June 6: What is Goodness?

 I have been reading a new (to me) book I found by Christopher Phillips, the author of Socrates Café, among others.   His books were my inspiration for starting Big Questions in the 1990's and I have often recommended them to people who are new to BQ and are looking for background.  In them he describes his experiences with establishing discussion groups that he calls Socratic Dialogs with many diverse backgrounds and stages of life.  These include random coffee house gatherings, groups of prisoners with the meetings held in jails, school children in school classrooms, and many other venues with many other interested folks.  His goal has been to resurrect the open discussion format favored by Socrates and Plato based on questions and answers between people in what he called the dialectic method.  Socrates (and Phillips) would toss out a starting question, and attendees would answer them in some way that reflected their understanding of the question, and so on.  The thread of the discussion invariably wandered here and there, mostly on topic (when you write the book you can make it stay on topic, right?) with Phillips bringing in Socratic perspectives when appropriate.

The current book is called Soul of Goodness, and is about Phillips' relationship with his father, primarily, who died many years before the book was written but whose influence was profound, formative, and supportive, and continues to be a major part of his life and his life's purpose today.  Included in the story is the history of the Phillips family as they emigrated from Greece to the USA, with many stories concerning Phillips' memories of the lives and times of his relatives when he visited them in Greece growing up, and later as an adult.  Another central figure was his paternal grandmother who he calls his YaYa, and her encouragement to become what he most desired to become and not to let others dictate his path in life.  Throughout the narrative he develops the idea that his father, while flawed in so many ways, was at heart someone filled with goodness, acceptance, and love for everyone around him.  While it comes across as a bit of a rose-colored requiem in remembrance of his father, it is balanced enough to paint the father as a human being with the common flaws by which we are all afflicted.  

With this as a backdrop I thought What is Goodness might be an interesting topic to discuss as an extension of the recent topic, What is Good?  Goodness, being a more personal example of the more general Good, could focus on human attitudes and behaviors, the origins of our sense of self and our purposes, and especially our relationship with all those around us.  

• What does Goodness expect of us, if we have it as a key quality or virtue?  

• What constitutes a lack of Goodness in a person, how should we react to this lack, and what can be done about it?  

• If we examine our lives and find that Goodness is lacking in some aspect, what can and should we do to address this lack?  

• Are there degrees of Goodness that we should concentrate on?  

• Can goodness exist in personal isolation, or is it only expressed in relation to our feelings and actions concerning others?

It was Linus, from the Snoopy comic by Charles Schultz, who famously said, "I love mankind!  It's people I can't stand!"  Can Goodness exist in our abstract relationship to the broader world, but be hard to hold on to when we deal with individuals?  Phillips makes the point repeatedly that his biggest impact on the lives of others happens at a very personal level, one-on-one really, and he offers case studies that support his perspective.

To end this summary I offer this quote, "We are all here on earth to help others: what on earth the others are here for, I don't know," by W.H. Auden.  I might paraphrase this as, in the boat of life there are those that pull on the oars, and those that are just along for the ride.  Which are you, and how is Goodness related to our perspectives on contributing to our own lives, and to the lives of others?