Is the point of life to be a good person? But, like happiness, the more you force it, the more blowback you get. Furthermore, I cannot help but be influenced by the memory of my mother, the weight of whose simple goodness seemed to leave her lost, broken and plagued by irrational guilt by the end of her life. People who try too hard to be good get depressed. And as Jon Ronson pointed out in a recent article in this newspaper, psychopaths often feel very good about themselves.