Yeah, you can be untrustworthy for other reasons too. But you certainly did try to eliminate some of the reasons for being perceived as untrustworthy :P
unenlightenedJanuary 20, 2018 at 22:42#1457660 likes
I am very good and trustworthy, as you all know. It would be disingenuous of me to pretend otherwise. Not perfect of course, but one of the best.
I'm a good person, and I suspect most here are as well. I never bought into the Christian view of us all being sinners or that humility demands we accept we are failed beings. I also don't buy into the liberal view that we're all guilty of some remote wrong committed just by our existence. As long as you're out trying to do your best, you're good in my book, even if you comparatively suck.
Reply to Andrew4Handel This is a self-defeating question; people, particularly those from dogmatic positions, often assume that there are selfish qualities in loving yourself and so believe that conversely there is moral superiority or virtue in loving only others at the expense of yourself; not doing this makes one 'bad' to others, but this is not true. Moral consciousness or being good is the capacity to give love and to give this to all people, a type of brotherly love without prejudice. This includes yourself.
Having a love for yourself is not synonymous with being selfish, that it is ok to say that you respect who you are or are trying to be a better person. This sacrificial giving up yourself for some greater 'good' that implies some sort of evil to independence or free thinking is ideological. Why would the golden rule imply LOVE others as you would your SELF. It is to love all human beings and not including yourself in this formula is to imply some non-human quality to your being, as though you stand outside of the world around you. If you become a part of the world, then you are bad. Those who are incapable of loving others are incapable of loving themselves and so most people will say either yes or no to this question because their understanding of good is parallel to social constructs of good and evil (and thus flawed).
Should the question be whether or not a person is good to themselves?
JustSomeGuyJanuary 21, 2018 at 04:24#1458200 likes
Having a love for yourself is not synonymous with being selfish, that it is ok to say that you respect who you are or are trying to be a better person.
This is consistent with The Golden Rule, to love thy neighbor as thyself, which requires first self love, and second offering to others a love equal to that. If you don't love youself, your neighbor should receive that same disregard if you love him as yourself. Deriving pleasure from pure self sacrifice is the definition of masochism.
Neither good nor it's supposed opposite. Those concepts are meaningless to me in regards to self evaluation. By what measure do you judge someone or yourself to be good/bad, anyway? And by what mean is that measure justified? And what means justify that measure? Ad infinitum (Regress problem).
celebritydiscodaveJanuary 21, 2018 at 18:08#1459170 likes
One should love oneself, but as is the case for friendship there are various forms of love, self love being the form to be avoided. One should only love one`s neighbor as oneself taking it that one has any respect at all for oneself. By the perception of whom can we be considered good or bad/ I think this is the wrong approach to it however. I`d define a good person as one that prioritizes the putting of other`s needs before their own. How good or bad they may be at doing this should be considered secondary to this assessment, in my opinion. In my view then effort is the primary consideration.
Moral consciousness or being good is the capacity to give love and to give this to all people, a type of brotherly love without prejudice.
I'm trying to decide whether I should get any further involved in this discussion. Calling someone "good" has a specific meaning to me, but I'm not interested in getting in a battle of conflicting definitions. I'll at least lay out how I think about it.
There are just a few people in my life I consider good. They are strong, compassionate, and open-hearted. They do what they do without drawing attention to themselves. Generally, I don't think they even notice. They have integrity - what they do grows out of who they are at a deep level. I always get the feeling they couldn't act differently if they tried.
As for the rest of us, we're fine. Not good, not bad. Human. I like people - almost everyone. I really don't dislike anyone, although there are people I don't want to hang around with. I love lots of people - most of them normal, fine, but not good in the sense I'm talking about.
Do I love myself? I like myself. It doesn't bother me that I'm not good. It doesn't stop me from trying to be a good friend or show kindness and generosity. I try to be a person of good will - I want others to be happy. But calling myself good would cheapen the word for me.
Depends whose asking.
But as Socrates says, no one knowingly decides to be a bad person. Even Hitler justified his actions as doing the right thing, for what he believed to be true, and decent.
celebritydiscodaveJanuary 21, 2018 at 23:30#1459720 likes
Do you mean this, that awareness of one`s being good is to be discovered in one`s capacity for love? You complicate well beyond making any sense. Do you do this to sound like an authority? So likely only Jesus of everyone ever born, according to both you and the scriptures,, can be justified in considering themselves good. It is hard enough to think of everybody, and all the cold blooded killers in the world, even without trying to love everybody. In any event mere mortals have to spend time with a person to know whether they love them or not. Remember, the love on its own is but emotion, not a form of meaningful/actual love. One does not emotion a person, they feel the love emotion as consequence to the presence of a person,that`s all. Overly emotional people may not be any more likely to be good people, and the love emotion can be the nearest thing to hate..
Even Hitler justified his actions as doing the right thing, for what he believed to be true, and decent.
Hitler may have seen goodness as a weakness.
I am not sure doing the right thing equals being good because people can say "I have to do this horrible thing because it will benefit us in the long run."
I consider my state a mixed bag: some good, a little bad. Most of the time the bad things were motivated by good intentions. That the bad-acts-which-were-well-intentioned didn't turn out very well is part of my bad understanding of the way the world works. Once in a while I have been cruel or dishonest quite deliberately. On the other hand, I have done and been good, too--just plain good. In being good I wasn't being heroically good. I felt confident and good about doing and being good, so I was.
Most of the time we, people including me, are indifferent -- being neither good nor bad. We are fulfilling the minimum expectations that are well within our operating capabilities. We aren't doing anything bad or good, because either one would require arousal from our zombie routine. We just chug along. We do not earn any points while being on cruise control.
Hitler, and other Nazis, inverted some normal ideas of good and evil, so that "to be soft in time of war is weakness" and "to be cruel and remorseless in struggle is a strength". Killing the Jews was purifying the nation. Letting inferior people live contaminated the blood of the nation.
Christian virtue was viewed as a weakness, so was much of secular philosophy, and humanistic culture.
Of course, most Germans had enough to do just surviving the war -- not starving, not getting killed by the Gestapo, or killed by the allied bombing.
As for the rest of us, we're fine. Not good, not bad. Human. I like people - almost everyone. I really don't dislike anyone, although there are people I don't want to hang around with. I love lots of people - most of them normal, fine, but not good in the sense I'm talking about.
I am tired of this idea that 'good' people somehow stand apart as though they are martyrs, saints, pure, deep, but that is simply not true. If I see an elderly person and I want to help them, I am not being 'good' and if I meet a girl with a bad attitude and treat her sternly, I am not being 'bad' because it is all about intent. It is like an equal playing field where I am balancing the scales in order to effectively create the best outcome for everyone because my motivation is happiness both for myself and for others; supporting and empowering the vulnerable is to remind the arrogant to be humble. Being good is to simply be confident to have empathy and show kindness, to do the best that you can do without following the herd; genuine kindness and compassion is only possible when one can articulate their own autonomous moral trajectory. That is why a person who cannot love themselves cannot love others.
