“Are You A Good Witch or A Bad Witch?”

Judy Garland as Dorothy and Billie Burke as Glinda the Good Witch in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz."

The wise words of Glinda the Good Witch. This seems like a timely quote, seeing as the new Wicked movie is in theaters soon. 

I have not been writing lately, much to my own discontent. In the time that I haven’t been writing, however, I've been able to think about some big ideas. Most of which center around these questions: Are we inherently good or bad people? And, if we are, how can we become better people, or witches, so to speak? Here are my thoughts. 

What does it mean to be a “good” person?

The definition of a “good person,” as per Ronald E. Riggio of Psychology Today, is broken down into four virtues. Prudence, the ability to make informed and wise decisions. Temperance, the ability to moderate your actions and emotions. Justice, treating others with fairness and respect. And finally, fortitude, standing up for what you believe in. 

While these are all well-defined and established cardinal rules of goodness, I believe that goodness is in the eye of the beholder. You create your own definition of goodness, and therefore there is no one specific definition of goodness. Everyone has a different definition. I define being a good person as someone who is caring, respects peers, has humility, empathy, and puts others before themself. 

“But, I've already told you, I'm not a witch at all! Witches are old, and ugly!” Not Glinda, Dorothy. Her definition of a witch is most certainly different than yours. 

Are we inherently good or bad people? 

No, I don’t think we are. Now, to use this as an excuse to defend an evil human being like Adolf Hitler is unfair. His actions, along with the actions of many terrible people in history, are inexcusable. But Hitler was a brave soldier before he became the dictator who directed a mass genocide. He wasn’t born good or bad, he was born as a blank slate, like all of us. 

This belief is a derivative from the psychological concept of Tabula rasa, which, as per Britannica, is based on Roman wax tablets. This suggests that when we are born, our minds are like a blank tablet, waiting to be added to. In other words, Hitler was born a baby, like all of us. He didn’t have the natural instinct to kill or to persecute people of Jewish faith, he was a typical, blank slate baby. 

So if you disagree strongly with someone, just think… “They were born as a normal, crying baby, just like me.” 

Glinda wasn’t born any different than Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, aside from maybe that one of them is green, but we can suspend disbelief. They were both born witches, not good or bad. The ruby slippers had not come into play yet.

Since we are born as a blank slate, how do we become good or bad?

Experiences in what medical professionals call the “formative years,” inform decisions later in life. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services says “A strong foundation helps children develop the skills they need to become well-functioning adults.” Especially ages 1-3, connections in the brain are made and behaviors are developed. With positive influences, children are more likely to behave as proper and functioning members of society in their later years. From examples that I have seen, if a peer has a parent who is disrespectful, racist, and prevents them from learning certain topics or reading certain material in school, they are more likely to have a child who is less well-rounded and accepting of those around them. They lack a certain understanding of the world, and the impact of their behaviors. This understanding can come from empathy.

Now, I am not an expert, but I think that empathy has an impact on becoming a good person. Amanda Morin of understood.org says that when parents show their children empathy, their children are more likely to be self-aware and motivated. 

Maybe Glinda’s parents were caring and loving, and Elphaba’s were cold and lacking empathy, creating the characteristics that are ingrained into modern society as a good witch and a wicked witch. 

Just generally, though, at least for me, empathy and thinking about how someone else might be feeling is a large step in being a good, or better, person.

Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West and Judy Garland as Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" (1939).

How can I tell if I am a good or bad person?

Most people say that they are nice. In 2017, CBS News Chicago reported on a study conducted by i2 Media Research, which found that 98% of people surveyed said that they were “in the top half of pleasant people.” Tying this back to the idea of empathy, the study finished with a quote from Sheridan Smith which reads “‘I think we don't put ourselves in other people's shoes enough, so I think we don't give them enough credit for how well they're doing for their life in their circumstances.’”

But are we really that good? Is the 98% statistic reliable? I don’t know. I worry about this often. How much stock can we put into Buzzfeed quizzes and word of mouth? In my opinion, not much.

Everyone has different viewpoints on the world, something gained during the aforementioned formative years. So, they are not a good judge of whether or not you are a good or bad person. The flying monkeys may tell Elphaba that she is a good witch, but is that really true? Who’s interpretation is accurate? In other words, the only determination of being good or bad comes from self-reflection and analysis of our own actions. 

What does it mean to self-reflect? 

Self-reflection is looking at your life, the things that you have done, are going to do, your decisions, your emotions, among other things. Every night when I get home I look back on the things that I’ve done that day and evaluate them. Regardless of whether that means talking to peers, getting a certain grade, what I learned in school, I look at the success level of it, so to speak.

That self-reflection is the genesis for this exploration of what it means to be a good person. I could have interviewed a professional for this, but it was more important to me that I explore what goodness is, and what it means to be good, rather than have a professional explain it to me. In my self-reflections, I often think about whether a joke I made crossed the line, if I need to apologize for that joke, and, most commonly, “Was I nice today?”

If the answer is no, I make an effort to be better the next day. However, on the days that I forget to reflect, have I sacrificed some of my goodness because I didn’t improve? If I was disrespectful to someone, or was in a bad mood, will that embellish my permanent record of goodness? Do those slip-ups make me a bad person? 

As so well put in a 2015 TEDxUniversityofGlasgow speech, everyone asks big questions in their lives. Self-reflection is the first step in addressing those questions. Elphaba regrets her decisions in life as Dorothy throws the bucket of water on her. She was self-reflecting, even in that fleeting moment before her demise. “What a world,” indeed.

Ray Bolger (Scarecrow), Jack Haley (Tin Man), and Margaret Hamilton (Wicked Witch of the West) reuniting for an NBC promotion in 1970.

Post Self-Reflection: How do I become a better person?

“You've always had the power, my dear. You just had to learn it for yourself.” Glinda was right. In my opinion, everyone has the capability of goodness. I could dive into information from the deepest corners of the internet, from every scholarly paper in existence, but I won’t. Being a good person may come more naturally to some people. But working towards being a good person, thinking about how to improve, striving for said improvement, is proof enough that you are good. Remember the Tabula rasa theory? Maybe that isn’t true. Maybe everyone is born good. That is why we are all capable of it. Maybe under all of the evil in the world, even the most hideous people out there, there is some good.

If you think about it, under all that makeup, the Wicked Witch of the West is just like all the rest of us.