"The Good"

“The Good”

Brian Lynch

Revised

Why can we know the good, “see” the good yet not grasp it? Not “do” it? This is not the Socratic and Platonic “To know the good is to do the good.”

This question has fascinated me for a very long time. I think the Socratic statement is not at all the case.

Our history and drama are full of tragic figures who strive for “the good” only to fail.

But, now, I turn not to great literature or philosophy, but to a situation comedy of recent years that always comes to mind when I think of this situation entitled “Arrested Development.” 

This is a wealthy “dysfunctional family” with one “functional” member.

While the CEO's father sits in prison for misdeeds and the mother continues to spend corporate money via embezzlement, and siblings and extended family simply cannot function The son “keeps” getting “pulled back in” because he is the only one that is stable enough to fix things. While everyone takes potshots at him.

An example from my life that exemplifies this situation and one of my favorites is when a patient actually says, “But you’re a doctor you’re supposed to do it.” That is I was to do some virtuous thing while they could not comprehend how they might do the same.

In my mind, the “problem” is how is it, in this rather brilliant show or any situation, real or imagined, can it be that a person can “know the good but not do it?” 

Between “To Know the good is to do the good” and the shame of not being able to get to the good not realizing that although you want the good something is impeding it. In between the two lies the entire history of Western thought. 

In there lies the entire history of Christianity and its struggle to deal with sin, blame, guilt, and damnation because if you know the good you must be able to effect it. If you don't, you did it of your own free will and thus are a sinner. But we now know that it is not that easy. We can’t until we can. And so if there is a gospel it is The Gospel of community love and support. Interest in others is the impediment to their ongoing shame. 

This type of question weds reason and emotion. There they are side by side. We came up with the term “cognitive dissonance” because of these situations. Here is the situation of how can it be that we know the good but do not do it. This will naturally and subconsciously cause confusion or cognitive dissonance that will often lead us to do things against our and others' best interests.

It seems there is a quite simple, but maybe not obvious answer: we do not do the good because we do not feel worthy.

It is a frightening thought. “I am not worthy.” And it can be dangerous because this can be a shame sinkhole as there is nothing anyone can do to convince me otherwise and I can drag the whole world with me. 

A phrase others and I have used is a “black hole of shame.” Just as a “black hole in space” is so powerful it sucks in everything around it, so does the personality of a person with such shame. It tries to destroy you and make you as miserable as they are. We have all kinds of terrible names for them and if we live with them or love them, we “pity them” and see their agony and if we do not have the benefit of understating their shame then we are left to our own devices.

Of course, not all are so off the bean but still so many suffer a whole continuum of this shame dynamic that keeps them and all of us from time to time in the shadows and form participating in “The Good.” The most common mode is the “simple” and hurtful “withdrawal.” The “impolite” unanswered phone call or email after the heartfelt request.

I cannot imagine life without this understanding. I cannot imagine being as civil as I am. And yes, so, by implication I do think I have come to be able to, without, embarrassment say that I have participated in “The Good” to some extent.

 My understanding of shame in others is the only thing that keeps me sane. So I wonder how we have survived and tolerated others so much in the troughs of shame and what we have understood until now called their “evil ways.” Well, we know what we have done and said; literature and drama well document this, to say nothing of the real historical record. But it also shows that we have often been surprisingly tolerant of ourselves and others. We have been strikingly good despite the existence of so much toxic shame in our lives. At least history shows we have improved despite our ignorance. It is so because all we have done here is discovered shame. 

Shame has always been with us and so every one of us has had to live it and live the consequence of the options that pain gives us whether it had been articulated or not. Point? Well, albeit we are still not all that empathetic it seems we have been empathetic enough to give, on average, each other many breaks along the road as we recognized from early on that we are “all fellow travels to the grave.” (Dickens)

But why am I not worthy? It is mainly because I have been told so or because I have been made to feel I am nothing by some kind of abandonment. The shame and humiliation, i.e. the enormous pain and void that leaves consumes my life. Life is for others from then on. I have but one job and that is: Well, what is it? Hard to define isn’t it since I am nothing?

As the king said, though in another context, “Nothing will come of nothing?” 

Much will come of interest as it overcomes “nothing.”