The Good Place: Moral Reward

Originally Posted by Gem

The entire framework is, therefore, a person knows 'goodness' subjectively, is empowered to chose between good and evil, and is deserving of pleasure or displeasure respectively (indeed, these outcomes would be resultant of inevitable universals). However, being compelled to act by desire for pleasure along with aversion to displeasure is seen as unwholesome since such desire and aversion propagates the purely selfish view that all events are acting on me - and hence I react to experiences with either craving and hatred to lesser or greater degree. However, if the experience affecting me causes me to react - which is also the compulsion to act - that defies the third Axiom, free-will. By extension, if I act to effect pleasure/avoid pain, I re-enter causality, which defies free will. Therefore, what we call free will implies nothing about acting, which is cause and effect in action/reaction unification.

I feel this is on the right track, but think further exploration of these points could be very interesting.

Just what is 'Good' and 'Bad', and why are they good and bad? Just what is 'Free will', just how is it freeing, and what are the implications of that? I think so much flows from these basic understandings.