A Good Heart And Right Action

Just some random notes and thoughts from a rambling insomniac early in the morn (I'd say morning light, but it is still dark out, and I'd have to type for a few hours for morning light).

Shakespeare wrote 'Nothing is good or bad, only thinking makes it so.' While Shakespeare's sentiments do sound good (and I admit taken way out of context), it is hard to accept our thoughts cause good and evil. Our decision, perhaps, which I suppose is an extension of thought, play the ultimate part in goodness and right action. We will choose to do what we think is good for us, or we will not. Of course, that is the problem, what might be good for us could be bad and what we might even think is right could actually be wrong. And then you have the problem of a good action/intention having catastrophic effects. Now, I was raised to understand that this is not true. The whole tenet of Christ's (not necessarily current Christian thought) philosophy hinges on the fact that doing good for its own sake will always prosper. Let us say you help a person out that then decides to use the money on an addiction (pick your poison) and then winds up hurting or killing someone because of their addiction. Was good done for its sake? And if you found out what had happened, would you do it again? The idea itself was right but the end was not.

Then the question is asked, what if not doing good, in fact, allowing the ends to justify the means, results in goodness? One might think that this action cannot really be random and is self-serving, and therefore is not for its own sake. I guess at least that person is still doing something.

I suppose, in the end, the worst thing is inaction. Edmund Burke commented, 'The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.' An observation applicable to any time. This world has become so apathetic and uninterested that most people would rather do nothing. Perhaps that is the case mostly in the West, and many times in my case. At least I try and understand the past and the present and through it, maybe understand the future. Still, I feel that is my excuse and/or justification to observe and not act. Perhaps that makes me even worse than being apathetic. I am informed and still do not act in a manner I should or at the least, I would like. Unlike most academics, who have a tendency to preen and posture while feeling that their comments alone mean that they have acted, I know what I am not doing is wrong.

So here I am, discussing goodness and my own guilt at not doing more than I have done, which is to say not much more than writing and trying to understand cause and effect, action, reaction and inaction. Has anything I have said changed anything? Or am I like the ones I have called out, hoping that my words alone constitute some sort of right action on my part? Is having the right heart enough? As always, I have too many questions and not enough answers. I hope, at least, I am asking the right questions.

C.