Why is it so difficult to be good? (An integrated approach)

In this post we will review a few of our ongoing discussions. We will introspect the full nature of goodness, and a couple of possible difficulties (including a monstrous explanation) that may impede our full realization of meaning.


The quale of every individual is unique, and from the assumption that there must be a meaning of man within this earth, we see immediately slight discrepancies of qualia between individuals. It is from this relativity true authority is formed….

Social Epistemology- On Politics and Authority

In light of determinism, subjectivity would be the slight discrepancies arising via the multitude of deterministic options undertaken in life…. Personalizing each subsequent decision to form a collective set  of traits unique to the individual…

The Reconciliation of Meaning in Causality and Choice

It is in actual fact on this basis of subjective (relative) qualitative assessment we emplace on each other that makes us ‘good’ or ‘bad’ so as to speak.

I am good to you because you mean to me

Perhaps some of us would now have developed a certain intuition now that we have placed these three important takeaways side by side.  All of the above quotes were highlighted in turn throughout the course of this project, very much analogous to the consideration of the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. Today as we will begin to reconcile the ideas of politics, goodness, meaning and determinism, we will highlight one very important aspect we have implied in our previous post on the acquisition of goodness, and hopefully through this actualization- finally proceed to induce the full meaning of love in part 6.

Do take a closer look at the above three statements.  In part 4 we have induced, from simple observation of social systems (from the faculty of sociology), that there cannot be two identical individuals with exactly the same quality of life. While the lower perceptions of the senses are by much similar throughout the board- we would all agree that table salt looks white,  smells ‘odorless’, feels crystalline,  and tastes ‘salty’; the higher cognitions of the individual somehow will consequent in differing schemas on salt. For some- salt is used as a preservative, others- it becomes a delicacy etc.

Similarly, it is from this discrepancy of individuality that brings about the question of meaning. This question of meaning would be most evident through the subjective assessments we make. In the most general sense, all propositions with elements of truth, goodness, and beauty are potential candidates for subjective assessment. However, due to limitations of this project, we will not be tackling this issue of transcendentalism. As we limit our scope towards the concept of goodness and meaning, we see how statement 1 can be used in vitro with statement 3. It is on the basis of the realization of our subjective qualitative assessments on each other that we build and realize our social networks, and from there affirm our social identities.

This can then be simplified back to our statement back in part 3: it is from our established personal identities we get to understand, and participate in our social identities- this phenomenon now is collectively realized as gessellschaft in Tonnes’s social model of the world.

Yet we know today that the story does not end here today. From statement 2, we see that determinism is the sole logical proceeding of the mean of things; we also affirm that all subjectivity stems from the infinite permutations of causality. Now, should we integrate all these three together, we immediately see that our social world: one that balances itself between the pivots of the individual and the community- and all the roles we play in society, the statuses we gain, and the interpersonal relationships formed, are actually part of this natural plan of determinism (higher plan of God). We now recall back the concept of compatiblism- in light of determinism, we can see how God oversees all past present and future. We also see how in relation, on how humans make the subjective moral choices that at the same time defines their individuality in light of goodness.

How ought we then make the moral choices of life? As we recap on the mechanisms of ontological conviction in ‘Soulful conviction’, we see that it is on the premise of our soulful convictions, or by definition: convictions in meaning; that we may bestow our subjective assessments of qualia (meaning) upon this world. In this respect we may finally realize the phrase: I am good to you because you mean to me.

 If we were to further integrate the findings of the last paragraph with the previous paragraph, we would simmer down to a further conclusion that our subjective assessments, just as our individualities, can only be improved towards the objective ‘living best’ if and only if our progress is one that is aimed for goodness, or for the highest expansion of meaning. So much for a self-centered person who does not see the qualia of others around him, to a person who harms others out of the lack of empathy of the phrase “do unto others what you do unto yourself”, we now directly see the link between our qualitative assessment and conventional goodness.

So what is the takeaway for today?

