The point of it all?

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It has some sense of truth, but I believe that a flourishing human life needs the troubled soul to grow, that is our drive, our quest for the ultimate good....oh yea, another question.....what is good and what is bad....

A friend wrote a song in his band and one of the lines goes: "Everybody's got a definition of good, everybody's got a definition of bad; what's good wouldn't be good without the bad, what the F*ck we had...."

My question is, why do we all have some sense of good in our lives, why don't we kill and say its all good. Why do we as humans have a general definition of good....what is good?

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Good point, Furious, about the drive to, what may be called, moral self-fulfillment. I would add, however--and I hope it doesn't make me look cynical--that all known societies socialize their children to have consciences, a sense of right and wrong (reflecting their societies' moral code). Without this built-in mechanism of inhibition societies are not likely to persist. Just imagine a society containing a majority of psychopaths (formerly called sociopaths), individuals who lack the "superego" or conscience. And please remember that our worst psychopaths often do the harm they do in the name of Goodness.

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Me...personally...I believe that there is a sense of "goodness" written in the hearts of everybody, some people just pervert the image of goodness, of equality and purity and live it in a different way. But we practice goodness naturally, therefore we have a concience, it is our goodness saying, man your not doing good.....

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We SHOULD think that goodness is innate to our nature; that way it becomes more absolute and therefore sacrosanct. You understand why I fear appearing cynical. The psychological view of conscience as something instilled in people by their socializers seems to render goodness as something relative rather than absolute. But I'm afraid that's the way it is. In my metaphysics (that of zen buddhism as I understand it) good and bad, like all dichotomies, are artificial. Our true nature goes beyond all of them. Nevertheless, I am socialized to favor good over bad, and so it makes me feel good when I do "good" and bad when I do "bad." To reverse what you said, we do not do have a conscience because we do good; we do good because we have a conscience.
In other words while I might appear to have a philosophy that justifies moral nihilism, my personality does not.

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In NLP you learn that the human brain is a positive thinker and inclined to process good before evil....I believe that our person was designed to be good, and not bad.....but thats me....Im leaving now....keep it alive....

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Furiousflee, I would like to think that you are right. And you might be. But given what I know, or think I know, at present, I must take this contrary position on the moral status of humankind. What I see around me, corruption, exploitation, greed, collective and individual cruelty and egocentrism, supports the position I take here; but I do see occasional indications that you might be right. Let's hope you are--in the long run.

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JLNobody wrote:

We SHOULD think that goodness is innate to our nature; that way it becomes more absolute and therefore sacrosanct. You understand why I fear appearing cynical. The psychological view of conscience as something instilled in people by their socializers seems to render goodness as something relative rather than absolute. But I'm afraid that's the way it is. In my metaphysics (that of zen buddhism as I understand it) good and bad, like all dichotomies, are artificial. Our true nature goes beyond all of them. Nevertheless, I am socialized to favor good over bad, and so it makes me feel good when I do "good" and bad when I do "bad." To reverse what you said, we do not do have a conscience because we do good; we do good because we have a conscience.
In other words while I might appear to have a philosophy that justifies moral nihilism, my personality does not.

I think the problem occurs when we identify with good; this identity with one side of a dichotomy is the formation of ego. Then we seem consumed by pointing out evil and going on crusades to destroy it. Should we actually succeed in the destruction of one target then we are wont to find another lest we lose our identity.

The old saw about "paving the streets of hell with good intentions" is appropo here. There are many examples in history. Gorbachev, who appears wise here said, "with the breakup of the Soviet Union the U.S. must now find another enemy." We often naively think of past madmen, such as Hitler, as identifying with evil, but the opposite is true; he fanatically identified with good. He really thought he was on a crusade to improve the world.

The problem with having a good god is that a devil is needed, and should god ever destroy the devil then poof, there goes the good god.

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Very good, Coluber. The use of Hitler to illustrate the principle (to paraphrase yours) that the way to Hell is paved with good intentions reveals the profoundly subjective nature of "goodness." What Hitler considered The Good, most of us consider extremely bad. But we must remember, also, that, acknowledging the reality of the good-bad dichotomy for the moment, the way to Heaven is also paved with good intentions.
Was the God of the old testament not considered the God of both good and evil (Isiah?)? Did not the Christian-Jews, therefore, create the Devil in order to make God all good? At least did they not give clear form to Satan in order to contrast him with the goodness of God? It seems that the serpent was only vaguely devilish, more like a symbol of temptation as such. I don't know. Just raising the question.

