Obligations to Ourselves

Some parts of trying to be good I do pretty well at, while other parts I struggle with. As time goes on, I plan to cover some of each of these. A big part of what I do here will be to try to figure out what it means to be good at all. ‘Good’ is a pretty general word, and being human is certainly not an activity that comes with an accepted standard of perfection. Setting aside the issue of being good at it, what it really means to even be human is something that people have been asking since there were people.

Part of trying to be good will involve trying to act rightly toward others. This has a particular side (acting rightly toward the individuals around me) and it has a general side (acting rightly toward the inhabitants of the world at large). What each of these means is something that I will have to deal with. I think I do pretty well with the second one—I’m very conscious of how my actions impact the world around me, and I generally stick to a way of life that’s compatible with the well-being of others. The first one I’m not always great at. I do ok when it comes to friends and family, but when it comes to my interactions with strangers and acquaintances, my social anxiety frequently overwhelms my attention to others. In short, I suspect that my shyness often comes across as standoffishness.

However, today’s post is not about my relationship to others. It’s about me. Ask yourself this: If I were the last person on Earth, what would it mean for me to be good? Some might think that this question is meaningless; morality deals with the relationships and interactions between people, so if there were only one person left, there would no longer be such a thing as morality. I don’t think that this is true. I wouldn’t blame this last person for unhappily sitting around, listlessly bemoaning their loneliness and waiting for death, but I wouldn’t call that living rightly either. What am I getting at? I think that being good requires seeking personal happiness.

Now that I’ve spent three paragraphs introducing my topic (hopefully as the blogging goes on, I’ll get better at getting to the point without so much introduction), I’m realizing that this isn’t something that I’ll be able to cover in a single post. Actually, I’m realizing that this post will just be an introduction for what’s to come. I’m inclined to think that happiness involves two parts: enjoying the present, and planning to enjoy the future. Next post’s topic: Enjoyment.