If there is something 'bad' it is those people that hide who they really are, shut down their own happiness because they are afraid to take risks, to disappoint, and such people are not really alive anyway.
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
I really don't dislike anyone, although there are people I don't want to hang around with.
I'm more like "I've never killed anybody, but there are obituaries that I very much enjoyed reading," Mark Twain? Clarence Darrow? (CD said, "I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
If there is something 'bad' it is those people that hide who they really are, shut down their own happiness because they are afraid to take risks, to disappoint, and such people are not really alive anyway.
Yes we are alive. How would you know?
Not a joke, so don't send me any angry crap.
celebritydiscodaveJanuary 22, 2018 at 17:40#1461650 likes
Be kind to yourself. If you are conscious of shutting down intentionally then I would probably suggest a psychologist. If you are consciously being mean than I would pity you.
If there is something 'bad' it is those people that hide who they really are, shut down their own happiness because they are afraid to take risks, to disappoint....
This is a very good description of my life.
XanderTheGreyJanuary 22, 2018 at 21:33#1462180 likes
No, there is no good or bad. Right and wrong are prefered delusions for some, and prefered simplifications for others.
It is no more wrong to shove your fngers down a little girls throat so you can see her vomit and cry; than it is to inject me with a 30 day dose of Haldol.
celebritydiscodaveJanuary 22, 2018 at 22:44#1462450 likes
Most likely, but as long as we make worthwhile points.
I agree with Xander, and right and wrong can be beholden upon which side of the fence one is standing, it is perceptual, right or wrong for whom?.
It is no more wrong to shove your fngers down a little girls throat so you can see her vomit and cry; than it is to inject me with a 30 day dose of Haldol.
Well, by that standard I guess it couldn't possibly have been wrong to have injected you with a permanent dose of banning.
Andrew4HandelJanuary 23, 2018 at 03:23#1463410 likes
Maybe being truthful is a good in one's self?
At least it something I definitely value in myself.
I know ethics is a philosophical subject but have we made any real progress in it? Can we, very clearly, distinguish good from bad; a necessity if one is to answer the question.
Personally, I think every individual carries the mark of both good and bad. One is good sometimes and bad at other times. So, it's impossible to identify yourself with either in an exclusive sense.
I could perform some calculus and say ''I'm good/bad most of the times'' but that still hasn't removed the minor good/bad as the case may be. Take the example of a group of 12 men. 11 are bad but 1 is good. The weight of 11 bad men doesn't affect the 1 good man. Likewise if the case was the reverse. So, while one part (good/bad) may be lesser in degree it still has weightage.
Personally, I think every individual carries the mark of both good and bad. One is good sometimes and bad at other times. So, it's impossible to identify yourself with either in an exclusive sense.
I don't get this level of relativism. If one is 'bad' because he takes hard drugs and almost everyone around considers this to be bad, but is 'good' because he is otherwise an upstanding citizen, who has influenced the lifes of everyone around in in such a positive way that no one could ever say they regret anything about that person, wouldn't it be appropriate to say that that person is a good person? That whatever flaw he has are entirely dismissable?
I guess what I mean is that, even in morality, isn't there multiple scales to the universe? That however much good can one do a one local scale might be undone by a single wrong done at a higher level? Or that a generality of wrongness at lower scales might not be enough to account for all the good done at a higher one?
One way or the other, the answer is : Trump was a mistake.
I'm only giving due importance to both sides so to speak. We do it in practice actually. Say a person does something bad. If we are to be good judges his good deeds must be factored into our judgment. Similarly, if someone does a good thing then in our valuation of him his bad deeds must also be considered.
Look at the sexual abuse scandal in Hollywood. People are judging others on both points of the moral scale.
You are such a compassionate person, I am always surprised when you are so quick to judge those of us who do not live up to your standards.
I did not set those standards. If you see a crime and choose to look the other way when you are at capacity to assist, telling yourself that the choice is justified and that you are not morally contemptible, that is really your problem and it is a shame. The contempt here is moral and not personal.
I did not set those standards. If you see a crime and choose to look the other way when you are at capacity to assist, telling yourself that the choice is justified and that you are not morally contemptible, that is really your problem and it is a shame. The contempt here is moral and not personal.
I catch myself feeling contempt for someone from time to time. It is one of the darkest, ugliest emotions. I feel dirty, sick to my stomach. One thing I have come to recognize - when I feel contempt for someone because of something I see in them, it is because I see that same thing in myself and can't face it.
One thing I have come to recognize - when I feel contempt for someone because of something I see in them, it is because I see that same thing in myself and can't face it.
It is presumptuous of me to question what you perceive going on in your own mind. But I do wonder whether you have contempt for an other because they mirror something in yourself. It could be that what you are perceiving is precisely labeled, and it may be a very common mechanism. The reason I doubt it is that we generally apply this theory only in negative ways. Do I like a comedian's physical slapstick humor because I am like the comedian? Do I admire bravery in someone because I recognize in myself bravery? Do I admire someone's piety because I am pious? I don't think so.
Would you (or I) not feel contempt for an other because they so thoroughly violate what you or I think is clean, right, and proper?
Whatever the mechanism, it is not a good idea to give too much free play to our feelings of contempt, loathing, disgust, and so on, because such feelings make it difficult to perceive and judge others fairly, and it makes it difficult to live in this world if we see ourselves surrounded by contemptible loathsome people. (Unless, of course, we are--but that's another thread.)
I catch myself feeling contempt for someone from time to time. It is one of the darkest, ugliest emotions. I feel dirty, sick to my stomach. One thing I have come to recognize - when I feel contempt for someone because of something I see in them, it is because I see that same thing in myself and can't face it.
Because your perceptions are flawed. You have attempted arrogance, then guilt, now shame.You are having some imagined battle with me but the effort here is merely to justify your flawed perceptions.
When I speak to some men in the field of science and sometimes philosophy, as a woman, it does not matter how logical and correct I am, I am wrong. They have a perception that women are not capable or intelligent enough to discuss certain topics and sometimes their sexism is so entrenched that even with quotes from actual scientific figures, it is still not enough. And, others follow suit because a man is supposed to be more right than a woman. Just like the delusion of neo-nazis who deny the holocaust, the imagined ideology remains fixed despite the evidence to the contrary.
So, when men speak to me in general, they often assume that being a woman I am required to give more leniency, that I am supposed to be genteel and support others emotionally, that I am not allowed to say no or that is wrong and if I do then I am 'fierce' or 'angry' because the idea is that women are supposed to be unconditionally obedient. So, it is paradoxical to such men that I am morally compassionate but not exempt from conditional standards.
