Is it fairly obvious (and very widely ,if tacitly accepted) that this is an impossible thing to achieve?

All we can do is to hope we have an either innate or learned appeciation of what "good" might be so that we could even be the judge of what might be "the good" in others ?

Absolute "good" ,...is that a misnomer and are we ,(if we are ) just striving for degrees of better imperfection?

If we are (so striving),how can we promote that "struggle" in the outside world and can we be at all sure that more good than harm is actually being achieved ?

Edit:

Is ,perhaps the wish to be or do "good" an integral part of our DNA after this long period of evolution and might the sensible aim be for micro adjustments on the tiller of human progress ,albeit in presently tempestuous and rocky waters?

2 hours ago, geordief said:

Is it fairly obvious (and very widely ,if tacitly accepted) that this is an impossible thing to achieve?

All we can do is to hope we have an either innate or learned appeciation of what "good" might be so that we could even be the judge of what might be "the good" in others ?

Absolute "good" ,...is that a misnomer and are we ,(if we are ) just striving for degrees of better imperfection?

If we are (so striving),how can we promote that "struggle" in the outside world and can we be at all sure that more good than harm is actually being achieved ?

Edit:

Is ,perhaps the wish to be or do "good" an integral part of our DNA after this long period of evolution and might the sensible aim be for micro adjustments on the tiller of human progress ,albeit in presently tempestuous and rocky waters?

Well of course one can persuade people to do good. Appeals to our better nature are commonplace, surely?

Compulsion is a different matter.

8 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Well of course one can persuade people to do good. Appeals to our better nature are commonplace, surely?

Compulsion is a different matter.

So ,open minded communication.(but "better nature" is subjective and a manipulator may first need to manipulate themselves to be effective)

Compulsion is ,though woven into the fabic of all our dealings with each other (laws being an example,customs another)

Perhaps the difficulty is when we don't take "no" for an answer-we have to fail in order to make meaningful progress.

26 minutes ago, geordief said:

So ,open minded communication.(but "better nature" is subjective and a manipulator may first need to manipulate themselves to be effective)

Compulsion is ,though woven into the fabic of all our dealings with each other (laws being an example,customs another)

Perhaps the difficulty is when we don't take "no" for an answer-we have to fail in order to make meaningful progress.

I'm not sure I follow your last statement. Doing or being good is generally some form of altruistic behaviour, directed towards the benefit of someone or something other than oneself. To take a trivial example, something as simple as responding to a charity appeal is doing good as a result of persuasion.

By contrast, doing something for the good of others because one is forced to rather deprives the act of moral virtue. I pay my taxes each year because if I don't I can get sent to prison, not because I have chosen to donate part of my income to the National Health Service or the education system or the armed forces. I happen not to begrudge the tax demand, because firstly I can afford it and secondly I recognise the value, to me and society, of the services the State provides us all. (I have had trouble explaining to earnest tax advisers that I have no interest in their special schemes to reduce my tax liabilities. To them it is inconceivable that somebody might pay tax willingly. But that's another story.) But I can't claim any moral virtue in paying my taxes, or in stopping at a zebra crossing to let somebody cross the road. It's the law.

What do you mean by failing in order to make progress? Failing in what way? And what form of progress?

18 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I'm not sure I follow your last statement. Doing or being good is generally some form of altruistic behaviour, directed towards the benefit of someone or something other than oneself. To take a trivial example, something as simple as responding to a charity appeal is doing good as a result of persuasion.

By contrast, doing something for the good of others because one is forced to rather deprives the act of moral virtue. I pay my taxes each year because if I don't I can get sent to prison, not because I have chosen to donate part of my income to the National Health Service or the education system or the armed forces. I happen not to begrudge the tax demand, because firstly I can afford it and secondly I recognise the value, to me and society, of the services the State provides us all. (I have had trouble explaining to earnest tax advisers that I have no interest in their special schemes to reduce my tax liabilities. To them it is inconceivable that somebody might pay tax willingly. But that's another story.) But I can't claim any moral virtue in paying my taxes, or in stopping at a zebra crossing to let somebody cross the road. It's the law.

What do you mean by failing in order to make progress? Failing in what way? And what form of progress?

Is altruism a form of coercion(not by the object of the altruistic action but by the attendant circumstances)

If there was not an evolved societal order would not the order of the day be to take as much as one needed and then to take note of the behaviour of others who were either haggling/ fighting for leftovers or moving on to another activity ,their desires sated?

Altruism =enlightened self interest?

