Today I lost my laptop for three hours.
Those three hours were a complete nightmare, and best of all I had to spend two out of three in an examination hall with an English paper in front of me. I had to preoccupy myself throughout thinking about the passage at hand, and looking on word after word. There was this lethargy to complete the entire paper, I was tempted to just write my name, stand up, and leave the hall.
But I guess I did the paper just fine. Perhaps its my innate ability to just shut down parts of my mind and live in a parallel world of idealistic denial while transversing this reality. I think I have stated before having a sort of metaphysical impression of this world. Today I would be adruptly pulled back to reality, and today I would see a final convergence between the real and the ideal. That would come three hours later, when a kind soul did return my laptop to the lost and found.
Before that, I would of course have to thank the many people I had contacted, and helped me during those three hours of madness. Now, to the deranged after-action-review.
What is human goodness? Human goodness is not an ideal. Yes, goodness is an ideal, and many of us may have the misconception that it is some sort of perfect goal to be achieved just as how we attempt to achieve success and fame. But this is where even philosophy begins to fail- true goodness is not a mental construct, it is not something we ought to have if we were to join the club of 'untaintedness' and 'innocence'; similarily, it would be equally erronous to assume that the lack of this idealistic goodness would naturally lead to a corrupted life of decadence, failure, and utter waste. Such a view would be a very dualistic view- no more better than the primitive view that heaven takes only the holy people and hell takes the rest. We know that such a view in itself is erronous- and I don't want to dwell into excessive christian doctrine to justify the policy changes of Vatican 2 as well as the reason of Jesus' affliation with sinners. I try not to dwell too deeply into theology here today, but personally, we can definitely see a convergence at this very point.
Actually, we have to understand that goodness is independent of ideal constructs. Goodness itself is an objective, a purpose, a meaning, and an agenda. When we show an act of kindess and concern, it is actually goodness that is the ultimate goal, rather than what we call 'mutual benefit' or 'because catechism tells me so'. Of course we can take one step back and return all meaning of creation back to 'God's infinite love", but as far as I could think of today in the lost and found, and as far as this discussion would go today- we will retrospect this thread in the future and leave matters as it is today.
Human nature is an infinitely curious subject, and human goodness- as part of human nature is something that we can never truly grasp (no matter how much we claim we can). The quote: "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak" brings a very conscise restatement to our real and idealistic domains- and the parable of "the two sons and the field" brings about a very sharp conclusion on whether 'real' goodness (in a form of actions) and 'ideal' goodness (in the form of lip service and ideas) takes presidence in light of truth. As we know, humans are exceedingly contridictory- falling over and over into the traps of procrastination as they pledge themselves towards that idealistic better that can never be realized. It is precisely this erronous view of goodness why humans can never be perfect. We are too busy trying to be good we neglect what it is to be truly good.
So? We may be weak, and we may not see the objective good of it all- on first glance some people may seem un-contestable in the domain of holiness, while others we consider unworthily fu*ked-up. But while it is subjective to view the world based on one's standards, it is objective fact that the goodness in a person is proportional to the amount of meaning he sees in goodness. As noted by Jesus, a person may be bad, but even a bad person would not give a scorpion to his son if he asks for a loaf of bread, if we are to integrate this two theories together, we can see that this is because even the 'bad' individual sees meaning of his son, and it is from this meaning he is at least 'good' to his son. This calls for an in depth discussion on the theory of dimensions (a new theory), but such discussions would not be necessarily. as far as we are concerned, the lack of goodness can be alluded to a form of metaphysical ignorance- and therein we go back to the concept of idealistic goodness (be careful), objectivity;/subjectivity, and truth.
While we blunder (by our wrong approach to goodness) on our quest to be that better person, every individual that is travelling along the same direction (of metaphysical expansion and greater-meaning acquisition) cannot be condemned. Ideals may clash between individuals as we have very different concerns to what is good for me, for you, and for us; but as long as that orientation of being (to be better in one's personal domain) exists (no matter whether we may see it or not), then it is objective that that person is on the way to goodness, and what remains subjective would be no more than human judgement. As concisely summarized by the words- 'Do not judge your neighbour.'
An personal subjective orientation of expansion (this is objective), a state of being (the real), and a being that all meaning and purpose converges to (the ideal); rather than a goal to be attained and mantained (if so, what is the meaning of that goal then??). That would be roughly the concept of goodness, as well as the methods of achieving goodness. I do not deny that these concepts are indeed a tough nut to chew, and many of us may not agree to this on the first review. This would probably be the reason why we fail at our attempts to be good today, and why- until our personal 'horizons' are fully expanded to accomodate ourselves and our neighbour simultaneously, we would be treading on each other's toes- as how we have been.