Try all you like but the continuity of my pity towards you remains unchanged.
Try all you like but the continuity of my pity towards you remains unchanged.
Now the real timeline has stood up. Just joking. I can't tell whether your self-presentation is realistic or a false front.
BTW, I know men who treat women the way you describe them: they think women are silly, trivial, shallow, stupid, etc. They don't like working for or with women. They don't like taking orders from a woman. They don't think women are smart. But almost all the time, these are men on their 60s or older. (of course, once they were in their 20s and were probably the same way then.)
I don't see this kind of behavior so much in younger men, like 20s to 40s. Younger men do seem to usually have better attitudes toward women. Do you find this to be true?
It is presumptuous of me to question what you perceive going on in your own mind. But I do wonder whether you have contempt for an other because they mirror something in yourself.
This is something I've paid a lot of attention to - both in myself and watching others. I see people do lots of things I don't like. Some make me angry, even resentful. Contempt is something completely different. It is judgment on the other person. I know what it feels like to feel contempt and to have people express contempt towards me. I have watched others show contempt for each other. It is a denial of the value of the other person.
It is absolutely clear to me why I feel contempt when I do. It is exactly as I said - hiding from things I see in myself. I see the same thing in others. People bully other people because of the weakness they see that they can't face in themselves. Contempt is an act of cowardice.
I have seen ugly things inside myself. Contempt is one of the worst and I try hard not to lose sight of that.
Reply to T Clark Of course, some of us in our 60s and above are the very models of modern enlightenment.
celebritydiscodaveJanuary 24, 2018 at 17:00#1468090 likes
Reply to T Clark I disagree that contempt is denial of value, for one can hardly hold a whole person in contempt, even should it feel like it at the time. One feels contempt as consequence to an action or inaction. Sure, one may suffer from psychological projection, but my position is that one can feel contempt without so doing. Just because one may feel contempt for somebody that refuses to pay them back money, it does not follow that they have a problem with being honest over money themselves..
B.Crank, sounds intelligent, but what is a model of modern enlightenment for god`s sake, does that even make any sense? My position is between the two of yours, that whilst the tendency over time is in becoming more judgmental in some areas that it is in becoming less so in others, those areas by individual. Two things are tending to happen, we are tending to become more set in our thinking whilst at the same time more broad minded. Such, there is a broader framework of thinking but one which we are not prepared to ever venture beyond. I just put this notion forward as a social tendency, it is not borrowed from anywhere, nothing I suggest to ever is, and this tendency has nothing to say for individuals..
I believe that younger people tend to being faster to react, so less well consider others actions, and coupled with this they have less experience of people that they can afford greater breath of consideration. The tendency is that young people are more judgmental but you only find this out by becoming a young person/by first having been invited into their social circles. However I do n`t consider that how fast one is to judge has anything whatsoever to say for whether they are a good or a bad person. I very much think of this in terms of where the heart is, where the heart genuinely is, and certainly before I have consideration to what`s happening.on the outside.
I disagree that contempt is denial of value, for one can hardly hold a whole person in contempt, even should it feel like it at the time. One feels contempt as consequence to an action or inaction. Sure, one may suffer from psychological projection, but my position is that one can feel contempt without so doing. Just because one may feel contempt for somebody that refuses to pay them back money, it does not follow that they have a problem with being honest over money themselves..
I can only speak to my own experiences. What I've observed. I know what it feels like to be impotently angry - thrashing around, yelling and cursing. When I'm like that, I always say something I have to apologize for later. I know what it feels like to be effectively angry - cold and calm with a determination to hold someone accountable for their actions. That's a clean feeling. Not pleasant, but good. As I said, contempt is something completely different than either of those.
Maybe you and I mean different things by "contempt." Here's a test. If you feel your upper lip rising up over your front teeth in the start of a sneer, that's contempt.
B.Crank, sounds intelligent, but what is a model of modern enlightenment for god`s sake, does that even make any sense?
BC was referring to the way men over 60 treat women in response to my snort. Both he and I are members of that class. His statement was tongue-in-cheek, which is not unusual. Tongue-in-cheek but not necessarily wrong.
Reply to Andrew4Handel I am a sick man... I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don't consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though. Of course, I can't explain who it is precisely that I am mortifying in this case by my spite: I am perfectly well aware that I cannot "pay out" the doctors by not consulting them; I know better than anyone that by all this I am only injuring myself and no one else. But still, if I don't consult a doctor it is from spite. My liver is bad, well -- let it get worse!
This is where I find myself agreeing with the biblical suggestion: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits." What is being authentic and in being so, does that enable one to actually be 'good' or to have moral autonomy? I think so.
People adopt an appearance and women can do this by presenting themselves as attractive - hence the disease fed into society through make-up and cosmetic surgery - but also through 'pleasant manners' and behaving in a way that will make them lovable all the while appearing unique or different from the rest of the herd despite blindly moving with the masses. Through this as though there is some collective delusion people actually believe that by being popular and having sex appeal that somehow it amounts to some satisfactory existence, that they deserve to be loved when - despite presenting themselves as 'good' people - they actually produce nothing.
The sophistication of how to present oneself as 'good' is getting better and better; there are some girls here who have lived a privileged life, who spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on cosmetics, and who publicly pretend that they hold some sort of concern for the bad things that go on in this world. 'I am a vegetarian because I love animals and animal rights' while wearing lipstick with animal in it or used on it, wearing clothing made in sweat shops, taking selfies while saying they are heartbroken about Syria before spending two hours doing their hair. Being morally concerned is now an image and a false one used to increase popularity. Even when I say 'you must learn to love yourself' they think that taking selfies is a form of loving yourself when it is actually turning your back on this wave of faux appearances.
Perhaps this is a product of capitalism and the marketing schema that feeds into the vulnerability of the masses and they, in turn, respond by purchasing what they are told they need and a certain way of looking becomes symbolic of truth, that it is fact and so convincing that by feeding back into the system by buying the beauty products, they can reap the rewards of popularity. It is only the courage to transcend this and to act - to give love and not to work hard at trying to be loveable - that one actually goes against the grain of this system and produces. So, only through this autonomy, this consciousness can one transcend to a mental state that can enable the person to think for themselves enough - first of all - to not get swept into this wave, but also to start helping others, doing or producing.
Working hard to appear loveable usually means spending years and years in that cycle and never producing anything, never changing or improving. They are stuck.
I don't see this kind of behavior so much in younger men, like 20s to 40s. Younger men do seem to usually have better attitudes toward women. Do you find this to be true?
It is everywhere, just done differently to those who are older. I have had several experiences only over the last few years where men have actually become aggressive towards me because I do not respond to them sexually and while it is not physical violence, they are dismissive when I talk, insinuate things I do not think and even slander me in some strange endeavour to get me to submit, like some alpha-gorilla thumping his chest. I believe there was a ridiculous discussion even here about how women apparently respond to such men, but this attitude has largely resulted in a shift in women who do respond because of the social pressure.
