The Intent to Effect Goodness

Defining a concept is probably one of the most difficult things ever done. From color to intelligence there are always gaps and things unexplained in these definitions. I would say that goodness is defined in both intention and effect. The intent to "do good" does not automatically make an action just or good, yet it is essential to determine whether or not an action was "good". When discussion on cultural appropriation comes up, I think this rings true. For example, when Miley Cyrus wore her hair in dreadlocks at the VMA's she was celebrated for her fashion statement and was defended saying she was "appreciating the culture"; yet mere months before Zendaya wore her hair in locs and was criticized by the media saying she must "smell like patchouli oil" and making other offensive racially based comments on a popular television program, Fashion Police. While I am all for learning from and appreciating other cultures, there are different ways to go about it. If this occurs yet simultaneously one person is put down and another is celebrated for the same thing the act isnt good becuase the effects were not without harm. As seen with Zendaya and Miley, the effects of actions are just as important as the intent. No matter the intent, if what one does causes harm or pain towards another, the action cannot be good. This is because, as defined by Google, good is “that which is morally right; righteousness”. To be righteous ones intent and effect must be right. If these things are malicious or harmful, they by this intertwining definition cannot be good or righteous. To define good we need to use other basically indefinable words and intertwine their definitions with each other and our own philosophy to create a partial definition. My incomplete definition of “goodness” would be actions done with the intent and effect of righteousness and respect. 

Good from the perspective of a Hope

Thinking back on my life I realize that it has been filled with good. I look around my bedroom to see old comic books, photos of my dad pushing me into my first wave, ukuleles that remind me of camping trips on the beach and so many more pieces of my childhood. Growing up a “Hope”, I guess I have always had a somewhat optimistic perspective on life, not only because of the connotations that my last name brings but because of my family how they raised me. I have been taught to have certain associations with the word good. In my family, good is going out side, going for an adventure, exploring life, enjoying the moment. I have learned the importance of driving out and sitting on the beach for a few hours when I feel stressed or listening to the sound of the wind when I begin to get too involved in insignificant problems. What is good is definitely something that you learn from where you live and who raises you, in other words, it is not your “nature” that tells you what is good but rather how you are “nutured”. I have noticed that the things I value as good often contrast with many of my fellow San Domenico community members. Often times what is considered “good” at this school is what will get you into college or what will get you the highest paying job. Although I do see value in, and respect completely that way of thinking, I never truly have understood it, simply because of how my life has been up until this point. However I do not see anything wrong with that, like I said before, you learn what is good through how you are raised, which shapes your values and the direction you want your life to go. 

Beauty and Goodness of Human Mind

        Goodness is a core value in human society. I believe that beauty embodies the goodness of humans. Something is beautiful if it is good. When a girl has a good appearance, we can say that she is beautiful. When a man devotes himself to the cause of helping the refugees, we can say that he has a beautiful mind. 

        This reminds me of the movie, The Beautiful Mind, which depicts the life of a well-known mathematician John Nash. Although Nash has great talents in the field of mathematics, he suffers from his life. When in college, he has social phobia that he cannot talk to others with ease. Yet he is able to dig into his research on math. He develops the famous Nash Equilibrium theory, which challenges the prevalent theory of Adam Smith. Later he successfully becomes a professor at MIT. However, his life changes. Torn by the reality, Nash develops schizophrenia—he creates illusions of being recruited by US Department of Homeland Security to decipher war codes. He has to fight against all these illusions that seem so real. Under such circumstances, all the colleagues, friends and others isolate him. Yet he does not give up his passion for math. He tries every effort to continue developing his own theory and eventually succeeds. He wins the Nobel Price in Mathematics later. 

        John Nash owns the beauty of mind and thus goodness because he overcomes all the obstacles in his life, including being schizophrenic, and pursues his passion in math all the way through. His tenacity and perseverance are the goodness, the beauty of a human being. Thus, beauty does not only represent the outside good appearance, but also the inner goodness of human beings. 

Try to Find the Little Bit of Good

           When I was young, my parents always taught me I need to be a good person in the future. But what is good? For my understanding, good is a standard to measure a person or a thing. Good is also a feeling of comfortable, excited, surprised or any kinds of positive senses. People deserve to meet good people in order to be happier; people deserve good thing to make life easier. Good can describe anything, and anything could be good. That conclusion confuses me. If anything could be good, then what kind of the “good person” that my parents want me to be? How can I determine if I’m a good person or not?