In this faculty we have considered the meaningful nature of goodness. While we bear in mind that this definition is not fully complete, we may for now, assumed that such a definition is more or less a normative (truthfully objective) insight into the phenomenon of Goodness. Our conclusions have pointed to a fact similar to the findings of Plato in the last post of part four- that goodness can only be acquired through an expansion of subjective meaning (value) towards the objective.  As we begin to transcend our personal horizons from primitive sense perception, to logic and pragmatism, and finally to the higher sapience of humanity, we begin to see more meaning of people; of creation; or even when we zoom back to that particular circumstance, the possible meanings that may manifest from our moral decisions as humans.

This is analogous to a simple story of the frog in the well. As we begin to see the higher purposes of life- through the constant strive for the expansion of goodness, we are in essence like the frog that ventures out of the well- or as Plato mentions, a man who ventures out of the cave of shadows to see the real objects (that cast the shadow in the first place). Should we ever return back to circumstance (which we will, since we are realists), we may at least understand this phenomenon of the complimentary doctrine (see prologue for more details) to convict ourselves to the appropriate moral decisions- one that itself strives for an expansion of meaning, and ultimately strives for the objective good.

While truth strives itself towards the perfection of knowledge, we must conclude with finality that Goodness strives itself towards the highest expansion of meaning.

It is questionable if much of our world had indeed emplaced a wrong schema towards the acquisition of goodness. Much of our ethics have been built upon the acquisition of truth, rather than upon the acquisition of Goodness, and sadly much of our actions, yet alone the highest philosophies of man, had too felled. The ethical postulate about premises leading to our moral decision to killing our nineteen year old girlfriend (see part 4 on ethics) is actually one of such traps that many have fallen into: indeed should we draw the arbitrary line between yes and no somewhere between those lines, we have already fallen prey by attempting to life with arguments of truth. As we remind ourselves once more that ‘’ it is impossible to bestow meaning and conviction based on pure reason” and “epistemic ethics have only led many into a wild-goose chase of never-ending subjectivity and relativism… and is a actually a logical-paradox” we may now see the formal reason behind this assertion we state in part four.

While we begin to place pieces of this jigsaw puzzle together, we must still realize that the full picture is still incomplete. We have stated the possible fallacies of goodness, and a lot of idealistic methods on how we should achieve goodness (i.e. expansion of meaning). However we have yet to provide a concrete account on how such an idealistic account may realized- not by some high flying philosopher, but also as laymen. Some of us may begin to have a little clue on how this may be manifested: by the convicting actions of love we may fully bring goodness, meaning and the individual together. We will leave this interesting topic for our final faculty in part six. In the meantime while we pick ourselves from the implications (carnages?) of this post, we may wonder why goodness and love is so difficult to realize, and why it is so difficult to be good.



 

I am (good) to you because you (mean) to me

Many of us would have probably heard of the phrase: “he is not a good man” or “she is a very good girl”. While taking a taxi, we may have said to our taxi drivers “please take the best route to the destination”; even as we go shopping, we would have uttered: “I don’t want… it’s of no good to me”. There are many more instances we would have uttered, or realized similar phrases in our lives- but I’ll leave the details to individual discernment and personal reflection. On a side note, please do bear in mind these three statements, as we will be re-visiting them periodically throughout this post itself.

Now, on first glance we see that all these statements do have a similar ring to them. While it is almost obvious that these statements are daily utterances by the layman i.e. they are not exclusive to the theories of a psychedelic philosopher and can be picked up by almost everyone; we can also evidently see that all these statements have a common allusion to the concept of relative goodness. The girl (in paragraph 1) is evidently ‘better’ than the ‘bad’ man to at least a person. There is a route among the man routes that is fundamentally good to the passenger (not for the taxi driver though…), and as for our third statement- it is evident that the customer would have a notion on what merchandise is good to her.

