The Mission For Distinction, What is "good" or "bad?"

I sit here with waves of confusion crashing into me and my surroundings, which is not very advisable guessing from my surroundings, for all around me I am covered with electronic devices that could potentially kill me if this much water came into aggressive contact with such equipment. The whole morality of the world is the biggest wave orientates from. In a world were we must pursue the good path to be accepted as a creditable human being and enjoy our life knowing that other people appreciate our presence, is it all really worth the running and energy we waste running along this yellow tar road? Full of rubber tyre marks from were people sped straight through, so that they may end up at the junction many a year before us, so that they may alter paths.

..What is this "good" path? .. I have been asking myself more frequently. Ask many people if they would prefer to be good or bad, the majority will confirm that they wish to be a good person and stroll steadily on the good path, on a nice warm summer's day, with that added cool breeze for extra comfort. The sad fact is that no one can really understand what is good or what is bad. Ask that same person again, what really defines good? They shall be stumped for hours or maybe minutes before coming to a conclusion that doesn't really make much sense. They may conclude that if you do good, you shall be rewarded with wealth and happiness, but we all no that this statement is false. Bad is evil, with there philosophy, they prophecies that the person acting out the bad evil shall be rewarded with nothing good at all, maybe a disease or a dead pet may strike this human into turning left at the traffic lights onto the good path, but the sad reality is that they shall be rewarded with wealth and happiness. So here we have a contradictory equation, bad = evil, but evil acts become rewarded, thus evil = good. (On a materialistic sence, which is how the world seems to work)
There we have our major problem. Good acts are rewarded with a higher sense of appreciation and acceptance by no one else but ourselves, which in its own right a reward. But to a evil, you shall be rewarded with sports cars as fast as the most impressive space rocket, a house as large and impressive as a small town, women which us poor men can only dream of, mostly the ones in the magazines or plastered up on a billboard 20feet long, to make sure we all see the image and know that we shall never receive such an award. What im trying to say is, the good path is a lot more confusing as it once seemed, and the path to a good, rewarding life is in the middle of a spaghetti junction, with cars speeding 200mph, driving at both sides, swapping lanes, jumping red lights and changing direction ever other minute.
What would be more rewarding? Sure, joining the great drag race will be fun, and there shall be a lot of nice, fast shinny red cars to admire on the journey, but surely at some point you shall either hit a 10mile long traffic jam, with a busted horn so you may not be able to express your anger and frustration with annoyingly brain punching sounds, or you shall break down, run out of fuel and struggle to purchase any more fuel resources for the oil crisis that is currently on the way. Or you could sit back in the field on the side of the road, find yourself a nicely angled tree to rest your back against, with a nice comfortable patch of grass beneath it, and watch all the madness unfold, within this chase for the impossible goal.

Good and evil are two sides of coin which would lack definition were one to win over the other.
Truthfully, they only exist for the sake of existing; ignore one, and the other fades as well.
Its all a part of some grander balance in the universes which I don't even pretend to understand; I just think that good and evil are two of the laws which make creation possible. Why? Who knows. The whole battle between good and evil is really just another measure of balance; its law through chaos, if you understand my meaning. Neither side can win, but they keep up the good fight.
If you would like a biblical explanation, I could do that as well. I just don't believe in the bible, so it would be a bit odd for me to do so.

i understand what you mean, as a child i was sent to a catholic school (ironicaly was the reason that made me disbelive in god) However, i was asking the question in general. We hear all the time everywere "this man is good) or "this man is evil", and i was just bringing out the thought of what originalny made us distinquish between the two?? Is it possible that, in lack of a better explanation, hitler was good? Because if the people in that "paralel" universe was forever told that eugenics was the only progress for man, that he would of been seen as a revoloutionary?

At the moment i study philisophy at a university, and obviously this question has always been around, is good something that we are born with to later be tempted with bad and loose our goodness/innocence, is it instictive or is it learned??