It doesn't work with me and the young girls that I mentor because they are learning what self-respect actually is. And that is all that equality is. Respect. The social pressure to behave and appear a certain way that is apparently acceptable is like rearing a fatted cow ready for slaughter.
While in the west there are some cultural shifts where equality and respect for women is reaching a level of consciousness, it really exists in the minority.
That's an awful lot of unsubstantiated opinion there which, when entirely harmless, is fine, but you've insulted a substantial population of women and, by definition, the majority of men with virtually no evidence.
despite presenting themselves as 'good' people - they actually produce nothing.
Produce nothing by whose standards - yours? What is wrong with producing a comforting and stable partner for someone, or even a transient sexual partner for a single night of mutual enjoyment. What's wrong with having your own beauty (in the eyes of others) as an objective? Not everyone has the intellectual capability to be a CEO, and not everyone buys into the modern crap about productivity. Some people are happy just happy to have sex, raise children, watch the sunrise and 'produce' nothing much by modern standards.
A woman (or man for that matter), is doing less harm just prettying themselves up as a object for someone else's' affection with animal-tested make up than the CEO of the company making the product, who has real power to change things but doesn't in order to impress her colleagues with what a 'productive' hard-headed businesswoman she is.Or are you suggesting that it wouldn't happen under a female CEO?
I dislike this double standard, where people assume they can speak for the whole of woman-kind, and assume to know the motives of the majority of men, when at the same time railing against that very stereotyping when perpetrated by the other party.
Either we have some biological, evolutionary, or sociological evidence supporting a belief that certain groups of people (men and women in this case) have certain characteristics, or, we must admit that we cannot know what most of any group want, or are like. What does not make any philosophical sense is to reject scientific knowledge (reasonable in itself, given the speculative nature at the moment), reject other people's stereotyping, but then claim to know anything about the majority of any group, just from personal experience.
Not everyone has the intellectual capability to be a CEO, and not everyone buys into the modern crap about productivity.
The standard I speak of is Kantian moral autonomy and while you may endorse a type of hedonism, which is neither 'good' nor 'evil' what I was attempting to convey is if there is anything wrong with humanity, it stems from those who are incapable of loving themselves, since love is about giving or being capable of giving love (which is goodness) and one cannot give love if they are incapable of thinking correctly because love or goodness is a practical attitude and a part of our rational faculty, not some random, spontaneous feeling independent of our will. It is also not directed to one object, but all.
Most people work very hard - usually through popularity or sex appeal and even presenting qualities that pretend to having some moral compass - only to attain the love from others, but what is 'bad' here is the inability to give love despite presenting themselves as 'good' people. To 'give' love is to produce and what that means is produce independent or morally autonomous thoughts, the person who will defend someone who is being hurt rather than being a bystander or looking the other way; being professionally successful is no different to having sex appeal, it is meaningless without this capacity to think with moral consciousness.
This boils down to intent, the will, authenticity and this is largely - particularly if you think of the Ring of Gyges - what distinguishes us morally, not the presentation or this false image.
A woman (or man for that matter), is doing less harm just prettying themselves up as a object for someone else's' affection with animal-tested make up than the CEO of the company making the product, who has real power to change things but doesn't in order to impress her colleagues with what a 'productive' hard-headed businesswoman she is.
I am a woman and the comparative and original rationale was about me (you should read the quote I was responding to), that is, what stands in stark contrast to me. Which is real, which is not? The only way one can distinguish this is about the output, the rational output and indeed I may be professionally successful, I may have studied and travelled the world, but none of that matters in comparison to my capacity to give love, which in turn means the young men and women who I have supported, mentored, loved and I do this while additionally taking care of myself and enjoy this world just as much as I would want anyone too. But, there has been numerous times where it has been suggested that 'good' is self-sacrificial and even your statements here appear to be contrasting with this notion, this 'well why can't we just live and enjoy life' and you certainly can while additionally being capable of giving love. In fact, you need to take care of and respect yourself to correctly and common sensically be capable of giving love to others.
What is peculiar is that while people attempt to make themselves attractive and popular within this social pattern of exchange, the intensity of this exchange - that is automatic 'truth' that being popular equates to being lovable - only exemplifies the depth of their loneliness just as much as material success and the commodity market governs values. This is the power of discourse that Foucault speaks of. It is about very thoughts and perceptions people have because a CEO just like a politician only has enough power that we give to them. If society believes that they should buy the latest lipstick and spend millions of dollars on them, isn't that being complicit, given them the very power?
I don't object to the conclusion you draw about those that do not give, but only expect, I object to the implication (by your descriptions of such people) that you could identify them by their behaviour with regards to making themselves sexually attractive, by the standards of the latest cultural preferences.
I don't see anything about wanting other people to find you sexually attractive, even in a superficial way, that automatically means you have nothing to give to society. Nor, conversely, do I see anything automatically moral in giving to others by not engaging in such rituals but focussing instead on something like teaching. Teaching can be as narcissistic an exercise as any other, relishing the adoration of those who hang on your every word etc.. Equally, dressing up in full, conventional make-up just to attract a partner for a one night stand, can be nothing more than a fun distraction for someone otherwise committed to making the world a better place.
If we are to draw conclusions about people's moral demeanour from their behaviours (and I believe we can) then we should do so by virtue of some evidence that such behaviour actually causes harms intrinsically. Attempting to divine their motives is overreaching our abilities.
I don't object to the conclusion you draw about those that do not give, but only expect, I object to the implication (by your descriptions of such people) that you could identify them by their behaviour with regards to making themselves sexually attractive, by the standards of the latest cultural preferences.
It is not to say that I myself do not participate in society. I too have pleasant manners, I too enjoy taking care of myself physically, but I actually give a great deal by supporting women and children, mentoring young girls and many teen boys, my focus is on human rights both practically and theoretically, because goodness does not stem from some 'self-sacrifice' - this image that you are only good when you give yourself up like some martyr - but rather being a part of society. It is all about intent or the will that drives us that determines whether someone is genuinely good and whether someone presents a false good. I have no qualms refusing to follow social expectations, for instance how I choose to wait for the right partner or my commitment to a personal virtue that is in stark contrast with how women and men want women to behave.
There is no 'automatic' implication that such individuals are unable to contribute further in society, but the intention or will of the actions in those that present a false image relies on the congratulations they will receive and not because they actually care, which is why they often showcase their charity (just like those who pray publically to apparently showcase religious devotion). It stems from a vulnerability, but can lead to evil; think Cain and Abel, where the intention was to receive love from God but when this was not returned in favour of the other, he committed murder. It is not about trying to be loved, but about knowing how to give love and, further still, that this is genuine and that therefore 'good' is only possible in this intent.
