Good and bad are both toxically costly

 

The basic idea of good versus bad, right versus wrong, fair versus unfair, virtue versus sin, have caused humanity more trouble and grief than any other single idea in the world.

 

At best, these ideas are only fit for a child, to provide low-context rules for action and to ensure that they will be approved of by those in their immediate environment.

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The benefits of living in the HOGAB

 

The main benefit of allowing these judgmental ideas to control us is that we can avoid the fear of knowing and taking into account one simple fact: Everything has its benefits and costs. It helps us to avoid facing and accepting the fundamental risk that life is. Only when we know that we are good, when we know that we are right, are we able to blind ourselves to (or relieve ourselves from looking into) the costs of our actions, both to ourselves and to others. We get to avoid taking 100% responsibility, thinking it's a good deal, when the opposite is true.

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Knowing that we are good (and even that we are bad), knowing that we took the right action (or even the wrong action), knowing that we are “saved” (or even sinners), gives us a sense of security that allows us to avoid feeling the fear of looking at the costs and benefits of our actions. It allows us to avoid embracing the risks that our actions and non-actions entail, including the risks of disapproval from others.

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We ignore and/or forget the fact that Hitler and all his eager supporters knew that they were right and good and that this "knowledge" enabled them to do the horrible things they did.

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Our arrogance in thinking we know how others should behave

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As a lesser example, we ignore and/or forget the fact that the damage that parents do to the spirit and happiness of their children is most often done by parents who know the right, good, and proper life that their children should live.

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Consider that good and bad have no meaning of their own except as they may, in some contexts, describe the benefits and costs of certain actions.

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The true meaning of good and bad that no one acknowledges

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Good: people or behaviors which I and/or others will approve of.

Bad: people or behaviors which I and/or others will disapprove of.

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As such, good and bad say nothing about the costs and risks or benefits and possibilities of the people or behaviors in question, except in so far as the disapproval or approval just by itself would qualify as a cost or benefit.

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The ultimate measure of costs, risks, benefits, and possibilities

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Also consider that benefits and costs are ultimately defined by whether or not they promote the successful expression of joy, pleasure, and rapture in our lives.

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Context and circumstances make a difference

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Take note that the distinctions of benefit and cost must include the parameters benefit to whom? and cost to whom? They must also include short-range and long-range considerations. They must also include an appreciation of the context and environment within which our choices lie: we often get attached to a particular form or way of doing something, forgetting the larger purpose.

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For example, we act as if the value of marriage is an ultimate value, while forgetting the reasons we decided to marry in the first place (namely the opportunity to express and feel love and to live our lives to the fullest).

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When the costs and risks exceed the benefits and possibilities of being alive

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Also consider that we often act as if having a body with a beating heart is of ultimate value, while forgetting that the only reason we really want to be alive is to rejoice in our life and rejoice in the opportunities for self-expression, pleasure, joy, and contribution to others.

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Is education good?

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Consider that we often think that a formal education is good, without clearly examining the costs and benefits as they do or do not serve the natural passion, curiosity, and interests of the person to be educated. In doing so, we are not using our creativity and choosing courage to create the structure of that education (formal or not) that would best serve these basic values.

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Marriage: is it good or bad?

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Is marriage good? I can show you contexts where the costs of staying married obviously outweigh the benefits. Is divorce bad? Divorce can be a reason for great celebration. Is keeping your word good? Some situations require breaking your word in order to maintain integrity.

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It all depends on circumstance, short-term and long-term, for whom, and as judged by whom

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Tell me anything that you think is always good, always bad, always right, always wrong, always fair, always unfair, always approved by God, or always a sin and I will demonstrate evidence (undiscovered or unacknowledged benefits or costs) to the contrary. I will show you contexts in which the benefits of the bad outweigh (often by far) the costs of the bad. I will show you contexts in which the costs of the good outweigh (often by far) the benefits of the good.

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Our addiction to the world of "good" and "bad"

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To know what is good, to know what is bad, to know what is right, and to know what is wrong is incredibly addictive; we so yearn for that feeling of security. Yet this security is the security of an ostrich with its head in the sand.

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To begin to have what we really want requires an existential choice of courage, again and again, day after day, to step beyond the dangerously simplistic good-bad world and into a more complicated and sometimes messy adult world of benefits and costs.

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I am amused by a quotation from the philosopher Bertrand Russell:

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Are people stupid?

 

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”

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I would take issue with Russell calling people stupid. I don’t think people are stupid; I think we just want to feel safe and comfortable. (Right now!) However, the problem with this feeling of safety is that it’s often foolishly dangerous to our real life and to the lives of those we love.

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Experiment with reducing/eliminating the words good and bad, right and wrong, fair and unfair, from your vocabulary, both in your conversation with others and in your internal conversations with yourself.

Instead, speak, if you can, in terms of benefits and costs (and to whom).

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The courage to leave the HOGAB

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Notice the feeling of insecurity that this stimulates.

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Notice the choice of courage that this involves.