Best Of

@Jeroen said:

@Shoshin1 said:
One man's meat is another man's poison
I think the terms good and bad are relative ..Doing a good deed for one sentient being may be causing harm to another...
Do no harm or try to do the least harm possible...
Also having the the right 'intent' when performing an action...
I guess in a sense good can be seen as being 'skilful'...

There is a difference between feeling like a “good person” and doing “good deeds”. It is certainly culturally determined, and there is a difference between children’s culture and adult’s culture.

Doing no harm can also be done by doing as little as possible. The Taoist story of the farmer and his “perhaps” is also very relevant, good or beneficial things are often not so easy to discern.

For example in IJmuiden in the Netherlands, where my mother grew up, they built a large steel works, which was intended to help make the country independent in the manufacture of large steel objects. It did that and supplied work for a lot of people, but they are now discovering that the emissions from the works have negatively impacted the lifespans of people living in the area.

So in a way I can sympathise with the wise for being cautious in taking action.

There's the story cast about in spiritual and self help circles that illustrates this point as well.

A young boy came across a butterfly cocoon and brought it into his house. He watched, over the course of hours, as the butterfly struggled to break free from its confinement. It managed to create a small hole in the cocoon, but its body was too large to emerge. It tired and became still.
Wanting to help the butterfly, the boy snipped a slit in the cocoon with a pair of scissors. But the butterfly was small, weak, and its wings crumpled. The boy expected the insect to take flight, but instead it could only drag its undeveloped body along the ground. It was incapable of flying.

The boy, in his eagerness to help the butterfly, stunted its development. What he did not know was that the butterfly needed to go through the process of struggling against the cocoon to gain strength and fill its wings with blood. It was the struggle that made it stronger.

You may have heard a variation of this story before. I came across it in Frank Dupree’s book Metamorphosis. It’s a reminder of the fact that while it’s hard to watch those who we are close to struggle, often the best help we can provide is to do nothing. By intervening, and shouldering the burden ourselves, we rob those we care about of the opportunity to grow and get stronger.

As a parent, as a friend, or as a spouse, the instinct to help is hard to resist. We see our kids struggling at school, interacting with other children, or falling behind on the playing field, and we want to step in and save them from hardship. We want to offload their pain onto ourselves.

By doing so, however, we’re eliminating the circumstances that the people we love need for their own personal development. It’s instinctive, and understandable, to want to help. But often the best course of action is to wait and, like the butterfly, let the process unfold on its own terms and timeline.

As Robert Tew once wrote, “The struggle you’re in today is developing the strength you need for tomorrow. Don’t give up.”
Sometimes the best gift we can give is to stand on the sideline, shouting encouragement, but allowing the process of growth to run its course.

https://www.lifeandwhim.com/first-moments-blog/2018/the-struggle-makes-you-stronger

Rita Rudner.

"I hate cats.....

(pause)

....They're a dreadful waste of good fur".

I personally despise the fact that they kill indiscriminately.
A domestic cat, in a loving home is never hungry.
And never without toys to play with.
yet they go and kill or injure for some unknown reason we call instinct, and play and toy with the victim.
A completely hypothetical and entirely speculative comment, but I would bet that IF hitler ever WAS reborn in the animal realm - he'd be a cat....

One of the greatest causes of song-bird population decline - is the domestic cat.

Feral cats, scavenge in bins, and find food in the easiest way possible - by raiding dustbins.
The domestic cat needs reining in.

I think in some cases one must curtail relativism, namely when it concerns doing damage to other people. But in a lot of cases people are quite happy adjusting to different circumstances, and one man’s good is another man’s evil indeed. I think tolerance is the important take-away in a lot of these cases, so that people can sit and eat together… if that makes sense.

@Shoshin1 said:
One man's meat is another man's poison
I think the terms good and bad are relative

I don't think you were saying this, its just when I hear someone talking about the relativity of good and bad I worry about falling into some sort of relativistic moral nihilism.

There is the old absolutist moral stance, which is still going strong in many areas of the world today, that says we're right and good and anyone else is wrong and bad.

In reaction to that people have seen the ways that isn't true and that things aren't so absolute. In some extremes, I'd say its been taken too far. For example, "some cultures allow women full participation in society and some practice female genital mutilation, who are we to decide who is right, maybe that is right for them?"

I think the wise stance is one of pluralism rather than absolutism or relativism. That there are many ways of promoting flourishing in the world, but some ways are harmful. That "good" ways of being usually have some level of trade offs in them, that the helpful aspects of one way may have downsides that other ways of being being don't have and vis versa. Like in @Jeroen 's example, one place may have avoided building the steel plant and now don't suffer the negative effects, but they also never experienced the benefits that the place that did build it had.

@Shoshin1 said:
One man's meat is another man's poison
I think the terms good and bad are relative ..Doing a good deed for one sentient being may be causing harm to another...
Do no harm or try to do the least harm possible...
Also having the the right 'intent' when performing an action...
I guess in a sense good can be seen as being 'skilful'...

There is a difference between feeling like a “good person” and doing “good deeds”. It is certainly culturally determined, and there is a difference between children’s culture and adult’s culture.

Doing no harm can also be done by doing as little as possible. The Taoist story of the farmer and his “perhaps” is also very relevant, good or beneficial things are often not so easy to discern.

For example in IJmuiden in the Netherlands, where my mother grew up, they built a large steel works, which was intended to help make the country independent in the manufacture of large steel objects. It did that and supplied work for a lot of people, but they are now discovering that the emissions from the works have negatively impacted the lifespans of people living in the area.

So in a way I can sympathise with the wise for being cautious in taking action.

One man's meat is another man's poison
I think the terms good and bad are relative ..Doing a good deed for one sentient being may be causing harm to another...
Do no harm or try to do the least harm possible...
Also having the the right 'intent' when performing an action...
I guess in a sense good can be seen as being 'skilful'...

@person said:
There is a certain danger in thinking of yourself as a good person in that it automatically sets up a dichotomy of the others which aren't good. And a lot of what is considered good is conditional on time, circumstance and culture, its a sort of trend.

For me, goodness was predicated on being certain things: environmentally aware and pro-active, against violence and in favour of peace, loving and caring, and a few others. It never had anything to do with comparison to others. Nevertheless it is an attachment to an external standard.

I think I agree with @how, it is a source of suffering, one’s own and others because it is a source of division. By being ‘good’ you automatically classify much of the world as ‘bad’ because they don’t do the same things as you.

Becoming attached to feeling like you are a good person, is one of suffering's causes.
And....
Becoming attached to states that society supports as something positive, is considered to be a compounded delusion for how seldom the resulting suffering gets traced back to its true cause.