So, the woman who stands in stark contrast to me, the opposite of who I am, are those women who attempt to make themselves attractive by forming pleasant manners, by focusing on beauty and attempting to be popular, who use 'good' only as a way to further climb this ladder such as pretending to be a vegetarian because they think about animals and animal rights (when it is likely just an image that they follow or for weight loss) all the while wearing tonnes of make-up that contribute to issues with animal and even social welfare, and all this without any purpose other than the presentation. How often do such women bully other women who are more attractive then them, or tries to actually be them? The primary impetus in their will is about their image.
So, you could be a man who enjoys life, but your intentions would be to disagree about negative views or opinions despite a bunch of other men holding them, that you could care about the environment enough to actually be conscious of what you and others are doing, to help the elderly lady, just as much as for a man who stands in stark contrast to you would attempt to be successful and financially secure or physically strong or other attempts at being socially powerful they they would not even see that elderly lady even if they walked past them, or any other type of moral consciousness unless it was socially a positive way to reinforce this image that their will pushes them to identify with. Such men have 'trophy' partners, people who are popular and would turn their back on love.
How are such men living?
celebritydiscodaveJanuary 25, 2018 at 21:12#1469920 likes
I make the sum total of what you have said to be about neutral,, which in philosophical terms is zero surely - In a single line then what is your position, and what does that add to philosophy? You do however suggest tot intent, quite why you did n`t stop there I do n`t know, so I take it from this then that your notion for a good person leaves it at intent, and apart from being successful nothing besides? Are you certain that you are not creating a notion for what constitutes a good person merely around how you and those in your social circles tend to live their lives? It reads like that. To make headway in philosophy self and ego have to be put entirely to one side. All that and you`ve said just one word, a term, "intent", that`s philosophy, and this is precisely in agreement with my previous post. The only thing which I`ve added to your contribution of "intent" is that this should constitute the main measure, that some consideration, by individual psychology, needs on occasion to be afforded their actual actions on the outside, so that there is no clear to define answer.to this question of what constitutes a good person. Perhaps God knows?.
Comments (68)
Definitely not good. Not bad. Just a regular person. I do know several people I consider good though.
Quoting T Clark
Quoting Thorongil
Why not you bad people? :P
...just kidding, I could do a lot better.
As I said, I'm not bad, I'm just not especially good. Why would you expect me to be? Would you trust anyone who said they are good?
Oh, so you just said that to get me to trust you? X-) ... well, it didn't work >:O
P1 - You can't trust people who say they're good.
P2 - T Clark does not say he's good.
Therefore you can trust T Clark
Something's missing here.
Yeah, you can be untrustworthy for other reasons too. But you certainly did try to eliminate some of the reasons for being perceived as untrustworthy :P
Yes. I have never cheated on a gf or sent anyone a d!ck pic.
Having a love for yourself is not synonymous with being selfish, that it is ok to say that you respect who you are or are trying to be a better person. This sacrificial giving up yourself for some greater 'good' that implies some sort of evil to independence or free thinking is ideological. Why would the golden rule imply LOVE others as you would your SELF. It is to love all human beings and not including yourself in this formula is to imply some non-human quality to your being, as though you stand outside of the world around you. If you become a part of the world, then you are bad. Those who are incapable of loving others are incapable of loving themselves and so most people will say either yes or no to this question because their understanding of good is parallel to social constructs of good and evil (and thus flawed).
Should the question be whether or not a person is good to themselves?
And so humble, too.
What is Good?
This is consistent with The Golden Rule, to love thy neighbor as thyself, which requires first self love, and second offering to others a love equal to that. If you don't love youself, your neighbor should receive that same disregard if you love him as yourself. Deriving pleasure from pure self sacrifice is the definition of masochism.
That is the question.
I thought if people had moral concepts maybe they could identify them in themselves.
I am not sure what is good. Or whether I am being good. Or whether other people are. I don't know if morality is being enacted in society
Well the first question to ask would be: do you believe in objective morality?
I would consider myself a moral nihilist.
I can't say that I can guarantee that any behaviour is moral or what that might mean.
I am interested in how other people identify moral attributes though.
Neither good nor it's supposed opposite. Those concepts are meaningless to me in regards to self evaluation. By what measure do you judge someone or yourself to be good/bad, anyway? And by what mean is that measure justified? And what means justify that measure? Ad infinitum (Regress problem).
One should love oneself, but as is the case for friendship there are various forms of love, self love being the form to be avoided. One should only love one`s neighbor as oneself taking it that one has any respect at all for oneself. By the perception of whom can we be considered good or bad/ I think this is the wrong approach to it however. I`d define a good person as one that prioritizes the putting of other`s needs before their own. How good or bad they may be at doing this should be considered secondary to this assessment, in my opinion. In my view then effort is the primary consideration.
I'm trying to decide whether I should get any further involved in this discussion. Calling someone "good" has a specific meaning to me, but I'm not interested in getting in a battle of conflicting definitions. I'll at least lay out how I think about it.
There are just a few people in my life I consider good. They are strong, compassionate, and open-hearted. They do what they do without drawing attention to themselves. Generally, I don't think they even notice. They have integrity - what they do grows out of who they are at a deep level. I always get the feeling they couldn't act differently if they tried.
As for the rest of us, we're fine. Not good, not bad. Human. I like people - almost everyone. I really don't dislike anyone, although there are people I don't want to hang around with. I love lots of people - most of them normal, fine, but not good in the sense I'm talking about.
Do I love myself? I like myself. It doesn't bother me that I'm not good. It doesn't stop me from trying to be a good friend or show kindness and generosity. I try to be a person of good will - I want others to be happy. But calling myself good would cheapen the word for me.
But as Socrates says, no one knowingly decides to be a bad person. Even Hitler justified his actions as doing the right thing, for what he believed to be true, and decent.
Do you mean this, that awareness of one`s being good is to be discovered in one`s capacity for love? You complicate well beyond making any sense. Do you do this to sound like an authority? So likely only Jesus of everyone ever born, according to both you and the scriptures,, can be justified in considering themselves good. It is hard enough to think of everybody, and all the cold blooded killers in the world, even without trying to love everybody. In any event mere mortals have to spend time with a person to know whether they love them or not. Remember, the love on its own is but emotion, not a form of meaningful/actual love. One does not emotion a person, they feel the love emotion as consequence to the presence of a person,that`s all. Overly emotional people may not be any more likely to be good people, and the love emotion can be the nearest thing to hate..
I'm not being sarcastic here - are you sure this is a response to my post? I can't see how your comments correspond to anything I said.
Hitler may have seen goodness as a weakness.
I am not sure doing the right thing equals being good because people can say "I have to do this horrible thing because it will benefit us in the long run."
