Goodness

i have a genuine question. im a bit of a sperg so do not laugh: what is the purpose of being a good person or ontologically good if it brings more suffering on the good person, as being good leads to more cases where the person loses? why would anyone want to be the loser? and we instill ideas of goodness for some kind of deeper personal meaning anyway… why?

If too many people are insufficiently good, everything is like kicking dead whales down the beach more for everyone.

>>48967 Does that mean someone has to be the sacrificial lamb by being kind so the world is less soykafty?

People want you to be good so they can profit of you, nice guys make it last. Most people pretend to be good to get favors from others and have a moral high ground. The sad truth is that being good does more bad to the world since those fake goodie twoshoes people gain from your efforts and only squander them. fuarrrk being a good person, who cares other than sociopaths and goalong get along people.

>>48969 >The sad truth is that being good does more bad to the world since those fake goodie twoshoes people gain from your efforts and only squander them. Yeah, nah. You're confusing being good with being nice. They're totally separate things. You can be good without being nice and you can be nice without being good. In fact, in some situations they are mutually exclusive.

Goodness is what, overall, is generally more beneficial in the long-run. You can get pretty seriously into philosophy and theology if you feel like understanding the metaphysics behind theories of morality and the purpose, but tl;dr a decision being "good" as opposed to bad is considered so for the reason that it creates the best outcome for the parties involved in the long run. I'm going a bit into deontology (consequences-based ethics) here to explain this just as a tangent, I feel like the traditional philosophical modes of ethics are too rigid to apply to the complicated realities of life, and should be used mostly as a guide to navigating a moral dilemma, not a hard set of rules to uphold all the time, but I digress Sometimes this comes in the form of needing to do something unpleasant with a better outcome overall. Maybe this comes in revealing to your friend that his wife is having an affair in a private, confidential conversation. You might lose in the short run; your friend loses his temper and explodes at you, but it is good for the reasons that a) you have discovered a dishonest act and brought out the truth to the party being deceived, and b) telling your friend in confidence, in a safer environment, allows him to get out any anger or pain in private, and be able to more rationally consider a course of action from there. Consider the alternative, where you keep the secret, but he ends up finding out on his own and loses his temper in public. Or, where he later finds out you knew, but kept silent, and this puts a strain on your relationship because he feels like you betrayed him by keeping him in the dark. Again, context and the means of doing so count; it would be a bad act to tactlessly reveal the affair in public. Sometimes, this comes in needing to do a fundamentally bad thing for a better outcome overall. Say, your friend owes alot of money to bad people, and one day, these two thugs come to your door and ask if you've seen him around. You know he's holed up on the other side of the street, but the good thing to do would be to lie and say you haven't seen him. In doing so, you may have had to be dishonest, but you've remained loyal to your friend and have prevented him from coming to harm. If you had been honest, you would have been selling him out -- and that would make you the loser in the moral dilemma. This is the prime example of why I find traditional deontology too rigid; the traditional Kantian view would consider dishonesty immoral in all circumstances >why would anyone want to be the loser? and we instill ideas of goodness for some kind of deeper personal meaning anyway… why? The short answer is that humans are social creatures and consider dilemmas both individually and socially. It's a fact of living in a society that someone has to get the short-end of the stick, but we accept these things because participating in society yields better rewards which make getting burned once in a while tolerable. Consider the example of a community charitable organization that solicits operating funds primarily through donations. From a purely objective standpoint, the people who donate to support this organization are losing out; giving their money away for no tangible reward, but do so anyways because they want to support their community, and feel like having a charitable organization makes life better overall. Human society is filled with these sorts of situations where, out of goodness, someone loses. Many voluntary, some involuntary, but it is something we deal with to be able to participate in society. Worker bees do the lion's share of work in a bee hive for generally little 'reward,' but do so because they get more out of being in a hive than trying to survive by themselves, as individuals. Human society is orders of magnitude more complicated than a bee hive, but it follows this principle. We don't want to be the loser, but we accept it having to happen sometimes. You don't lash out at your co-workers, you don't steal from your local grocery store, and you don't kill your neighbor's annoying pit bull both out of the fear of consequences, but also because it's the right thing to do, despite you losing a bit by being the bigger person -- and again, those consequences stem from the need to preserve society. Like >>48967 said, if most people weren't "good," and they weren't considerate of others, and didn't accept losing out in some situations, and were completely individualistic and focused on getting the best individual payoff in all circumstances, then life would probably suck.

