I was raised and taught to do the good thing all the time when I was in China. I always did. As I grown up, I can’t help but get more and more frustrated as I try to do good thing. You only realize doing good thing will not necessarily do you any good. On the contrary, you found that those people who get up higher and higher in social status had done a lot of bad things, mostly behind back and sometimes even in public. Then I start question the motive to do good things, and eventually became careless. I believe I am among the majorities who went through the same mentality. 

What’s wrong with ‘doing good things’. It sounds so great, but it’s against not so great human nature. When you do good thing, regardless what you say, you actually expect some kind of reward. The reward could be a praise, a raise in whatever way, more public exposure etc. More importantly ‘doing good thing’ is kind of propaganda employed by the CCP to better control your behaviour. As a result, people won’t always get rewarded or not to the degree they expected, due to so many factors such as personal judgment, preference, bias and agenda. Or some one’s good deed could be fabricated, exaggerated, or dismissed depending on different political need. ‘Doing the good things’ then become much greater and easier said than done, just like the seemingly so wonderful Communism.

You start hearing ‘just do your job’, ‘be yourself’ and ‘do the right thing’ over and over again when come to North America. After while, you realize ‘doing the right thing’ is actually a high standard to maintain for an ordinary person. I am following a reality show on ABC called what would you do. I am so impressed with that how American people established their wildly accepted standard for what is right or wrong for all kind of situations, and with that how hard it is for common people to do the right thing all the time.

Do the right thing, if not good thing. You can only ask so much from people and yourself. Before that, a normal and healthy society need to establish a solid standard for what is right and what is wrong. Then just be yourself, do your job and do the right thing for as much as you can. This is exactly what China need.