The Greater Good

[wstein]

Originally Posted by Juanita

I don't think there is anything vague about it at all....If someone is starving, you feed them; If they need water, you help them build a well; if their children are dying from old diseases, you vaccinate them, etc....This all contributes to the greater good of all....Your heart and soul know that your actions fit into the unfolding......

I certainly won’t argue that these are good acts in the local sense. And I will give you that they are not vague. However, I don’t see any reference to the ‘greater’.

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It’s not so simple or so clear as you make it out.

If there is one bad apple in a barrel, as the old saying goes, do you throw it out? Or allow the others to rot? What if there is one bad child in a population?

If there is a person drowning in the water and you are in a lifeboat, do you pull them in? What if the lifeboat is already overly full and adding one more person will sink the boat?

If there is one species unrelentingly causing the extinction of thousands of others, do you exterminate it to save the others? Do you make sure that every member of that species survives? Are you aware that humans are one of those species?

Saving one child, installing one well, vaccinating one village are all singular acts. It easy to see what benefit there might be to the few, but what is the cost to the greater whole?

My heart and soul knows that life especially on Earth is a closed system. Making things better for one individual always makes it worse for many others. Acting by considering only that which is in front of you does not have a clear effect on the whole system. Sustaining life in a closed system is a balance, not a set of pat answers.

[Louisa]

I am liking reading everyone's views.

I still try to find a "greater good", but I accept that only my own biased and limited perception can guess what that is really supposed to be, plus to be guided by spirit, and then only if I trust spirit's guidance enough.

In some sense, I think everything can be accepted and redeemed (it's all good), yet I certainly won't passively accept everything. I have preferences. I feel much better in certain situations. I judge and assess life for myself and others.

I might be wrong, and if I learn that I'm wrong (or seem to be wrong, based on new information), then I'll revise.

Maybe there's no ultimate right or wrong, and we all must judge that for ourselves, I guess. No real way to know, and clearly it's subjectively interpreted through the haze of personal experiences and biases.

But in general, humanity benefits from certain things. Most people benefit from lack of pain and harm. Then there's the level of environment - that's altogether beyond people, though it includes them. If you look at the level of spirit, that's a whole 'nother level. Beyond the earth. But I don't begin to grasp spirit, only guess, intuit and sometimes sense vague things or get signs and precognitions, etc.

I agree that sometimes the idea of greater good is misused, yet our conscience seems to dictate that we try to care, and try to consider greater good concerns. I think it's a matter of combining the heart and feelings with objective truths that makes "greater good" become a more realistic ideal. More applicable to practical reality. Even so, it's often difficult for people to see beyond certain biases, but then I hope that gradually as a culture we will learn to get closer and closer to the true greater balance and well-being. Like most people are much better off now that in many times in human history. In many ways, at least. I doubt many would disagree, and I think much of that's due to knowledge and evolution of cultural values. But I think that maybe there is still a lot of room for corruption and a lot of corruption goes on. Colonization has destroyed many viable and harmonious indigenous cultures. Media distorts things. So sometimes I wonder how much better off we are and do I know?

But I still try to care for the greater good and I still admit to myself that for me it's both guess and intuition. In the right hands, "greater good" ideas can be very transformative and healing. In the wrong hands, they can be devastating. I guess that's human nature.

From the level of spirit, maybe it's a totally different creature, compassion and well being viewed on a scale beyond our abilities to guess. I like to take that view sometimes, because I have learned that many of the things I thought would destroy me made me immensely more knowledgeable or stronger. Sometimes though, that's not the case. I think life destroys many people. It doesn't comfort anyone in the throes of despair, but maybe there's a redemption beyond their life. Maybe even those who live miserable and oppressed lives learn something about it and benefit in other lifetimes, through soul knowledge... it's a theory only for me, but it makes sense to me considering how my own life has gone.

If I looked at a segment of the worst period of my life.. if that's all my life had been, it would've seemed like senseless tragedy... But I ended up growing from it tremendously. Maybe some people's lives are the same way... and they only learn the lessons or gain the wisdom after the miserable life is over with, either in spirit, or in some soul imprint that carries on in later incarnations?

[Mr Interesting]

I like to think that I follow the greater good but that it's also part of that job to accept I can't really know what that greater good is, at least not be able to see the obvious results of what I might do and how that's going somewhere I could comprehend.

The ramifications of doing spread so widely sometimes in the most inarticulate ways that the process itself then defies seeing results especially as we might define those results as towards a greater good. But I suppose that's what the idea of faith is all about especially in relation to trust and intuition... that we just listen and commit to doing and let the whole thing take care of itself, alike a single cell in our bodies which might want to know where it's going and what it's doing, what it's all for, but actually works better just serving within it's framework of abilities.