I consider my state a mixed bag: some good, a little bad. Most of the time the bad things were motivated by good intentions. That the bad-acts-which-were-well-intentioned didn't turn out very well is part of my bad understanding of the way the world works. Once in a while I have been cruel or dishonest quite deliberately. On the other hand, I have done and been good, too--just plain good. In being good I wasn't being heroically good. I felt confident and good about doing and being good, so I was.
Most of the time we, people including me, are indifferent -- being neither good nor bad. We are fulfilling the minimum expectations that are well within our operating capabilities. We aren't doing anything bad or good, because either one would require arousal from our zombie routine. We just chug along. We do not earn any points while being on cruise control.
Quoting Andrew4Handel
Hitler, and other Nazis, inverted some normal ideas of good and evil, so that "to be soft in time of war is weakness" and "to be cruel and remorseless in struggle is a strength". Killing the Jews was purifying the nation. Letting inferior people live contaminated the blood of the nation.
Christian virtue was viewed as a weakness, so was much of secular philosophy, and humanistic culture.
Of course, most Germans had enough to do just surviving the war -- not starving, not getting killed by the Gestapo, or killed by the allied bombing.
I am tired of this idea that 'good' people somehow stand apart as though they are martyrs, saints, pure, deep, but that is simply not true. If I see an elderly person and I want to help them, I am not being 'good' and if I meet a girl with a bad attitude and treat her sternly, I am not being 'bad' because it is all about intent. It is like an equal playing field where I am balancing the scales in order to effectively create the best outcome for everyone because my motivation is happiness both for myself and for others; supporting and empowering the vulnerable is to remind the arrogant to be humble. Being good is to simply be confident to have empathy and show kindness, to do the best that you can do without following the herd; genuine kindness and compassion is only possible when one can articulate their own autonomous moral trajectory. That is why a person who cannot love themselves cannot love others.
If there is something 'bad' it is those people that hide who they really are, shut down their own happiness because they are afraid to take risks, to disappoint, and such people are not really alive anyway.
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."
I'm more like "I've never killed anybody, but there are obituaries that I very much enjoyed reading," Mark Twain? Clarence Darrow? (CD said, "I’ve never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."
Yes we are alive. How would you know?
Not a joke, so don't send me any angry crap.
No, being good concerns only the good in a person, so their meaning good, not what consequences on the outside.
That does n`t denote a bad person, that denotes an unfortunate person. Are you simply trying to set it up such that you can consider yourself good?
Seems like you are responding to TimeLine, not me.
Be kind to yourself. If you are conscious of shutting down intentionally then I would probably suggest a psychologist. If you are consciously being mean than I would pity you.
This is a very good description of my life.
It is no more wrong to shove your fngers down a little girls throat so you can see her vomit and cry; than it is to inject me with a 30 day dose of Haldol.
Most likely, but as long as we make worthwhile points.
I agree with Xander, and right and wrong can be beholden upon which side of the fence one is standing, it is perceptual, right or wrong for whom?.
Well, by that standard I guess it couldn't possibly have been wrong to have injected you with a permanent dose of banning.
At least it something I definitely value in myself.
Self discovery?
Then I pity you.
Personally, I think every individual carries the mark of both good and bad. One is good sometimes and bad at other times. So, it's impossible to identify yourself with either in an exclusive sense.
I could perform some calculus and say ''I'm good/bad most of the times'' but that still hasn't removed the minor good/bad as the case may be. Take the example of a group of 12 men. 11 are bad but 1 is good. The weight of 11 bad men doesn't affect the 1 good man. Likewise if the case was the reverse. So, while one part (good/bad) may be lesser in degree it still has weightage.
So, I'm good AND bad.
I don't get this level of relativism. If one is 'bad' because he takes hard drugs and almost everyone around considers this to be bad, but is 'good' because he is otherwise an upstanding citizen, who has influenced the lifes of everyone around in in such a positive way that no one could ever say they regret anything about that person, wouldn't it be appropriate to say that that person is a good person? That whatever flaw he has are entirely dismissable?
I guess what I mean is that, even in morality, isn't there multiple scales to the universe? That however much good can one do a one local scale might be undone by a single wrong done at a higher level? Or that a generality of wrongness at lower scales might not be enough to account for all the good done at a higher one?
One way or the other, the answer is : Trump was a mistake.
I'm only giving due importance to both sides so to speak. We do it in practice actually. Say a person does something bad. If we are to be good judges his good deeds must be factored into our judgment. Similarly, if someone does a good thing then in our valuation of him his bad deeds must also be considered.
Look at the sexual abuse scandal in Hollywood. People are judging others on both points of the moral scale.
You are such a compassionate person, I am always surprised when you are so quick to judge those of us who do not live up to your standards.
I did not set those standards. If you see a crime and choose to look the other way when you are at capacity to assist, telling yourself that the choice is justified and that you are not morally contemptible, that is really your problem and it is a shame. The contempt here is moral and not personal.
I catch myself feeling contempt for someone from time to time. It is one of the darkest, ugliest emotions. I feel dirty, sick to my stomach. One thing I have come to recognize - when I feel contempt for someone because of something I see in them, it is because I see that same thing in myself and can't face it.
It is presumptuous of me to question what you perceive going on in your own mind. But I do wonder whether you have contempt for an other because they mirror something in yourself. It could be that what you are perceiving is precisely labeled, and it may be a very common mechanism. The reason I doubt it is that we generally apply this theory only in negative ways. Do I like a comedian's physical slapstick humor because I am like the comedian? Do I admire bravery in someone because I recognize in myself bravery? Do I admire someone's piety because I am pious? I don't think so.
Would you (or I) not feel contempt for an other because they so thoroughly violate what you or I think is clean, right, and proper?
Whatever the mechanism, it is not a good idea to give too much free play to our feelings of contempt, loathing, disgust, and so on, because such feelings make it difficult to perceive and judge others fairly, and it makes it difficult to live in this world if we see ourselves surrounded by contemptible loathsome people. (Unless, of course, we are--but that's another thread.)
Because your perceptions are flawed. You have attempted arrogance, then guilt, now shame.You are having some imagined battle with me but the effort here is merely to justify your flawed perceptions.
When I speak to some men in the field of science and sometimes philosophy, as a woman, it does not matter how logical and correct I am, I am wrong. They have a perception that women are not capable or intelligent enough to discuss certain topics and sometimes their sexism is so entrenched that even with quotes from actual scientific figures, it is still not enough. And, others follow suit because a man is supposed to be more right than a woman. Just like the delusion of neo-nazis who deny the holocaust, the imagined ideology remains fixed despite the evidence to the contrary.