            There are lots of the qualities of good person: authority, loyalty, purity, kind, friendly and so on. After I discovered this, I started to question myself: does a good person need to contain all of those qualities in order to be defined as “good person”? Obviously, the answer is not; no one is perfect. We are all human beings, and we all have emotions. However, it is important to try our best to be good – to help others, to bring out positive attitude, to smile, to excise, to be healthy and to enjoy our life and value the people around us. It is true that we are not perfect, but what will happen if everyone on the Earth try their best to improve themselves a little bit more? That is as same as the food drive — if everyone brings one more can, we could raise six thousand more cans and beat Safeway so that we will be the first donor in the Bay area. Being good has nothing to do with winning the first place, but the fact that everyone tries to be part of the community and help others shows how “good” is defined.

            In conclusion, good is to devote, to participate, and to try our best. Good has unlimited definitions. It is the job for everyone to discover the “good” in him/her. There is a little bit of good in everyone, so try to find the little bit of good.

            

"Perfection is the enemy of the good"

Very few things in life can be divided into what is good and what is bad, just like the world is not black and white. There are numerous shades of grey. In fact, there is a whole spectrum of colors and shades, so why should we limit ourselves to consider only two. That being said, we have to define some behaviors as good and others as immoral in order to keep order in a world with so many differing and contradicting opinions. Furthermore, some actions, people, qualities, days, etc. are just inherently more "good" than others. For example, giving is better than stealing, Gandhi was better than Hitler, to be full of love is better than to be full of hatred, the last day of school is better than the first,....  But how do we determine these? Similar to truth, determining the good comes from a mixture of analytical thinking, learning from your elders (parents, teachers, distinguished individuals...), and listening to your own emotions and gut. I believe that with the good, the personal side versus the intellectual side is essential. You can stop to hold the door open for an elderly person for a number of reasons. You can hold it open because you feel that society would deem you rude in not doing so, or you can hold it open because you would deem yourself rude in not doing so. Either way, you are doing a good deed, but which is more sincere? Good is many things. It is justice, it is kindness, it is that warm fuzzy feeling in your chest when you drink warm tea or help a stranger pick up their spilt groceries. Something or someone that is good does not have to be flawless. Often it is the dark, rough patches that help us notice the bright and smooth and appreciate them.

No definition

Good is when a person's actions are done with good intentions. Actions done with the intention to help others and not hurt them. Good can benefit just one person without hurting anyone or it can benefit a larger population. The part where it gets tricky to define is when you have to weigh the damage versus helpfulness. For instance in one situation we saw in a video you had the choice to kill one man or five. When you weigh the facts I think it is better to let one person die rather than five. When other factors are added such as having to pen one man in front of the train to stop it from killing the other five the decision becomes even more complicated. One death is better than five but the one man was completely innocent and should not have even been on the tracks. This is not "good" because of the forceful pushing of someone to their death. Another situation to consider is the one presented in the movie Traitor. Allowing terrorists to kill a few people in order to save many. In this situation I initially though pt it was crazy that anyone would  ever give terrorists explosives. But as time went on I realized why. It saved many lives in the future. I think this is "good". I wish there was a way to prevent all deaths in this situation but seeing no way to do that I think the actions taken were the right choice. They were done in an effort to help the world, not injure it. To conclude my view I believe that there is no simple view of what is good. It is to complex to determine one definition of "good". If I were to begin the definition though I would begins with saying that good is when the actions are done with the intention to help rather than hurt. However there are many situations involving careful thought and calculation on which outcome is more beneficial. When it is impossible to have a completely harm free outcome it is better to have the outcome that is the least harmful. But then there are many different cases here too. Good is relative to the situation. It is not as simple as one definition.

A loss, no bad thing

     In the society, people get use to learn things by distinguishing they are good or bad. However, are the things that defined bad have noting good with it?

     There is a famous idiom in Chinese that says “a loss, no bad thing”, meaning a loss may turn out to be a gain. The idiom is base on an ancient story that is about an old man who lost a few horses. He does not feel unfortunate about it and the lost horses actually led a group of horses back later. The story leads me to think the boundary between the definitions of “good” and “bad”. They are all uncertain in a way we could not predict what is going to happen after. Therefore, when something bad occurs, we should not be too negative about it because it may causes good things. And on the opposite, sometimes good things can turn into bad things in a certain condition. This goes on without end, and its depths cannot be measured.

     According to the philosophy of Taoism, the two halves yin and yang together complete wholeness. I believe goodness and badness are just like yin and yang, they are balanced and their duality forms a whole. Further more, the shady side and sunny side in our lives is equal, what we can do is accept them bravely – smile at the unfortunate and appreciate the good fortune in life. Whenever a good or bad thing occurs, it is good to always be soberly and positive.

Who is the "good" witch?

Goodness is weighed in every decision we make. Is it good to interfere in a situation that does not require your help? Is it good to go against your family’s beliefs to pursue what you really want? Is it good to eat the last piece of pumpkin pie on Thanksgiving? It doesn’t matter how important or serious these decisions are, but each time we choose to do something, we weigh whether it is good decision, consciously or not.