>>48966 > i have a genuine question. im a bit of a sperg so do not laugh: what is the purpose of being a good person or ontologically good if it brings more suffering on the good person, as being good leads to more cases where the person loses? why would anyone want to be the loser? The trick to answering this question properly is agreeing on what we mean by "goodness". I'll give an obvious set of examples: Would you rather be a good runner, or a bad runner? Would you rather be a good thinker, or a bad one? Would you rather be a good moneymaker, or a bad one? Clearly, goodness is preferred in some situations. So you have to clarify what you mean by being a good person. If you mean "good at living", than that certainly sounds like something we should all pursue. Or did you mean, "good at doing the right thing", well who would want to do the wrong thing? Isn't being wrong obviously undesirable (e.g: getting a question wrong on a test, making a wrong turn while driving)? The only reason this question emerges is because we are being inconsistent in our use of terminology. If you have a coherent framework, then the answers fall out for free. Currently, we are using the word "good" to mean "what some other guy says is morally correct, that I disagree with", which is the most incoherent approach to reasoning I can imagine. >inb4 you think morality is nonexistent Then being "good at living" or "good" for short means maximizing your pleasure, I guess. (Or please, propose a clear meaning). You still want to be good in this case, just not in the way that it traditionally gets thrown around. Now, the filthy masses might have a different (incorrect) view of being "good at living", but who gives a fuuark what the dung-eaters think. >inb4 you think morality exists Then being a "good person" or "good at living" means living rightly. While this may not maximize pleasure, it will still be correct by definition. Note this will still lead to the filthy masses calling you a "loser", who gives a fuark. >>48971 >>48967 >>48968 >>48969 >Goodness is what, overall, is generally more beneficial in the long-run Utilitarians weep at the sight of the pleasure-monster. OP, don't split the argument / get caught up in thinking about "what do when good is what Dave says is good but me disagree etc" messes. Decide where your stand philosophically, and then follow through. Maximizing societal outcomes should never be your goal, living to the best of your ability ("being good at living") should be. Figure out what that means and pursue it. p.s: go read socrates. you don't have to agree with his conclusions, but you should absolutely follow his method.

>what is the purpose of being a good person or ontologically good if it brings more suffering on the good person Well, first don't be good AND an idiot at the same time. Being good shouldn't bring suffering to the good person. You be good when the other person deserves it, or if you have nothing to lose from it. Giving a gift to a friend for a favor they did for you. or giving the random homeless guy that passes by 20 bucks when you can afford the charity. Or because it is Christmas and you finally decided to contribute to the joys of the holidays. You don't be good when someone is a jerk to you. or if the result of being too generous harms yourself for no reason.

It seems that a lot but not all people in this thread don't even know what is being talked about when "good" is invoked. Goodness is to do the morally correct thing. There are moral questions and there are answers to these questions. Some people deny that moral questions have any truth value at all. It seems to me obvious that there are right and wrong answers to at least some moral questions. I for one think that it's wrong to torture babies for fun. I'm not merely saying "boo torturing babies", I am saying that there is a correct answer here and it's obvious to anyone with a functioning brain. If you do not agree here you are saying the following: I have no right to say that torturing my or anyone else's baby is the correct thing to do if I am to speak the truth. If this indeed happened all most you could say is that you are suffering and that it has some morally indifferent consequences on the world. >>48973 >>48970 already pointed out where you went wrong. It's basic etiquette to read the thread before you write

>>48966 >ontologically good if it brings more suffering on the good person, as being good leads to more cases where the person loses? why would anyone want to be the loser? It's the other way around, being "evil" means to take things by force, to make others upset and abuse them with your power, but, with what force and what power? If you do have the power to be evil, you don't suffer at all from getting away with it, even if you're scorned. Being evil will lead you to making lots of money, having lots of influence, and being able to do incredibly luxurious and expensive things, look at basically any global-level elite rich person, their living standard is astronomically higher than that of the average person, and they definitely got there immorally. Even if you believe that might is right, that being rich is all that matters and that other people's rights don't matter, you still need to have the power to carry out injustice. But you most likely don't have such power, thus if you challenge the powers of the status quo you will be destroyed, you're a slave. For this reason, people rationalize being _unable_ to commit injustice (and avoiding the consequences) with _choosing_ not to. Words words words, this is a soykafty way of explaining Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality, which states that being powerful was awesome to the eyes of everyone until those that were too weak to live the life coped and said that their weakness was actually a virtue.

