from the sycophants who managed to straddle that illogical line: Everything that is worth doing, is worth doing by everyone, and nobody should go off and do anything by his lonesome — that would imply a specialty, and we can’t have specialties because everyone is worthy and everyone is equal. But oh, by the way, just in case the hunting is bad and the crops are withered, here are the reasons why I’m more worthy than most.

Whatever the cause, it is responsible for a great deal of damage, although, it must be said, no hard scientific correlation has yet been found between Goodperson Fever and global warming.

But — for the good of society — we’re sure as hell going to try to come up with one.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

[…] Healthcare, or a Second Stimulus — or to oppose those things — none of this makes you a Good PersonTM. Nor do such declarations of ideological positioning make you a rotten nasty person. These are […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/18/2009 @ 09:21
[…] It was the late 1960’s. The baby-boomers were old enough to consume information and pay attention to what those in authority said about things; but still young enough to know everything. Because of this, everyone who was in any position to be watched, caught a raging case of GoodPerson FeverTM. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2009 @ 06:22
[…] universe? Yeah. That fits into this. That’s what I’m talking about. Your raging case of GoodPerson FeverTM amounts to just one more way to crank out harmful policy decisions, Montel. Nothing more, nothing […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/24/2009 @ 06:26
[…] they wipe their butts with one sheet at a time, buy up their carbon credit vouchers, and sip from eco-cups. The only other good things they can do have to do with not doing things, like building companies, […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/04/2009 @ 07:18
[…] Goodperson Fever. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/26/2009 @ 21:42
[…] these days who think they have “standards” because they are in the advanced stages of Goodperson Fever. I lived up to a standard, because I’m drinking out of an eco-cup. I lived up to a standard, […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 08/29/2009 @ 09:07
[…] is chock full of stories about entire societies catching raging white-hot cases of Goodperson Fever and then becoming monsters as they try to become good people. Generally, they don’t become […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/01/2009 @ 07:23
[…] the purpose of demonstrating that the people in charge are, or have been…yeah, you got it. Wonderful. Expanded welfare state. More expensive labor. Exorbitant public debts. The much-talked-about […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/10/2010 @ 10:50
[…] in our polices, both public and private, within recent history. It is also a vicious addiction; to take in more of the elixir that quenches the thirst is to aggravate the thirst. People intent on proving their wonderfulness are never, ever quite done proving their […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/11/2010 @ 13:55
[…] of Berkeley has discovered Goodperson Fever, but not recently. It is an epiphany that has brewing since childhood: This is my first childhood […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/15/2010 @ 20:01
[…] here of the Freeberg Village Theory, discussed here and here and here and here and here and here. The process by which, in a season a famine, one or several individuals are declared somehow unfit. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/23/2010 @ 06:36
[…] blog, which nobody reads anyway, has frequently made the point about GoodPerson Fever; we’ve got all these ninnies just like Juan Williams, running around everywhere, and even […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/17/2012 @ 06:51
[…] up some stairs. They want to maintain differences. The message they want to broadcast isn’t merely about them being good people; it’s about them being better people than some other peopl…. They require a control for their […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 01/26/2012 @ 07:51
[…] to believe, or be persuaded that — or to force people to understand — that you are a good person. To form a crowd, or become a part of one, that is all on the same wavelength, and to elevate your […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/02/2012 @ 08:19
[…] Myself and others have been noticing, it seems to be this sense of extreme-goodperson-who-knows-it-all, with side helpings of “my side’s always right and those other guys […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/02/2012 @ 07:23
[…] sense of obligation to some four-year-old-pledge to be a more highly-evolved and more highly-aware good-person. That would be a tough sell even if the pledge was panning […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 06/06/2012 @ 06:23
[…] of day. We’re way too enlightened, too sensitive, far too infected with a raging case of GoodPerson […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/08/2012 @ 07:01
[…] — you never would’ve done it if we didn’t make ya. Our raging incurable case of GoodPerson Fever takes precedence over your case of GoodPerson […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/23/2012 @ 04:21
[…] hmmmmm…we’ve noticed this ourselves, and we have called it GoodPerson Fever. But that isn’t all there is to the malady, there is much, much more: Those suffering from […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/02/2012 @ 14:39
[…] This is a story, I guess. “Here’s a quote that challenges one of our leftist sacred cows, now everybody gets a chance to pile on and say it’s stupid so we know you’re a Goodperson™“. […]
- Back Slapping | Rotten Chestnuts | 12/19/2012 @ 19:31
[…] the wake of the recent school shooting, every Democrat, Goodperson, Virtue Junkie, and assorted supposedly-apolitical-but-really-doctrinaire-liberal dipshit with a […]
- I’m Not Nostradamus…. | Rotten Chestnuts | 02/19/2013 @ 13:49
[…] Bing*o (n). A competitive public display of Goodperson status. Players assert an item of leftist cant in response to a news item. Points are awarded […]
- D3: Goodperson Bingo | Rotten Chestnuts | 03/14/2013 @ 13:08
[…] life. They see humans as a contagion. To them, the grand achievement is to be a better and better GoodPerson, but the only way to do that is to apologize for oneself and the space he takes up in the universe. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 07/21/2013 @ 13:27
[…] life. They see humans as a contagion. To them, the grand achievement is to be a better and better GoodPerson, but the only way to do that is to apologize for oneself and the space he takes up in the universe. […]
- Memo For File CLXXXII | Rotten Chestnuts | 07/21/2013 @ 14:24
[…] of GoodPerson Fever; I noticed it way back when. But, I was too asleep-at-the-switch to think of the “rats […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/16/2015 @ 16:47
[…] What do all these things have in common? Racists calling non-racists racists. Which, in turn, is brought on by a raging shitstorm of Goodperson Fever. […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/29/2015 @ 14:25
[…] is it they’re never quite done showing what good people they are? After awhile, it comes off looking like an attempt to hide something. One has to wonder what that […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 10/11/2015 @ 13:03
[…] people are grasping at straws for ways to show what good people they are. We have an epidemic of GoodPerson Fever which is really nothing more than a spike disrupting the supply-demand equilibrium. A generation or […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 11/20/2015 @ 07:47
[…] all his passion for gun control, he didn’t have any guns. In fact, he was grasping for some GoodPerson strokes, having boasted of a personal oath to never own a gun, ever. He hadn’t anticipated the […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 04/13/2016 @ 06:46
[…] We all know people like this. […]
- Morning Reads for Friday, April 15, 2016 | GeorgiaPol | 04/15/2016 @ 04:08
[…] overly long, history behind the use of that phrase and it gratifies me to see my own terminology, “GoodPerson Fever”, made its debut relatively early. (Although the two aren’t exactly the same, since V.S. is a […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 05/07/2017 @ 10:09
[…] he could get away with it. The modern, showboating virtue-signaling liberal with a raging case of GoodPerson Fever, created that environment and continues to create such an environment. Special status for […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/31/2019 @ 02:06
[…] everything with eco-cups, heavy plastic bags, the masks, paper straws, gay gay gay make everything […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/05/2021 @ 07:24

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