So, when men speak to me in general, they often assume that being a woman I am required to give more leniency, that I am supposed to be genteel and support others emotionally, that I am not allowed to say no or that is wrong and if I do then I am 'fierce' or 'angry' because the idea is that women are supposed to be unconditionally obedient. So, it is paradoxical to such men that I am morally compassionate but not exempt from conditional standards.
Try all you like but the continuity of my pity towards you remains unchanged.
Now the real timeline has stood up. Just joking. I can't tell whether your self-presentation is realistic or a false front.
BTW, I know men who treat women the way you describe them: they think women are silly, trivial, shallow, stupid, etc. They don't like working for or with women. They don't like taking orders from a woman. They don't think women are smart. But almost all the time, these are men on their 60s or older. (of course, once they were in their 20s and were probably the same way then.)
I don't see this kind of behavior so much in younger men, like 20s to 40s. Younger men do seem to usually have better attitudes toward women. Do you find this to be true?
This is something I've paid a lot of attention to - both in myself and watching others. I see people do lots of things I don't like. Some make me angry, even resentful. Contempt is something completely different. It is judgment on the other person. I know what it feels like to feel contempt and to have people express contempt towards me. I have watched others show contempt for each other. It is a denial of the value of the other person.
It is absolutely clear to me why I feel contempt when I do. It is exactly as I said - hiding from things I see in myself. I see the same thing in others. People bully other people because of the weakness they see that they can't face in themselves. Contempt is an act of cowardice.
I have seen ugly things inside myself. Contempt is one of the worst and I try hard not to lose sight of that.
Ahem...
B.Crank, sounds intelligent, but what is a model of modern enlightenment for god`s sake, does that even make any sense? My position is between the two of yours, that whilst the tendency over time is in becoming more judgmental in some areas that it is in becoming less so in others, those areas by individual. Two things are tending to happen, we are tending to become more set in our thinking whilst at the same time more broad minded. Such, there is a broader framework of thinking but one which we are not prepared to ever venture beyond. I just put this notion forward as a social tendency, it is not borrowed from anywhere, nothing I suggest to ever is, and this tendency has nothing to say for individuals..
I believe that younger people tend to being faster to react, so less well consider others actions, and coupled with this they have less experience of people that they can afford greater breath of consideration. The tendency is that young people are more judgmental but you only find this out by becoming a young person/by first having been invited into their social circles. However I do n`t consider that how fast one is to judge has anything whatsoever to say for whether they are a good or a bad person. I very much think of this in terms of where the heart is, where the heart genuinely is, and certainly before I have consideration to what`s happening.on the outside.
Well, of course.
I can only speak to my own experiences. What I've observed. I know what it feels like to be impotently angry - thrashing around, yelling and cursing. When I'm like that, I always say something I have to apologize for later. I know what it feels like to be effectively angry - cold and calm with a determination to hold someone accountable for their actions. That's a clean feeling. Not pleasant, but good. As I said, contempt is something completely different than either of those.
Maybe you and I mean different things by "contempt." Here's a test. If you feel your upper lip rising up over your front teeth in the start of a sneer, that's contempt.
Quoting celebritydiscodave
BC was referring to the way men over 60 treat women in response to my snort. Both he and I are members of that class. His statement was tongue-in-cheek, which is not unusual. Tongue-in-cheek but not necessarily wrong.
This is where I find myself agreeing with the biblical suggestion: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits." What is being authentic and in being so, does that enable one to actually be 'good' or to have moral autonomy? I think so.
People adopt an appearance and women can do this by presenting themselves as attractive - hence the disease fed into society through make-up and cosmetic surgery - but also through 'pleasant manners' and behaving in a way that will make them lovable all the while appearing unique or different from the rest of the herd despite blindly moving with the masses. Through this as though there is some collective delusion people actually believe that by being popular and having sex appeal that somehow it amounts to some satisfactory existence, that they deserve to be loved when - despite presenting themselves as 'good' people - they actually produce nothing.
The sophistication of how to present oneself as 'good' is getting better and better; there are some girls here who have lived a privileged life, who spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on cosmetics, and who publicly pretend that they hold some sort of concern for the bad things that go on in this world. 'I am a vegetarian because I love animals and animal rights' while wearing lipstick with animal in it or used on it, wearing clothing made in sweat shops, taking selfies while saying they are heartbroken about Syria before spending two hours doing their hair. Being morally concerned is now an image and a false one used to increase popularity. Even when I say 'you must learn to love yourself' they think that taking selfies is a form of loving yourself when it is actually turning your back on this wave of faux appearances.
Perhaps this is a product of capitalism and the marketing schema that feeds into the vulnerability of the masses and they, in turn, respond by purchasing what they are told they need and a certain way of looking becomes symbolic of truth, that it is fact and so convincing that by feeding back into the system by buying the beauty products, they can reap the rewards of popularity. It is only the courage to transcend this and to act - to give love and not to work hard at trying to be loveable - that one actually goes against the grain of this system and produces. So, only through this autonomy, this consciousness can one transcend to a mental state that can enable the person to think for themselves enough - first of all - to not get swept into this wave, but also to start helping others, doing or producing.
Working hard to appear loveable usually means spending years and years in that cycle and never producing anything, never changing or improving. They are stuck.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It is everywhere, just done differently to those who are older. I have had several experiences only over the last few years where men have actually become aggressive towards me because I do not respond to them sexually and while it is not physical violence, they are dismissive when I talk, insinuate things I do not think and even slander me in some strange endeavour to get me to submit, like some alpha-gorilla thumping his chest. I believe there was a ridiculous discussion even here about how women apparently respond to such men, but this attitude has largely resulted in a shift in women who do respond because of the social pressure.
It doesn't work with me and the young girls that I mentor because they are learning what self-respect actually is. And that is all that equality is. Respect. The social pressure to behave and appear a certain way that is apparently acceptable is like rearing a fatted cow ready for slaughter.
While in the west there are some cultural shifts where equality and respect for women is reaching a level of consciousness, it really exists in the minority.
That's an awful lot of unsubstantiated opinion there which, when entirely harmless, is fine, but you've insulted a substantial population of women and, by definition, the majority of men with virtually no evidence.
Quoting TimeLine
Produce nothing by whose standards - yours? What is wrong with producing a comforting and stable partner for someone, or even a transient sexual partner for a single night of mutual enjoyment. What's wrong with having your own beauty (in the eyes of others) as an objective? Not everyone has the intellectual capability to be a CEO, and not everyone buys into the modern crap about productivity. Some people are happy just happy to have sex, raise children, watch the sunrise and 'produce' nothing much by modern standards.
A woman (or man for that matter), is doing less harm just prettying themselves up as a object for someone else's' affection with animal-tested make up than the CEO of the company making the product, who has real power to change things but doesn't in order to impress her colleagues with what a 'productive' hard-headed businesswoman she is.Or are you suggesting that it wouldn't happen under a female CEO?