We would have been more than aware by now that such relative goodness to man, as the name suggests, is relative in nature and is arbitrarily assigned by man to en-value the items related to him. In our common world, this is the other goodness that we speak of, apart from the metaphysical goodness religion advocates that “God is good and love is good”. We also know that these two types of goodness are in essence one, linked subtly from the theory of subjectivity and objectivity (and determinism). Yet these linkages remain vague and idealistic. If the concept of goodness is in essence one with the concept of meaning, then how does our above ‘goods’ be reconciled with our lofty topics of free will, qualia of living, soulfulness, and metaphysical meaning  in light of creation?

On a more direct note, what does it actually mean to be ‘good’ to the people around us?

Do pause and re-consider the above statements. While it may not be obvious to state, it is subtly implied in all three statements that the qualification of goodness of the subject (the two people, and the route) is actually their meaning with respect to the proponent (the person making that statement). We would have been familiar with the aphorism: one man’s meat may be another man’s poison, and from this some of us would thus have concluded before that goodness must have a relativistic aspect. True enough, much of the conventional views of our society are based on a subjectivist basis- since all propositions from a subject must be fundamentally subjective. We may claim our views to be objective and in line with the truthful nature of reality, however in part 1 of project RN (T) we have already established that such recognition of objectivity is actually the correspondence theory of acquiring truth.

Even if such views of goodness, like any other theories of truth, remain subjective (we must understand that truth and goodness are transcendental in nature, and one may not take precedence over the other. So much as there is goodness of truth, there is also the truth of goodness); it is still not up to our fanciful whims to arbitrarily impose our views with respect to the objective good. Although it may make logical sense if a strong argument is presented for the justification of rape or murder, yet the natural law of self preservation, if not the natural evolution of the society to maintain order and progress, sets in objectively to limit the validity of such a claim. We would then classify such justifications to be a logical fallacy, and the conclusions untruth.  Similarly, what we define as good must be based on what is natural, what is decreed (for the theist, the truly natural way to life is decreed by God), and also what is convicted.

Of course the progress of humankind, insofar, has tailed rather dutifully to this delicate balance between subjectivity and objectivity. While religion had reigned in the past as a primarily means of invoking such a balance, the outcome of such a balance, known to us as formally as human values, sets the general framework for the set of righteous activities tolerated, appreciated and subsequently venerated by man. Indeed, through the ages we have seen activities such as share, hope, trust and most importantly love being values exonerated, apart from bravery, hardiness and even cash (I'll dwell into these details in part 6). we have now returned back to our premise that humans value what is innately good to them back in part 4- yet we will be paying more attention to how these human values are congruent to the concepts of goodness we have introspected insofar.

We know that not every statement of goodness is a human value. There is no prescribed human value to judge, or justify the precise value of a particular person or identity. We cannot universally condemn a person, or exonerate him- partially due to the reason of free will (to change), and the higher determinism (which we know now is actually the physical manifestation of what we conventionally deem as God’s plan. It is also in this respect we can see why no human be able to judge his neighbor- out of our imperfect view of truth, and our lack of authority to go against this plan). Yet we must understand that each of these statements is still, as with the formal definition of ‘value’, a qualitative assessment.

Now, as we en-label such qualitative statements unto each other (during the process of living) to en-value their ‘goodness’; as we compare the personality of the boy next door in comparison to our more-or-less objective set of human values (i.e. love, care, etc); it is in actual fact on this basis of subjective (relative) qualitative assessment we emplace upon each other that makes us ‘good’ or ‘bad’ so as to speak. It is on this assessment of meaning to us that we qualify the goodness of a human, and a taxi route.

Now some of us may begin to object. Consciously, we appreciate the objective goodness of all man. Surely, it may sound a little too harsh to claim that our conventional goodness is no more than a claim of meaning no different to that of a taxi route? Humans are definitely not comparable to taxi routes or merchandise in a departmental store. Yet as we refer back to the first three lines of this post, why had we not seen a stark contrast between the first statement and the subsequent two statements? If the concept of goodness as applied to man, subconsciously in our daily lives, is inherently different from the goodness of other objects to us, then we would not have even seen sense in from the start of this post.

What then is the moral of the story?