Originally Posted by wstein

I certainly won’t argue that these are good acts in the local sense. And I will give you that they are not vague. However, I don’t see any reference to the ‘greater’.

------------------------------------------
It’s not so simple or so clear as you make it out.

If there is one bad apple in a barrel, as the old saying goes, do you throw it out? Or allow the others to rot? What if there is one bad child in a population?

If there is a person drowning in the water and you are in a lifeboat, do you pull them in? What if the lifeboat is already overly full and adding one more person will sink the boat?

If there is one species unrelentingly causing the extinction of thousands of others, do you exterminate it to save the others? Do you make sure that every member of that species survives? Are you aware that humans are one of those species?

Saving one child, installing one well, vaccinating one village are all singular acts. It easy to see what benefit there might be to the few, but what is the cost to the greater whole?

My heart and soul knows that life especially on Earth is a closed system. Making things better for one individual always makes it worse for many others. Acting by considering only that which is in front of you does not have a clear effect on the whole system. Sustaining life in a closed system is a balance, not a set of pat answers.

Set of pat answers? What is the cost to the rest of the world if you feed and vaccinate a child? How about if we also provide it with an education and he/she/they grow up to discover a cure for cancer? There is a Buddhist proverb that says something like a single step can change the world....

[wstein]

Originally Posted by Juanita

What is the cost to the rest of the world if you feed and vaccinate a child?

not a whole lot, the cost of one more human living an additional ~60 years is another matter.

Originally Posted by Juanita

How about if we also provide it with an education and he/she/they grow up to discover a cure for cancer?

What if it invents an antimatter bomb?

Originally Posted by Juanita

There is a Buddhist proverb that says something like a single step can change the world....

For sure, it’s just that you don’t know in advance if it’s a ‘good’ change or a ‘bad’ change

[blackraven]

Originally Posted by Louisa

In the right hands, "greater good" ideas can be very transformative and healing. In the wrong hands, they can be devastating. I guess that's human nature.

Louisa - You said a lot and I agree with everything you said, but especially the above comment. The 'wrong hands' is what drove my input on this topic. I guess that's my way of seeing the glass half empty. But you're right that transformation and healing can take place in the 'right hands'.

Blackraven

[Louisa]

I think faith is one of the few things that could give me the sense of working for the greater good. If the faith yielded good results, and then other times it might not but I guess I might not be seeing from a big enough perspective. Still I'd have to see a good enough balance on the side of "good" or else I'd stop having faith.

I have often weighed decisions endlessly, looking at all the possibilities, and realized that yes it often is really a toss-up as for what would turn out possibly good or bad. And what's more, things like just living on this earth taking up resources could be viewed in a moral sense as negative, but of course, few people would choose to view it that way and I don't focus on that either. But yes, sometimes it's really pointless for the sake of one's own life to try to see it as good or bad, unless, as mentioned above, it's viewed from the perspective of faith, and maybe that faith goes beyond the earth's needs, beyond what we view as right or wrong from a human perspective. But I don't like making such assumptions, unless I clearly feel a sense of guidance that leads me to believe it's benevolent based on many positive results.

[Louisa]

Originally Posted by blackraven

Louisa - You said a lot and I agree with everything you said, but especially the above comment. The 'wrong hands' is what drove my input on this topic. I guess that's my way of seeing the glass half empty. But you're right that transformation and healing can take place in the 'right hands'.

Blackraven

Blackraven, your concerns do seem very valid to me... I wonder if maybe the whole idea of "the greater good" is more likely to be taken up by people who would use if for harm. Or if maybe the ones who would use it for harm would be more forceful and get their way because of that.

But at least for some causes, I look at the impact my actions would have, even if it's a drop in the bucket. Small changes among many people can change the world, and sometimes the change isn't even apparent until it's well on its way. It begins first in the hearts and minds and in the little examples and ripple effects, oftentimes, so I consider that when I contribute my fair share, try to help others, etc.

But ultimately, I guess I really don't know, as mentioned in my above post, and there's always the chance for some wild card to make things turn out totally harmful when you thought you were actually doing a good thing, like supporting a person who will later turn out to be a very harmful person. But then from a larger perspective, again, who knows that it's not a learning lesson.

But from a human perspective, yeah, I'm not sure of the idea of the "greater good". I still often try to live by it. It lets me feel my life has meaning and matters, not just as having fun (which has gotten a little boring for me in itself), but as mattering to a bigger picture.