Goodness Graces (1.22.25)
Ever wondered what's upstream?
Perhaps the worst verdict you can pass on a movie or restaurant experience is “good”. In polite society, that’s code for “so-so”: just a whisker above “not bad”, and far short of the passing grade of “fantastic”. Grammar alert! In our comparison-driven society, “good” (adjective), is decidedly bottom tier, sulking below “better” (comparative) and seething enviously at “best” (superlative).
Just as ideas such as truth and beauty have been sidelined in our fashionably subjective postmodern world, so has the concept of absolute Good. Goodness (the noun, capitalized here for clarity) has fallen into disfavor, sliding down the ideas league table with its adjective cousin. Just ask Google search trends: “Kardashian” (blue) way outperforms “Goodness” (red).
It wasn’t always this way.
In Greek literature, “agathosune” (Goodness) means “an uprightness of heart and life”. People once organized their lives around this notion — of an objective, unadulterated Good. They passionately sought to understand it, to internalize it, to live it. Aristotle called it eudaimonia: to use one’s mind in pursuit of virtue and transcendental Goodness.
We postmoderns reject this as old-fashioned thinking. We believe we can define Good on our own terms. In other words, we set the test, and we grade the test. Does anyone ever fail such tests? I don’t mean that cynically. I ask because when we set our own tests, one of two things happens. We can set vain standards: these become an instrument of pride and condescension, but cancerously metastasize into self-loathing. Or we set contextually flexible standards, which aren’t really standards at all. This encourages self-deception, excuses bad behavior, and is a race to the bottom: “But he did it first!”.
More importantly, in rejecting the notion of an incorruptible, objective, Good, we also jettison the opportunity to draw from its power, to be a conduit for that which is noble, for it to perfect our weakness. One could internalize this idea in an ego-centric way (“because of Good…I can be better than this”). But it is more meaningful to explore how Goodness finds purpose in grace (“because of Good…others are worthy of the best I can give them”).
Who is the most wretched, hopeless and irredeemable person you can think of? It is grotesque to entertain the idea that they channel the divine - but we must. For if we cannot grasp this concept, we let slip something incalculably precious (that we are all, somehow, still worthy) and replace it with a terrible conceit (that we each decide the worth of others).
Our world is broken.
We need to do more than to stop hating and to start respecting those we disagree with. We need to hold them up and cherish them. This idea is so repellent that if we pursue the (subjective) rationale of what doing so says about us (“See: I took the high road”), we will be easily subverted. The surer path is the (objective) rationale of what doing so says about them (“Look: something Good governs us both”).
-J