The goodness of people...

The goodness of people

I was given the title as a topic for a 500 word something.  Seemingly simple, I mistakenly allowed it to bounce around in my head for a few days.  The questions began…

• Do we judge the goodness of people by how they make us feel?

• Or the way the person acts for the greater good?

• Over what time is the goodness being assessed?

• What is the intention behind the good act?

• In fact, what is good – is it not all relative?

• Yin & Yang: for there to be ‘good’, has there to be ‘not-good’?

I have concluded that I do not know what the ‘goodness of people’ means.  I do know that I believe there is at least a kernel of good in each.  But, that is a belief, hardly something to hang a hat off, much less judgement of such a weighty matter.

I have seen people be and do ‘good’ to a person and then act horrendously to others.  To label this person ‘good’ would entirely depend on the vantage point.  Are they good or bad based on some net balance of acts?

This is getting complicated…

Is someone only doing a ‘good’ act of kindness for how it makes them feel?  If so, are they being more selfish or self-less?

Not everyone that does harm is bad and not everyone who does good is good. Do you think otherwise? Ask the frozen bird, who was shat on by a bear (‘bad’ bear), defrosted by the warmness of the fresh deposit (‘good’ bear), he was then dug out of the shit by a fox (‘good’ fox) only to be eaten by said fox (‘bad’ fox). The full story is wonderful but I have only 500 words – too little to elaborate on the roller coaster of experiences that poor bird went through.

Google the story.  Hold on, isn’t Google’s moto about doing no harm or something like that?  In the absence of harm, is there only good or just boring boredom?

The more I think of it the more difficult it is to judge the various angles and dimensions to assess the goodness of a person.  Perhaps that is why the courts are full of clever old men.

This feels really complicated…

Actually; is the goodness in a person different from the goodness in people.  Is the complexity of the assessment compounded with each additional person?

What about balance?  Does doing good in one set of circumstance mean that there has to be an equal offset somewhere in existence?  Does this mean someone somewhere has suffered as a result of someone somewhere-else doing good?

Does this mean that we should not seek good or bad?  Instead, aiming for nothing but bland, vanilla and boring least we heighten the imbalance.

The ‘goodness of people’; I do not know what to say.  Are we meant to be like the bear where even our shit is of benefit to someone else?  I wonder what that bear thinks…