Objective Goodness, part I

Photo: Rebecca van Laer with Alina Hansen, the granddaughter of the late Sarah Hansen née van Laer.

April 13.

I've had several good conversations with my wife over the past day or two about the nature of goodness. In addition, I've created several podcasts about the search for a contact—a personal, intimate contact—with this quality of Being.

I don't think one sees how every concept of goodness automatically clusters itself around the ego. All goodness is about me, because I’m the arbiter of goodness. After all, every goodness that is perceived is perceived… by whom?

Me, of course—and so, in my naïvete, I believe that I determine the good. That it exists of me and through me, and that what I think of as good is the good. Religion and society and culture and government also try to tell me what’s good, of course; and good thereby invariably becomes a commodity to be bought and sold.

My ego takes note of these external inputs about good, but in the end, I’m a merchant – I imagine myself a masterful buyer and seller of good. I can trade in it; I can make a profit in it for myself. If I trade in the good of the body, I can get food and sex and so on; and if I trade in the good of the mind, I can get money and power.

So this is a rough snapshot of how I see the good.

Yet this isn't what the good is at all; it’s merely an abstract construction that arises from desire, and the perversity of egoistic will.

Real good is not of me and does not belong to me. I am able, if I discriminate, to perceive real good; but it doesn’t belong to me, and I don’t control it. Because of its nature, I can’t even affect it. I can only affect the objects, events, circumstances, and conditions around me; and although I may rearrange their relationships, subjectively, I cannot actually destroy the metaphysical good in them, even though I can destroy what ordinary good might ultimately arise from them.

This is one of the strange qualities of goodness, that on the metaphysical level, it can never be damaged, but on the physical level – that's another thing entirely.