{"id":322,"date":"2006-03-14T02:23:18","date_gmt":"2006-03-14T02:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=322"},"modified":"2006-03-14T02:23:18","modified_gmt":"2006-03-14T02:23:18","slug":"do-gooder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"Do-Gooder"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking lately about the word ‘do-gooder’. About how we all instantly understand it to be a derogatory term with a bunch of related implications.
\nIt is usually used to refer to particularly naive or impractical attempts by liberals to ‘do good’ (evaluations made by conservatives of course), but it can be and often is applied more generally.
\nOne of the things that bugs me about it is that it implicitly undermines the whole project of attempting to ‘do good’. Such attempts are always misguided – good can only be achieved indirectly by maximising individual freedom.<\/i> In Lakoff’s account of the morality underlying conservatism (I’m reading Lakoff right now), it actually becomes immoral to attempt to do good.
\nWe have thoroughly internalised a conservative value system. I can’t think of any term that shows our culture has internalised a liberal value system – but there must be one, right? Any suggestions?
\nOne attempt to reclaim the term is here – a Canadian social justice site named DoGooder<\/a>. It’s kind of charming, but by Lakoff’s analysis such a reclamation will never overcome its status as a shorthand for moral evil on the conservative side.
\n(And just to partially prove me wrong about all of us understanding its negative connotation, a Canadian local press article celebrating a local man as a ‘do-gooder.<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been thinking lately about the word ‘do-gooder’. About how we all instantly understand it to be a derogatory term with a bunch of related implications. It is usually used to refer to particularly naive or impractical attempts by liberals to ‘do good’ (evaluations made by conservatives of course), but it can be and often … Continue reading Do-Gooder<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8D9ZE-5c","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morgue.isprettyawesome.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}