Producing Goodness

Your Responsibility for Goodness

There is a massive conflict between our humanity and our societies, aspects of which are often primitive in the extreme. Still, we must live in our societies for better or worse. Correspondingly, the biggest challenge in communal existence is rising to the occasion. At such times, personal awareness and principles refuse to submit to social and egocentric pressures.

Most of us think of a better world in terms of the empirical world, wholly or largely outside of ourselves. We want the reduction or eradication of poverty, ignorance, war, illness. Such goals are worthy: they derive from empathy with others and ideals that make life meaningful. Although such grand goals cannot realistically be your personal responsibility, you can still make a difference.

The context within which you make a difference is your psychosocial world: this is created by you and is therefore unequivocally your responsibility. Betterment here is a function of experiencing a personal responsibility for goodness, i.e. for actively generating goodness.

Can I really make a difference?

While I can have a small effect on my world, it is uncertain that more goodness from me will produce widespread beneficial social changes. But social life is so complex that it is impossible to be certain.  If the flap of a butterfly wing can cause a tornado, who knows what one of your actions may generate?

I can always make certain improvements in regard to myself: the way I think and the way I act. The power of example and convention in social life is great. If everybody took goodness seriously, the effect could be massive. At the very least, I can do my part irrespective of others. This framework spells out what that entails.

In this section, we consider the psychosocial components that you can use to ensure goodness in your personal life and therefore in the wider world. In the next section, I will explain how THEE orders these components so you can be the change you want to see in the world.

Make «Your Life» Your Project

All efforts to create goodness must depend on adherence to the Primal Injunctions-RH" (see right), and develop from the effective use of a better Self (RH"K). The question that arises is whether it is possible to move from a better Self as a state of awareness to making your usual self a vehicle for the creation of goodness. In this regard, it is far preferable if many or all of the Primal Injunctions are used simultaneously. In the previous framework (RH"), they can function separately.
How?

It is possible to become aware-L"3 but be constantly miserable (L"1), or to do your best-L"5 yet be indifferent to others (L"4). If so, you will operate a «better Self » at times, no doubt, but your actual self will have serious flaws that reduce the production of goodness. This will certainly interfere at the spiritual level, and affect the pleroma. Perhaps, at the crucial moment, it will undermine efforts, yours and others, to produce an empirically better world.

However, producing goodness is not an endeavour in itself. Goodness is a value within purpose-RL6 that can guide and permeate endeavours throughout your life. Remember: values are created by an act of will. (Forgotten? Then review: transcendence is easy.)

The production of goodness is taxonomically enabled by perceiving each of the Primal Injunctions as a special-purpose «Vehicle». Then, to ensure all Injunctions are persistently in play, a Structural Hierarchy is generated in which each Level uses allvehicles in combinations. The proposed THEE-name for the result is: framework for Producing Goodness-RsH". It has many components: but you don't use all of them all of the time.

This framework offers a practical and realistic way to handle everyday life, work, and even the most difficult personal and social issues in a way that you and others can deem good.

Avoid Lists : Avoid Hypocrisy

Goodness is usually explained in terms of specific values and virtues. The trouble is that this leads to a long string of desirable and noble demands outside your control. This way of thinking conjures up a terrifying and depressing (or persecuting) vision of the perfect person that none of us can ever be. In the present conception, you may at times fail to generate goodness when you could. However, the goal is not perfection. Nor is there any permanent self-thing that just «is» good. THEE conceives of human life as a continuous process of creation, and you can always (re-)start from wherever you are.

Goodness must permeate endeavours and not be its own endeavour: that way lies sanctimony.

If you wish to see the final result now, click here.

Leap even further ahead and see in advance the dynamic framework for bringing goodness to life, which is derived from this result.

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• Otherwise, start by understanding how the new framework is constructed.

Originally posted: 29-Mar-2013