>>48972 >utility monster only really works against simplistic utilitarianism. kind of like how the example of lying to save someone's life only works against extremely simplistic deontology. They're relevant to philosophers of ethics, but to everyday people, the fact that you can come up with absurd extremes of a philosophical theory of ethics is a sign that things are just a little more complicated than a one-sentence maxim, not that the entire idea is bunk. >>48977 >If you do have the power to be evil, you don't suffer at all from getting away with it, even if you're scorned. I often wonder how true this is. I think it's very rarely true. Most evil people make great sacrifices to be evil, and they usually live in paranoia that some other evil person will come take their lunch. Why isn't the ideal Superman more like, well, Superman? If you are powerful enough to exert your will on others, why wouldn't you use your power to make society just and kind? Nietsche's interpreters always seem to assume evil is prior to good.

>>48969 There's a difference between being good and being civilized, in my view a person who is whiling to destroy the system is a good person even if it uses violence.

>>48966 Not all interactions are a zero sum game where you either win or lose. If you feel you are always losing when being good, it’s time to move your ass somewhere else.

being good is harder than being bad. but it doesnt make you a loser if you can tame life while being good or at least decent that makes you a master of reality. its more fun than being just another bitter insecure dickhead compensating for a soul with worldly status

I recommend you play this game https://ncase.me/trust/ it might answer some of your questions

>>48979 >Nietsche's interpreters always seem to assume evil is prior to good. Well that is exactly what Nietzsche said, in a nutshell, morality is a human invention, it happened by accident, not consciously, and not by divine revelation, and we do think the concept of evil was first and by extension that of goodness. First of all, talking about morality, it didn't "begin", it doesn't have an "origin", that is, a point where it went from not existing to existing, instead it has a "procedence", which are multiple points in history where, because of the circumstances, the concepts of good and evil changed. Second of all, morality is not universal across cultures and time, so even if you think that african morality does not matter but yours does, yours also went through transformations throughout history, you and your ancestors disagree on what's good and evil. Lastly, the explaination by Nietzsche of the procedence of good and evil, the following is a mental experiment and not to be taken literally, it is a psychological theater more than it is a scientific theory (which it isn't at all). >The concept of good and evil/bad didn't exist. >The blonde beast, that is, very ancient humans, because they were so badass, invented language, and gave things the seal of a sound (names), and called their own selves _good_. >"Good" still doesn't have a moral meaning, it's just what they use to refer to themselves. >They are strong, fast, and have a lot of sex, note that these are _physical_ characteristics. >By _extension_, they call other humans that aren't like them _bad_, that is, those who are weak, brittle, easy to kill, not good with their limbs, and bitchless. >The reason they're going around giving names in the first place is because they're really awesome. >The weak men feel impotence when, no matter what they try, they simply cannot become strong, they will forever be _slaves_, and will never become _warriors_. However, they still long and yearn for becoming "good", and hate the fact that they are "bad". >The weak continue to suffer under the rule of the strong, and resent the strong, but I insist, they still value strenght and wish to become strong. >By this point, apart from the physical characteristics alone (including wealth), goodness also starts to include _psychological_ characteristics like _saying the truth_ (Nietzsche claims that these changes can actually be seen in history, supposedly Foucault actually does the job of proving it, given that Nietzsche didn't bother to make citations). >The _priests_ are men that don't have the mentality of the slaves, but don't have the strength of the warriors, however they are neurotic, this explains why they think intensively and play with concepts (this is the type of men phisolophers are). >The priests want to raise in the hierarchy, because they cannot let their essense overflow onto the world and envy the warriors that do it on the daily, for example, a priest could be someone from an aristocratic family born blind, cursed to never pillage and rape the slaves. >In a conspiracy to raise the hierarchy, the priests invent the concept of _will_, and teach it to the slaves. >The slaves now realize that the horrible treatment they've gone through doesn't necessarily need to be though about as their fault for being weak, instead they look at it this way "I suffer not because I can't defend myself, but because the strong decided to hurt me, when they could simply have chosen not to, they are not merciful, they are evil". >This is when the transvaluation begins, those who were good, those who were atop the hierarchy are not evil, and the pain they cause the slaves is not just their nature, this isn't the way the world works, they are evil and they do this out of their own volition. >The slave's wish of taking revenge on the warriors comes true, instead of becoming stronger than them, they deny all their value, they stop longing to be like them and instead scorn them and what they are. >Thus, strength, wealth, beauty, health, truth-saying, pride, courage, etc, lose their value, now they're evil things. >By extension, the inversion of these old values is now what is good. >Good is the negation of evil, not the other way around. >Good now becomes weakness, humility, ugliness, illness, obedience, prudence, etc. ("Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God") >The priests can now sit at the top. >The slaves keep being slaves. >The warriors are not slaves, but they're not the top notch anymore, the strong and handsome pillager is now less valuable than the weak and smelly priest that teaches you about god. Nietzsche calls himself the antichrist because he denounces this way of though, first saying that evil is worthless and by extension good must be worthful is basing their value system on revenge, and in the denial of life: heaven is a denial of the earth; the divine, of the mundane; the soul, of the body. Instead of saying, "I'm very angry at this kind of person with these characteristics, thus these characteristics have no value and their inverse do", his ideal is to say "strength, beauty and will have inherent value", which reverts the concept of evil, basically destroys it, which is why it is a philosophy "Beyond Good and Evil", something that doesn't assign value based on negative feelings but positive feelings, something that instead of running away from the world, hiding and cursing it, celebrates it.

