What does it mean when we say, good? It's often talked about, do good, feel good. But I think it's time to reflect. What do we mean by good? Are we all on the same page about what we mean when we say, good? We've just assumed you and I in this conversation that we know what good is, but let's spend a few minutes reflecting on that. We've talked about giving money to charitable causes, we've talked about giving time, we've talked about lots of things that mean good things to do. But I want to step back and look at this from a philosophical lens and then from a concrete everyday examples, and what it means about giving rewards and feeling good about doing good, and it might get in the way of doing good. But first, what is good? What does it mean to do good? Now, good has always been associated in life with charity, somehow with happiness, with love, or justice. I recall a very interesting saying that I came across when I was very young, and when I didn't want to eat what necessarily my parents put onto the table I would always say, "One man's food is another man's poison." Which I really should have said is, ''One woman's food is another woman's poison.'' Nevertheless. One woman's good could be another woman's evil. We don't always agree on what is good not even as a child, not even as adults. What might be good to one person may not be. The question is, how do you identify ways in which you do good or even know what is good? Some philosophers believe that good and evil really do not exist within the things themselves and that everything is a judgment of good and evil, and it's relative to what one is doing or what one is judging. Then who knows what is good and what is bad? Are there times when you thought something was good that later on you thought, ''Oh no I was wrong. That was really bad or vice versa?'' Something unexpectedly and especially over time can shift from being good to bad and the reverse. It can be differences across cultures, across countries, across religions, even across genders. It's not clear when we say, do good, feel good, that we all know exactly what we're talking about doing good. First of all I'll have to ask you, where did you learn what is good? Perhaps you haven't asked yourself this question, you just know what's good. In fact, we all go round thinking we know what's good. I'm sure you've had conversations with your parents, with your friends where you've disagreed on what's the good thing. Where do we learn what's good? Are we born innately to know this is good, this is bad, or do we learn it from our parents? Do we learn it from our place of worship via the church, synagogue, mosque, temple, [inaudible], wherever we go to worship? Clearly in Christianity and Judaism from the Old Testament, they are the Ten Commandments and pretty well people tend to the Ten Commandments to say, we know what not to do and what to do, and therefore, we know what's good. Are we born with a sense of what is evil and what is good? If not, then it is learned. If it's learned, where is it learned from? We need somehow to put some boundaries about what we think is good that we may somehow agree on what is a good thing to do. Jeremy Bentham wrote a book on The Principles of Morals and Legislations and it prioritize goods by considering how much pleasure or pain they gave us. Considering good things give us pressure and not good things give us pain. This was further put into a theory of utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, who said, "Something that is good is whatever provides the greatest happiness for the greatest number." This is a theory that we all subscribe when our governments decide on policies. If they truly thinking of the benefit of all society not their own agendas, then they're saying, what is the best way of doing thing that will provide us the greatest happiness for the greatest number? Great. Do you agree that that might be a good way to proceed? If most people think that's a good thing and will bring us happiness, the blessed, the way we should proceed. I know you're thinking, you're reflecting on this and saying, where's the catch? Well, here's the catch. What if you belong to a minority that does not agree with the majority on what the good thing is. This is a question that philosophers is struggle for a long time. What is a good life and your idea of a good life in mind, you have a good life, I'm sure, may overlap considerably, but it's not identical. I'm going to leave you with just this idea of reflecting deeply what you mean is a good thing and whether you think that could be universally good thing. Because philosophers have different ways of seeing things. There is something called moral absolutism that holds that good and evil are very fixed and your version and my version can't change what's good and evil. These are fixed concepts that are given to us by our gods. Your god, my God may not be the same. Nevertheless, they are fixed. It's something defined by nature somehow. Something outside of us determines what's good. Amoralism basically says good and evil are meaningless and that there is really no moral ingredient in nature, you should just look out at nature and it's survival of the fittest and wherever, that ensues that's what it is. Moral relativism on the other hand says the standards of good and evil, which are only products of local culture, local costume, or prejudices. That means anything goes. You can say something is good, I can say it's not good or vice versa. My culture, your custom. There's moral universalism which tries to find a position in-between this immoralism and moral relativism and says, maybe we can compromise between this very absolute sense of morality, not look at amoralism at all and moral relativism where everything goes. We can come on what may commonly be considered to be good amongst all human beings. We may not always agree on that, there might be dissension, but there might be some subset we can agree on. In this respect we can talk about what is a good deed, a good act. When I say act, do good, feel good. What are the do goods? You can say a do good or good deed is an action you can take at least where your intention is to benefit the receiving party and that you expect no compensation, recognition, or even thanks. Who should it be for? Who should judge it, and will that good deed change over time? Or is it your intent that counts? If you plan to do something good, is it your intent that counts? You may have helped the old lady to cross the street even if she didn't want to cross the street but because you meant well, should it count as a good deed? But the outcome should not matter. Should it be judged good by the giver as well as the person receiving it? Because intentions well, may have the best of intentions but you might be doing something very harmful to somebody without realizing. The idea of crossing the street is not such a harmful thing, but you can imagine your doing good may really cause harm. Unknowingly, it's an unintended consequence of your generosity. Let's think of some smaller random acts of kindness that we've been talking about all along and let's look at them from the eyes of the cynic. Well, you and I may not agree on, and I'll do that just to be a devil's advocate. I don't agree at all that these are not good things to do. I think they're all good things to do. But I want you to just bear with me for a minute, me being the cynic or the devil's advocate and look at it from another point of view. I said smile and greet a stranger. Now, when I got my students to do it, she said people looked at them suspiciously except older people. People their age looked at them very suspiciously or somebody hitting on them. What was that, and they would look away. If you give a compliment to somebody you don't know, they might look at you suspiciously or say, "What are you trying to get from me?'' ''Are you entertaining and then ask me for something?" What happens if you you ask somebody, how's your day going? Are you really committed to actively listening to all their aches and pains? Really? How about if you treat somebody for a tea or coffee and you normally have never treated them for a cute tea. You've gone out for coffee and you say, that's my good deed. I'm going to treat them for the coffee, I'll pick up the bill. Then suddenly it is well, the other person thinks, well, "Okay. Well, then next time I'll do it." That's not what you intended. But it becomes an obligation for the other person. Is that the good deed you meant to do? You may say no, that's not what I meant but it might be an obligation. Again, if you send flowers or chocolates to somebody or a friend out of the blue, they going to be suspicious. They're going to think, "What's in it for you? What issue, what's the motive behind this?" Until you explain, it's a random act of kindness. Then again, the fact that they were suspicious colors your act of kindness, of your being good and removes the warm gloves feel that you're going to get. What about if somebody hands you a bottle of water whilst you're jogging? Are you going to check if the bottle is sealed before you drink from it. What if they handed you a glass of water, you're going to be suspicious? Well, what about if you're taking your toys to a thrift shop? Are you really taking it because you want to clean out your closet or your children's closet and they've got too many toys and you want to get rid of them. But if you put them in the garbage, you feel guilty. But if you give it away to a thrift shop, you're really doing something good. I'm going to stop here before you stop doing any acts of kindness. I really think these are all good acts of kindness, but I want you to be careful. I want you to be reflective a little bit about the good things you do. I really do believe your intentions matter. That if you're doing good because you want to do good, it is a good act.