I dislike this double standard, where people assume they can speak for the whole of woman-kind, and assume to know the motives of the majority of men, when at the same time railing against that very stereotyping when perpetrated by the other party.
Either we have some biological, evolutionary, or sociological evidence supporting a belief that certain groups of people (men and women in this case) have certain characteristics, or, we must admit that we cannot know what most of any group want, or are like. What does not make any philosophical sense is to reject scientific knowledge (reasonable in itself, given the speculative nature at the moment), reject other people's stereotyping, but then claim to know anything about the majority of any group, just from personal experience.
The standard I speak of is Kantian moral autonomy and while you may endorse a type of hedonism, which is neither 'good' nor 'evil' what I was attempting to convey is if there is anything wrong with humanity, it stems from those who are incapable of loving themselves, since love is about giving or being capable of giving love (which is goodness) and one cannot give love if they are incapable of thinking correctly because love or goodness is a practical attitude and a part of our rational faculty, not some random, spontaneous feeling independent of our will. It is also not directed to one object, but all.
Most people work very hard - usually through popularity or sex appeal and even presenting qualities that pretend to having some moral compass - only to attain the love from others, but what is 'bad' here is the inability to give love despite presenting themselves as 'good' people. To 'give' love is to produce and what that means is produce independent or morally autonomous thoughts, the person who will defend someone who is being hurt rather than being a bystander or looking the other way; being professionally successful is no different to having sex appeal, it is meaningless without this capacity to think with moral consciousness.
This boils down to intent, the will, authenticity and this is largely - particularly if you think of the Ring of Gyges - what distinguishes us morally, not the presentation or this false image.
Quoting Pseudonym
I am a woman and the comparative and original rationale was about me (you should read the quote I was responding to), that is, what stands in stark contrast to me. Which is real, which is not? The only way one can distinguish this is about the output, the rational output and indeed I may be professionally successful, I may have studied and travelled the world, but none of that matters in comparison to my capacity to give love, which in turn means the young men and women who I have supported, mentored, loved and I do this while additionally taking care of myself and enjoy this world just as much as I would want anyone too. But, there has been numerous times where it has been suggested that 'good' is self-sacrificial and even your statements here appear to be contrasting with this notion, this 'well why can't we just live and enjoy life' and you certainly can while additionally being capable of giving love. In fact, you need to take care of and respect yourself to correctly and common sensically be capable of giving love to others.
What is peculiar is that while people attempt to make themselves attractive and popular within this social pattern of exchange, the intensity of this exchange - that is automatic 'truth' that being popular equates to being lovable - only exemplifies the depth of their loneliness just as much as material success and the commodity market governs values. This is the power of discourse that Foucault speaks of. It is about very thoughts and perceptions people have because a CEO just like a politician only has enough power that we give to them. If society believes that they should buy the latest lipstick and spend millions of dollars on them, isn't that being complicit, given them the very power?
I don't object to the conclusion you draw about those that do not give, but only expect, I object to the implication (by your descriptions of such people) that you could identify them by their behaviour with regards to making themselves sexually attractive, by the standards of the latest cultural preferences.
I don't see anything about wanting other people to find you sexually attractive, even in a superficial way, that automatically means you have nothing to give to society. Nor, conversely, do I see anything automatically moral in giving to others by not engaging in such rituals but focussing instead on something like teaching. Teaching can be as narcissistic an exercise as any other, relishing the adoration of those who hang on your every word etc.. Equally, dressing up in full, conventional make-up just to attract a partner for a one night stand, can be nothing more than a fun distraction for someone otherwise committed to making the world a better place.
If we are to draw conclusions about people's moral demeanour from their behaviours (and I believe we can) then we should do so by virtue of some evidence that such behaviour actually causes harms intrinsically. Attempting to divine their motives is overreaching our abilities.
It is not to say that I myself do not participate in society. I too have pleasant manners, I too enjoy taking care of myself physically, but I actually give a great deal by supporting women and children, mentoring young girls and many teen boys, my focus is on human rights both practically and theoretically, because goodness does not stem from some 'self-sacrifice' - this image that you are only good when you give yourself up like some martyr - but rather being a part of society. It is all about intent or the will that drives us that determines whether someone is genuinely good and whether someone presents a false good. I have no qualms refusing to follow social expectations, for instance how I choose to wait for the right partner or my commitment to a personal virtue that is in stark contrast with how women and men want women to behave.
There is no 'automatic' implication that such individuals are unable to contribute further in society, but the intention or will of the actions in those that present a false image relies on the congratulations they will receive and not because they actually care, which is why they often showcase their charity (just like those who pray publically to apparently showcase religious devotion). It stems from a vulnerability, but can lead to evil; think Cain and Abel, where the intention was to receive love from God but when this was not returned in favour of the other, he committed murder. It is not about trying to be loved, but about knowing how to give love and, further still, that this is genuine and that therefore 'good' is only possible in this intent.
So, the woman who stands in stark contrast to me, the opposite of who I am, are those women who attempt to make themselves attractive by forming pleasant manners, by focusing on beauty and attempting to be popular, who use 'good' only as a way to further climb this ladder such as pretending to be a vegetarian because they think about animals and animal rights (when it is likely just an image that they follow or for weight loss) all the while wearing tonnes of make-up that contribute to issues with animal and even social welfare, and all this without any purpose other than the presentation. How often do such women bully other women who are more attractive then them, or tries to actually be them? The primary impetus in their will is about their image.
So, you could be a man who enjoys life, but your intentions would be to disagree about negative views or opinions despite a bunch of other men holding them, that you could care about the environment enough to actually be conscious of what you and others are doing, to help the elderly lady, just as much as for a man who stands in stark contrast to you would attempt to be successful and financially secure or physically strong or other attempts at being socially powerful they they would not even see that elderly lady even if they walked past them, or any other type of moral consciousness unless it was socially a positive way to reinforce this image that their will pushes them to identify with. Such men have 'trophy' partners, people who are popular and would turn their back on love.
How are such men living?
I make the sum total of what you have said to be about neutral,, which in philosophical terms is zero surely - In a single line then what is your position, and what does that add to philosophy? You do however suggest tot intent, quite why you did n`t stop there I do n`t know, so I take it from this then that your notion for a good person leaves it at intent, and apart from being successful nothing besides? Are you certain that you are not creating a notion for what constitutes a good person merely around how you and those in your social circles tend to live their lives? It reads like that. To make headway in philosophy self and ego have to be put entirely to one side. All that and you`ve said just one word, a term, "intent", that`s philosophy, and this is precisely in agreement with my previous post. The only thing which I`ve added to your contribution of "intent" is that this should constitute the main measure, that some consideration, by individual psychology, needs on occasion to be afforded their actual actions on the outside, so that there is no clear to define answer.to this question of what constitutes a good person. Perhaps God knows?.