(July 3, 2018 at 8:46 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: We want better, naturally, the question at the heart of my response is, what is the path most likely to yield improvement? ... As a practical matter, utilitarianism suggests that the greatest good is to be had when individuals are each allowed to rationally choose what is in their own best interest.
That’s where I would like any discussion between you and me to go. My interests in this thread have changed, since I started it. What I would like to discuss now, if anyone is interested, is how it might happen that more people will make more and better efforts to improve themselves for the benefit of others, and what any of us might be able to do, to help it happen. For example, for me it starts with practicing it myself, then encouraging and supporting other people I see doing it, then learning to discuss it more with more people.
On Facebook I started noticing more when my Facebook friends posted images of beauty, possibly to help make Facebook a better place for all of us, as I was trying to learn to do. I’ve tried to learn, whenever I go on Facebook, to search for things I see people doing that I like, to let them know the good it’s doing me, and sometimes to share their posts on my timeline.
I think now that it was a mistake to bring God and faith into my original post the way I did. I think that discussing the pros and cons of religion would distract and detract from what I want to do now, which is for anyone who’s interested, if anyone is, to talk about how it might happen that more people will make more and better efforts to improve themselves for the benefit of others, and what any of us might be able to do, to help it happen.
- Jim