Goodness is defined by each individual’s values.  What is good to you might be different than the person sitting next to you. It might even be different than the you a couple years ago. Each individual’s definition of good is defined by their experiences and the influences in their lives. In a Tedtalk about morality, psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks about the moral roots of liberals and conservatives. He concluded that liberals are found to be more open-minded to change while conservatives tend to stick to more familiar situations that don’t create chaos. A liberal will think that their point of view is good and a conservative will think that their perspective is good. In some ways, they are both right because goodness requires a yin and yang; a balance between all perspectives in order to have a broader perspective of what is considered good.

I also think that goodness is very subjective. Take the story of Wicked. In the Wizard of Oz, Glinda is portrayed as the “good” witch and Alphaba is the “evil” witch. It’s easy for people to accept that fact and categorize both Alphaba and Glinda with the way they are presented, but when the story of Wicked, the prequel to the Wizard of Oz, came out people were able to see both Alphaba and Glinda in a different light. Now, people see Alphaba as the misunderstood and manipulated character and Glinda as the selfish and self-absorbed character. Because the audience’s perspectives were changed, they were able to see both stories of how these characters came to be, and make their own decision. Neither Glinda nor Alphaba are the “bad” witches because both of them demonstrate goodness in their actions, despite some of their flaws. The way the Wizard of Oz portrayed these characters as either the “bad” or the “good” witch influenced people’s perspectives and did not allow them the opportunity to choose the goodness is both of them.

Goodness is an abstract thought that requires a much broader perspective than a constricting definition. There is goodness everywhere we look and we think about it constantly throughout our days, even if we don’t consciously know it.

What is Goodness?

People barely can use one certain sentence to answer the question, “What is goodness?” because of the versatility of the question itself. For me, the question is undefined. Goodness can be fostered based on different qualities one owns, either obvious or subtle, and all of them equally contribute to shape the word “goodness”. 

“Good” is not merely a subjective, which determined by a sudden human consciousness or an ephemeral willingness to be good, but also a verb which inspires people to do something they actually value as goodness and to live their lives with such motivation in a longer term. Rosa Parks, for example, help define goodness by siting down at the first row of the bus and ending the racial separation on bus system in Montgomery. Steve Jobs, the great creator of our modern world, invent numerous Apple products to broaden our experiences with technology and rapidly stimulates tech developments in the whole society. Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest industrialists who led the enormous expansion of the American steel industry in the late 19th century, founded Carnegie Mellon University and provided education opportunities to countless students. Throughout the history, people in our society are always using their own specialties to  help integrate the word “goodness”. 

However, goodness always has two sides which cannot be compatible with each other. For instance, Animal testing has been an issue that caused so many debates and arguments between people holding different perspectives. People who agree to ban such activity consider the whole issue in animals’ direction believed that animals, like human beings, have the right to live and to choose. Those people are pursuing goodness—for the sake of animals. On the contrary, people who disagree to ban animal testing point out that animal testing has also given us huge medical advances that we would have never came upon without animal testing. Those people are also pursuing goodness—for the sake of human beings. Although all arguments about animal testing are all derived from the same purpose: creating goodness, but the ways to value such idea here are opposite, which separates the idea of goodness into two reciprocal parts. Therefore, the perfect goodness does not possibly exist.

Dimensional

       Goodness cannot be defined as something that is black and white. However, if I was to define when someone is “good”, I’d say that it is primarily when someone has found harmony in society and feels fulfilled with themselves. This means that they feel happy with how they are living their lives and whom they are surrounded by. It also resulted from who can benefit from them. 

        I also believe that goodness is equality between the environment and all of the creatures that live on it (that includes our human species). I believe that one of the greatest down falls of our human race is the mindset that humans are superior to all other races and therefor are allowed to treat other species with disrespect. Goodness also comes with generosity for those who need it. Being able to see that you might have more than enough and sharing your wealth with those who deserve it is also an important part of being “good”.

        However, when it comes to more detailed issues that arise in life, good is never so simply defined. There are always going to be pros and cons to every decision no matter what it is. Our world is based on chance. Say, for example, you make a sandwich (for a very simple example). You can either use peanut butter and jelly or salami and mayonnaise. Whichever one you choose there is always something that can go wrong. Maybe the peanut butter will get stuck in your throat and the smell will follow you around all day. On the other hand, maybe the mayonnaise has gone bad and you could get sick. While this example may seem small, the idea is the same for many examples within life. 

        Good is can never be so easily defined. Just like people, every decision is never black and white. Every decision you make will create a chain reactions of positive and negative events and that is how life works. By putting things in boxes of good and evil, you are limiting yourself to a world of dimensions and shapes.