(August 10, 2019 at 2:45 am)Belaqua Wrote: Maybe it would help to define the word "good."
That’s no easy task, i don’t think anything we can say could full capture the meaning of Good. Our recognition of it is less a matter of hearing or saying, but seeing.
Like a 3 month old who sees something good about the person who helps another, rather than the one who hinders another persons, absent of any language to articulate it.
Perhaps our best attempts to articulate it are expressed in art, like in the words of Cormac McCarthy:
“At the deep bottom of the mine where the gold is at there aint none of that. There’s just the pure ore. That forever thing. That you dont think is there ....That thing that makes it possible to ladle out benediction upon the heads of strangers instead of curses. It’s all the same thing. And it aint but one thing. Just one.”
Quote:I'll posit that a good thing is one that satisfies human desires, and brings happiness.
I’m weary of happiness as an aim, because happiness is fleeting. If you were happy all the time, there’s probably something wrong with you.
I’d replace happiness with meaning. Because meaning transcends both happiness and unhappiness, both suffering and the lack of it. The Good is what satisfies the human longing for meaning. While not perfect, I’d prefer it to your suggestion.
The people I most admire are not necessarily happy, and the period in which I’ve admired them the most are in times of tragedy and suffering in their lives, when they’re not necessarily happy, but times in which they seem to exist with some sort profound sense of meaning, that transcends both their suffering and sadness.
