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- Stages to developing a mature understanding of goodness:
- First step, babies and children equate receiving approval with being good.
- Second step, older children will begin to understand, vaguely, that being a good person requires more than just receiving approval.
- Third step, starting with teenagers, is the realization that being a good person and receiving approval are two separate things. Sometimes they overlap, often they don’t.
- Often a person will get stuck on the first or second step.
- What goodness is not:
- Defending family, friend, or coworker even though you know they are wrong.
- Arbitrarily fighting the other group or tribe simply because they are other.
- Never backing down without considering if perhaps you are wrong.
- Being better than others at doing something.
- Being tougher and stronger than others.
- Being first to do something.
- Displaying certainty about something.
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- Truth is best determined by if something works.
- If something works you can reasonably call it true.
- If it does not work, then you can know it is not true.
- Should belief in what is True, that which works, lead to better lives?
- Yes, it should.
- Leading a life based on Truth is leading a life in accordance with the way the universe actually is, the way it actually works, and that should lead to better outcomes.
- Examples of beliefs that do not conform to the real world.
- I’m talking about such ideas as Astrology, magic, faith healing, and prayer (as a means for getting what you want).
- I personally would also include ideas like vaccine denial, climate denial, gun rights (as a way of improving our society), and racial superiority.
- Many conspiracy theories, although not necessarily all of them.
- You probably have your own list.