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Hey Frank, I just came across a good quote in support of agnosticism:
"In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open." What do you think?

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JLNobody wrote:

Hey Frank, I just came across a good quote in support of agnosticism:
"In a complex world, wisdom is knowing what we don't know so that we can keep the future open." What do you think?

Not bad!

Not sure if you've noticed...but I am an enthusiastic supporter of acknowledging that we do not know what we do not know. :wink:

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JL Nobody, maybe I misunderstood your reply, but it seems to me that you speak about "goodness" as if this word has some kind of reality. I don't believe that concepts like "goodness" - or "beauty" or "justice" - have a meaning in themselves. There are moral codes in any society or historic period that establish what is good or bad. There is no need, in my opinion, to invoque an absolute "goodness" that would never be appliable to any concrete situation.
For instance: to kill in the name of a god was "good" in western world in the period of the cruzades. Now is considered bad. So, if a christian european kills a moslem european for religious motives, it will be a "bad" and criminal action. In the XII century it would be a good action.
So, why speak about a innate goodness?

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JL Nobody, maybe I misunderstood your reply, but it seems to me that you speak about "goodness" as if this word has some kind of reality. I don't believe that concepts like "goodness" - or "beauty" or "justice" - have a meaning in themselves. There are moral codes in any society or historic period that establish what is good or bad. There is no need, in my opinion, to invoque an absolute "goodness" that would never be appliable to any concrete situation.
For instance: to kill in the name of a god was "good" in western world in the period of the cruzades. Now is considered bad. So, if a christian european kills a moslem european for religious motives, it will be a "bad" and criminal action. In the XII century it would be a good action.
So, why speak about a innate goodness?

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Welcome to A2K Val. You are quite correct of course that values of propriety, correctness, morality change over time. This is why I firmly advocate NOT attempting to assign 21st century morality to earlier times.

The issue of good versus evil has been debated since the beginning of civilization I suppose. Is there a force of evil in the world? Are people born with a spark of inate 'goodness' and it is their environment and experience that prompts them to do bad things? Are people born naturally hedonistic and self serving and it is their environment and experience that brings out a more generous and unselfish side?

If, at the moment of birth, it was possible to raise a human being to adulthood with no human contact of any kind, would this person have any sense of right and wrong at all?

To the best of my knowledge, there has been no solution for these questions to date. Which raises the point of what is evil and what is good as Val suggests.

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I would have thought "A flourishing human life "
would include making life better for those
who replace ourselves........I wish!

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Frank said: "Not sure if you've noticed...but I am an enthusiastic supporter of acknowledging that we do not know what we do not know."

Why do you think I sent the quote to you?

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No, Val, I do not mean to objectify ideas. Reification is the original sin of the intellect. I agree with you. All ideas are by their very nature phantoms, some useful some dangerous. We cannot and should not want to be without them. Just as I said to Furiousflee, we should (meaning society requires that we) act AS IF moral ideas are real, as if goodness and evil exist in their own right, and not merely as figments of culture or our socially instilled consciences, which is, of course, what they are. But we do not want the majority of people to live as if this were so: we want MOST people to think they are real, in the interest of societal survival. If people were to be liberated from their moral absolutism without first becoming socially responsible and sane, they would be as dangerous as psychopaths. But since we are here talking philosophy we must rise above that necesssary illusion.

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JLNobody wrote:

Frank said: "Not sure if you've noticed...but I am an enthusiastic supporter of acknowledging that we do not know what we do not know."

Why do you think I sent the quote to you?

I was kidding, of course.

I'm assuming you are too.

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Frank, dense me. I didn't realize you were kidding. I thought you were drunk or stoned. Laughing

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JL, I see your point. Not very different from Plato's idea that religion was important and should be imposed to the people, in his "Republic", not because religion was true - in fact he considered it a "noble lie" - but because it would help to control the masses.
In the XVII century there were discussions about the impossibility of a society of atheists.
Today we see, in the western world, that absolute values have declined. And it's true that violence reaches unacceptable levels. But then I ask you: the greatest crimes in the History were not commited in name of absolute values? The Inquisition, the Cruzades, the Nazism, Stalin, and in the present the fundamentalist terrorism?

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The point of it all?

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