Very importantly, we must stress the fact that there is in essence no difference between the goodness of man and the goodness of all other things. Goodness is the universal standard of qualia and meaning, and all things that functions under determinism- be it natural or man-made, must have an associated qualia and meaning, be it to the eyes of man, or ultimately to the eyes of God. Henceforth, to put the goodness of man apart from other goodness would inadvertently allude to a double standard of goodness, which cannot manifest.

As we re-affirm once more that this view of goodness is only limited to the relative meaning to man, we now state a very crucial claim that what defines itself as good or meaningful, is partially based on the amount of meaning it poses to the people around it. While someone tells us that “you are so good to me”, this is synonymous to the statement “to me, you mean a lot”. While we consider the goodness of people around us, we are in actual fact comparing them- their lifestyles, based on our personal values. From here, what we actually deem as a good person is actually a person who means very much alike our personal values, our personal characters, and our ideals… very much congruent to how we see the good taxi route as a route that means alike to our agendas for a speedy and safe trip.

Now, such a definition naturally imposes an issue. If what we see, decide, and be is as good as how we view ourselves and each other, then how is it possible for us to be a better person? The earlier statement of one man’s meat be another man’s poison would have quelled all attempts to improve in goodness and meaning, since as we mean more to some we might mean less to others. To be fiercely independent would be a good thing for society in general, since it allows the individual to be able to withstand the hardships of life and excel without dependence, yet on the basis of love (to his parents) such independence would only mean the end of trust, sharing and concern.  How then are we supposed to become better, and ultimately, seek the living best to life?

We have stated that all things have its conventional goodness with respect to the meaning to man. We have also stated that all things too have an objective goodness, or the true metaphysical meaning (to God). The goodness of a ourselves how we behave, and feedback from society- yet innately we know that our true goodness, and the qualia of our lives go beyond our thoughts, feelings and behaviours. It is in this recognition of objective goodness humanists argue the sanctity of life regardless of social status and norms. Now, we have claimed many times before that such two are linked by the permutations of determinism, which leads to free choice and subjectivity. Now, if correspondence theory holds, and we ought correspond our subjective view of goodness to the objective good, then naturally- the progression of goodness has to be from the subjective to the objective.

 Meaning? (no puns intended)

It is no coincidence that Jesus had raised a parable: a man, no matter how bad he is, will not give a stone to his son should his son ask for bread, or a scorpion, if he asks for a fish. Now, if we were to introspect this statement with respect to subjective goodness, we see that no matter how objectively ‘nasty’ the man may be, his domain of personal meaning (i.e. the domain of things that mean to him) includes the well-being of his son. To him, his son is good, and to his son- he is still good. Yet as we question why he gives a scorpion to the kid next door when asked for fish-balls, we see that this is fundamentally because the neighbor’s child does not mean anything to him. It is in this lack of meaning results in a subsequent alienation of things that are fundamentally good, that brings about the distance between the goodness of the self (perception) and the objective goodness of all things.

So we continue along with the parable- we see that if the man was to ‘become a better person’, we naturally expect him to be more kindly to people around him: to respect them as they are and be in peace with them. As the phrase 'do unto others what u wish others would do unto you' comes into mind, we see that such expansion of meaning of others grows with respect to the meaning of oneself (recall part 3: the balance between the self and the neighbor). It is then from this gradual expansion of meaning that one begins to accommodate and show concern. This subjective expansion of meaningful domains would grow, and it is from such an expansion subsequent goodness is truly achieved.

And finally God, in his infinite goodness, sees meaning in all creation- down to taking care of the littlest of things.

Of course, the full mechanism of the acquisition of goodness is far more complex than such an empiricist claim. We know for a fact that true goodness cannot be qualified by mere description, and surely such an attempt would prove far from satisfactory in addressing such profound issues. Yet nevertheless, as we model how our conventional goodness is related to the this idealistic objective goodness that we speak about- and at the same time see a possible method of becoming better through the expansion of meaning via the correspondence theory of truth; hopefully from such technicalities may spring forth a higher realization to what it means to be good, and hopefully, what it takes to live the living best and the meaning of life.