At the present time that we are in now, we are constantly being told to be "good" whitout knowing what "good" is, and we constantly see people being bad and getting rich from it, however we constantly see that being "good" makes us better, and get rewards in a second life (heaven/hell)

p.s. thanks for replying, its always good to read someones opinions on a subject like this


[edit on 13-6-2009 by Trolloks]

[edit on 13-6-2009 by Trolloks]

You are right in your perception that positive acts are more often than not taken advantage of and negative acts are being rewarded i think. Just look at work and rewards in the monetairy sense alone.

A teacher or nurse ideally helps the most people in their line of work but are near the bottom of the barrel in relation to wages while some one who is on the recieving end of a big cashflow has gotten there by eliminating the competition and more often than not have a negative impact on the ones he comes in contact with.

It is how this world works at the moment but thinking that those people are genuinly happy may be presumptious, not sure but i would not be suprised when the percentage of unhappy people in the top of the monetairy tree is the same or maybe higher than in the rest of the population. The ones in the ratrace for more money/power always have someone that is doing better than them while the ones just doing their jobs and are happy with what they got have some peace of mind.

And yeah, being positive and helping others in whatever way is your own reward because when you do good with the goal of getting better from it yourself is not really 'good' as such. Not to say that when you are being a positive influence in the world that you should not get anything good out of it, i mean it can be a unintentional side effect. Like one guy in the Netherlands set up 'marktplaats.nl' where people can buy and sel second hand stuff, the owner of the site ran a second hand shop for people to get some furniture, clothing or other things someone threw away and on that principle he made a site. After a few years he got bought out by ebay.com or something similair for a few hundred million dollars. He was doing something good and got his unintentional reward. Last i know he never changed his lifestyle and is putting the money everywhere where needed to help others.

Doing 'good' with the intention of getting a reward is not doing good, it all depends on your reasons of doing something.

But the bottomline is that in the media and in your working life being a selfish and greedy person works best in the monetairy sense, true enough but money isn't everything. I'm not sure if could life with myself selling something that would be good for my bankingaccount while shafting someone else. Peace of mind is a reward in itself.

As you grow in understanding in this universe you are more and more capable of survivng massive and catastrophic disasters that appear quite frequently. The longer you survive the more you can know and understand... allowing you to live longer... infinity.

Good is that which promotes a growth in understanding.

Evil is that which inhibits a growth in understanding.

All sorts of unfortunate things can happen to a person that can teach such priceless lessons. All sorts of fortunate things can happen to a person that leave him weak and careless. Therefore if your perspective and understanding of human phycological growth is limited then your understanding of good and evil will be aswell. Good and evil is not something that can be tackled untill you completely understand multiple lives.

Good emits a positive emotional response.
Bad emits a negative emotional response.
Confusion sets in when the thinking mind refuses to accept the current emotion.

reply to post by Trolloks


This may sound quaint to you, but as I age the truth is unfolding.

LOVE

That is right, just love. That is what is good. Everything else is just an obstacle towards love.

Do you really care about the fast cars and women? It is an empty existence. You show off your "goods" to someone who has a heart full of love and they will not be impressed.

Do you want the fast car because you want it? Or is it to show off, or compete with your brothers?

I only care about one physical possesion, that is my motorcycles. Not because I give a care what people think, but because it is my main joy in life, to ride them.

But if even that was taken away, I have my memories............

Good points all. Our society does venerate greed and acquisition above all other virtues, and unfortunately this means that the majority of people aspire to be greedy and acquisitive. Hence we have young boys learning how good it is to be hard and cold, and they aspire to heartlessness and ruthlessness.
It is a sad thing that women who appear hot are venerated to be better and more valuable than women who are not as hot, may as well try to attach more value to the pear tree than to the rose or the ginger root.

It seems that it is a backwards truth that time and freedom to explore our humanity is truly something more afforded by those who gain freedom from the ratrace through amassing a small fortune, and yet those who are able to amass that fortune are, by design, those who have cultivated greed and are least able or inclined to use that freedom to further their growth or the growth of those around them.