>>48998 Interesting psychological theater, is this what Nietzsche was trying to convey? I haven't read any of his books, would you please recommend me one, Lainon? “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

>>48998 >Well that is exactly what Nietzsche said, in a nutshell, morality is a human invention What I meant is that Nietzsche's interpreters always seem to believe that evil wasn't created by humans. I have never read Nietzsche, to be clear, which is why I refer to his interpreters (who seem more influential than Nietzsche himself, and many say he is often misinterpreted). >Second of all, morality is not universal across cultures and time, so even if you think that african morality does not matter but yours does, yours also went through transformations throughout history, you and your ancestors disagree on what's good and evil. people have disagreed for centuries about what the best kind of soup is, that does not mean there is no such thing as soup.

>im a bit of a sperg so do not laugh Why shouldn't I laugh...there is no point in being moral, right?

>>48966 It's the thing to not be a sucker or a push-over, my friend. Self sacrifice is not something you can expect any immediate reward for. Sometimes it's even inappropriate and unwanted. It's funny, healthy relationships are in a way all transactional be it in a very deffered way. If they're not and one party isn't pulling their weight, that's something toxic. But at the same time people aren't vending machines to redeem your good boy points in at your leasure. And being unconditonally giving tends to attract those who're unconditinally taking. Long story short, just chill, my dude. Take it easy since people tend to relax around others who too are relaxed. Simply having self restraint can be its own form of goodness. True goodness is more akin to not piss into the pool and hope others share your sentiment once you go swimming. And maybe even having initiative in trying to keep the water clean without expecting more as a reward than it not being a mess. Which paradoxixally tends to make other good people to also start caring. Broken window principle and all. While forcing your "goodness" onto others will only leave you unhappy and bitter. Take it from someone with a sprinkle of tisms who had to learn it the hard way too. God bless. >>48970 I believe this anon gets it. Everything else seems more like pontification for the fun of the game. >You can be good without being nice Like when keeping bad people from doign bad. But that's sadly not always easy and you should pick your battles with care.

Nobody wants to be a cartoon villain, so it's better to think of the difference as being sincere vs machiavellian. the machiavellian actor will be helpful sometimes if it's beneficial, and will generally try to convince everyone else he is sincere. But the machiavellian will also deliberately harm other people for the sake of selfish benefit, and his good intentions generally won't extend beyond himself. The sincere actor might not sacrifice 100 percent of his wellbeing for everyone else, but will have good intentions and will not deliberately cause harm when it can reasonably be avoided. Most of this is easy to pick up on if you spend a long enough time around the same people, which is why being sincere is valuable: it's the optimal way to stay valuable in the optimal mode of human social expression (long term consistent interactions between people who know each other). There's also the buddhist argument which is essentially that all life is marked by suffering and dissatisfaction, so if you choose to be insincere you'll just keep yourself trapped in samsara for things you don't even enjoy. In buddhism this means not following the dhamma, which is the pattern of behavior that leads to understanding and relief

>why? People can justify whatever they want in their own head. You can, too. I just like being nice. It's not that deep.