Season’s greetings to all of you out there! I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a good person. The deeper I think about this, the less I feel I know. I think we all have an intuitive sense of what it means, but none of us really knows for sure. I don’t mean to disparage any religion, by saying that. If there is a God, I guess He/She/It must know. But, if so, how do we know what God knows? Some religions say that their holy book tells us this, but how do we know which holy book, if any, is right?
Alan Watts, the former Anglican minister who lectured on eastern religion from the 1950’s through the 1970’s, recounted a story in which a proselytizer tried to convince him that it made sense that God would give humanity a book to explain how everything worked. Watts responded that he certainly hoped not, for such a book would destroy our minds. Creation, he thought, is far too complex for us mortals to get our minds around. Couldn’t the same thing be said about ethics?
I can’t think of a single religious teaching or ethics philosophy that tells me exactly how to navigate every single moral dilemma. The best we get are some basic guidelines and wisdom teachings to guide us. Do we go with Immanuel Kant’s idea that we should ask “how would it be if we all did that”? John Stuart Mill’s idea that we should try to maximize everyone’s happiness? Aristotle’s idea that virtues are balance points between twin vices? None of them seem to really cover everything.
Religions give us wisdom, like the Golden Rule (treat others the way you’d want to be treated). It’s a good general guideline, but, if you really think it through, it doesn’t really help you through everything. We know, for example, that different people have different personalities. An extrovert might follow the Golden Rule by shouting “hi” to an introvert across the room, not realizing that this may overwhelm the introvert. The introvert might not talk to an extrovert who’s reading a book in the corner, feeling that they may want peace and quiet, when, in fact, the extrovert might be hoping for some attention.
I personally like the idea that we just shouldn’t hurt people, but that seems impossible. What about self-defense? What about offending people? If we always worried about offending people, we’d never say anything, because, if social media has taught us anything, it’s that someone, somewhere will be offended by just about anything we communicate.
I humbly suggest that none of us really knows for sure what it means to be good. Still, I think we should try to be good. Humanity is too precious to do otherwise. Fortunately, many of us have good ideas that guide us. Somehow, we muddle through.
As we near the winter solstice, I hope that, whatever your religion, or lack thereof, the new light of a new year renews us in our resolve to try to be good, by our own lights. May the Light bless us all.