Degrees of goodness

I agree with Asmo ....motive is key.....Ifsomeone is making someone else's life miserable for more than two years on purpose....that is a bad person in my book, one which I wish would leave....wish no harm on them.....but leave me alone.

and once one of my real friends is insulted...I go bolistic.

 

I'm not sure. It's easier to speak of acts of self sacrifice I think than selfless acts, because even doing some good deed for no reward there's still some kind of self there doing the action.

I guess it depends on how you define 'self', and in the context of degrees of good and bad, how you define those two.

What appears bad on the first glance can actually be good sometimes when we gain a better understanding. If a child has to have a painful dental job done, that will seem bad to the child, although the dentist is actually trying to do good.

 

The variety of acts of kindness doesn't have to be measured in degrees, but experiences. The guy giving massages in the same parlor everyday is essentially just doing a job. But a doctor helping refugees and hostiles is gaining a lot of experience and directly helping a lot of people.

But I don't think being good is about being a competition at who's the best. They are both contributing to a community. Hell, the doctor might even see the very same massage therapist on his return home

 

I would say there is still a reward. There is always a reward. The ego feels good afterwards. We've seen in nature animals who will take in the young of another, sometimes another species even, and raise the animal. There reasons are less selfish than ours, but even nature knows reward. The reward is the furthering of that species.

The self is the self. Selfish is something benefiting the self. Selfless is not considering the self. I'm not sure there is such a thing as truly selfless. Just as ego death is still being observed by the self and the ego.

How would you define those terms?

People mistake intentions all the time.



Sally asked whether we ever weigh our selfishness with our selflessness.

I think most do. Do we request or seek alone time from children and/or spouses after prolonged periods of being together? Do we ever feel guilty then do something good to make up for it? Do we feel justified to pamper ourselves ever because "I deserve it"?

 

Is the massage therapist not gaining experience that helps him do his job better? And life experience conversing with clients? I would say he is helping a lot of people as well. One might be seen more as cosmetic and the other humanitarian, but they each gain useful experience while helping others.

 

I call this Me time, we all need to suck back and reload, take a moment for ourselves and I find in some situations if I didn't even from my business I would have a hard time sleeping at night.
There has to be some separation and if someone feels guilty for allowing it they need to think more of themselves and take time to care more for themselves. We can only stretch our selves so thin then we lose it.

 

Is wanting to be alone and denying others our company selfish? I don't think so. But that might be another thread? Lol

 

I don't think you read the rest of my post

 

I tend to agree. On the other hand you do see acts of self sacrifice where the person making the sacrifice doesn't survive, like in battlefield situations. Perhaps their last though might be 'well, I did the right thing'.

I don't really have a short and succinct definition of what self is. To say it's just self doesn't really explain anything though.
I think just having a body implies a self because of the sense the body has of itself as separate from it's environment and other bodies. Without that, I doubt our ancestors would have survived for long.

But there is also the mental sense of self, and probably that is partially something which depends on cultural influences. And can change over time or according to roles we take on.
Hindus have the concept of the Atman, a higher self - maybe that, or something like that, is what observes in states of ego loss.

Definitely so.

 

I did and I understand. I just don't feel that the massage therapist in that example is not not gaining experience. I'd say they both are.

 

But is thinking or wanting to know that one did the right thing not still selfish? Why the need to know one's acts are right/good? Because we say good is right. And doing good makes us good. It makes us right. Is wanting to be right/know we've done right selfless?

 

That was my point - that thinking you did the right thing is still an affirmation of self - 'I' did it.

I think we do good as we perceive good to be based on education, cultural conditioning and so on. Conscience seems to be a universal thing, but the value systems through which it is expressed can be quite variable. Doing good makes us good in our own eyes and eyes of others who share our particular value system. Ultimately I think it gives the sense of self a reward, and so it isn't really selfless.

 

Thinking we did the right thing is an affirmation of the self. Is there then a sense of right or wrong that lies outside the self? An innate goodness and badness in the world that we experience through the self and call it our own?

Conscience is universal but the value systems can be varied. Is this you saying that people have varying degrees of conscience?

Do you remember Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer? Two human beings who believed, at the core of themselves that what they did was not wrong.

The concept of conscience is universal, but the parameters certainly are not.

 

Some people actually think so. I have met some who said things like "When I want to leave the kids or my mom at home I feel bad but I have to" and they are right, they need to but some can't see it as themselves being fair.

I did similar tho, hated to take a break when I needed it but I learned you have to keep your sanity somehow. Especially if you expect to go on and not become something terrible in the end or hurt your own health.

 

You mean like an absolute good and bad? I'm not sure such a thing exists.

It could be that there is a kind of ultimate sense of good and bad that's conditioned by our biological forms. But that may not extend to a full consideration of good and bad for other forms of life.
Don't get me wrong here, as I'm not a vegetarian, but we say it's bad to kill another human being, then go buy meat from the supermart never actually connecting with the facts of how this animal died , and feel no guilt about it.

Also we don't mind killing in wars, or executing criminals. So the ban on killing is actually only a very partial one.

Getting into deep waters here, but maybe it's worth considering that in western ethical philosophy, there are two basic sets of ideas of good and bad: Utilitarianism, which says that morality can only be defined in so far as it creates 'the greatest good for the greatest number'.
The other line comes from Emanuel Kant, who said there are 'categorical imperatives', and some things can never be right.
So if we catch the man who just planted a bomb, a utilitarian argument might be that it's ok to torture him to reveal the information, because the greater good of a greater number is served by that, whilst a Kantian would say that torture flies in the face of the categorical imperative and can never be justified and it's better the people die in the bomb blast than resort to such means, through which we would become no better then the bomber.

I'm not sure about that, and it wasn't my point. But probably the conscience can get dulled in some people, or they simply learn how to avoid it, circumvent it.

I'm afraid I don't know of that case. I agree the parameters of conscience vary a lot.

 

The problem with good and bad in organizing your view of the world is that there are no standard metrics in a sliding scale. Real is sufficient determination and the question is it the same or is it different seems more open to acuity.

 

Any good deed is a good deed. I am not sure why we qualify or distinguish between them as far as merit. Even if the motive is some what selfish, if the recipient feels good then the act in itself was appreciated. Life sometimes is about making others feel good.

It stands to reason that if we do a good deed we are going to on some level feel good about that. I think we should. Not in a gloating manner but a sense of inner peace that we did so. We have no issue feeling badly about things a good balance is also being able to accept the feeling good.

 

What about the person that risks their life for a person who about to be run over by a car or fall off a cliff? In that moment I doubt they have time to think about morals.

 

The thought may be, "I need to save that person. They're going to die."

Why would they think of doing so? Because they feel that person should not die now. Why? Because they feel it isn't the right time or way for them to go and they should therefore postpone that person's death because it isn't right, according to their right vs wrong. If one is acting according to their right vs wrong morality, they're acting for themselves.

 

would we not be doing the greater good, to live in such a way as to not create situations like poverty and homelessness?