,By "failing so as to progress meaningfully" I had in mind failing to convince someone of your own belief and learning from that failure.

Edit:I appreciate that an altruistic act gives physical pleasure to the giver/actor(is that also a form of biological coercion?)

10 minutes ago, geordief said:

Is altruism a form of coercion(not by the object of the altruistic action but by the attendant circumstances)

If there was not an evolved societal order would not the order of the day be to take as much as one needed and then to take note of the behaviour of others who were either haggling/ fighting for leftovers or moving on to another activity ,their desires sated?

Altruism =enlightened self interest?

,By "failing so as to progress meaningfully" I had in mind failing to convince someone of your own belief and learning from that failure.

Edit:I appreciate that an altruistic act gives physical pleasure to the giver/actor(is that also a form of biological coercion?)

No. There is this thing called love. Love leads people to act for the benefit of family, friends, partners and even members of the a wider community, without self-interest. (Unless you count as self-interest the feeling of wellbeing and satisfaction one gets from having done something altruistic. But in my opinion that way leads to disappearing up one's own arsehole.)

I remember being struck, during the Covid lockdown, by the enormous reservoir of goodwill that was released. Perfect strangers or neighbours one had never spoken to were suddenly willing to run errands and so on for other people. It was as if they were just aching to be given permission, socially speaking, to talk to one another and help out. This too is a form of love in its broadest sense.

I'm not sure where failing to convince someone of your own belief comes into all this. Why would a person's beliefs be relevant? Can you give an example?

13 minutes ago, exchemist said:

No. There is this thing called love. Love leads people to act for the benefit of family, friends, partners and even members of the a wider community, without self-interest. (Unless you count as self-interest the feeling of wellbeing and satisfaction one gets from having done something altruistic. But in my opinion that way leads to disappearing up one's own arsehole.)

I remember being struck, during the Covid lockdown, by the enormous reservoir of goodwill that was released. Perfect strangers or neighbours one had never spoken to were suddenly willing to run errands and so on for other people. It was as if they were just aching to be given permission, socially speaking, to talk to one another and help out. This too is a form of love in its broadest sense.

I'm not sure where failing to convince someone of your own belief comes into all this. Why would a person's beliefs be relevant? Can you give an example?

Well,just on this site we get posters with the most incredible ideas that ,if one wanted to be charitable one could devote an enormous amount of time trying to persuade them of the apparent (often blatant) error of their beliefs.

Of course that is likely to be a complete waste of time as people's beliefs can be almost impossible to change (unless,perhaps you can persuade them that it was their idea in the first place)

In everyday life the same can apply where ,with some people there really is hardly any point in disagreeing with someone as they "already know best".

Edited October 22Oct 22 by geordief

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Well,just on this site we get posters with the most incredible ideas that ,if one wanted to be charitable one could devote an enormous amount of time trying to persuade them of the apparent (often blatant) error of their beliefs.

Of course that is likely to be a complete waste of time as people's beliefs can be almost impossible to change (unless,perhaps you can persuade them that it was their idea in the first place)

In everyday life the same can apply where ,with some people there really is hardly any point in disagreeing with someone as they "already know best".

True, but what does that have to do with persuading or compelling people to do good?

10 minutes ago, exchemist said:

True, but what does that have to do with persuading or compelling people to do good?

Well,in our mind's eye we may make the erroneous (but perhaps logically necessary) assumption that we are right and we do good.

So ,if we cannot persuade another of the correctness of our position then it seems to us that we have failed to compell or persuade that person to be or do good.

Just because I accepted /posited in the OP that it was not possible to persuade or compel others to "do good" does not mean that I might not still harbour that (futile?) ambition-and that it might not resurface if circumstances changed and it seemed possible or desirable.

10 hours ago, geordief said:

Absolute "good" ,...is that a misnomer and are we ,(if we are ) just striving for degrees of better imperfection?

There are things some people consider good and that others do not.

Some people can be persuaded by the carrot, some compelled by the stick and some do not care. Some will be contrary just for the sake of being contrary and some owing to other motivations.

22 hours ago, geordief said:

Well,in our mind's eye we may make the erroneous (but perhaps logically necessary) assumption that we are right and we do good.

So ,if we cannot persuade another of the correctness of our position then it seems to us that we have failed to compell or persuade that person to be or do good.

Just because I accepted /posited in the OP that it was not possible to persuade or compel others to "do good" does not mean that I might not still harbour that (futile?) ambition-and that it might not resurface if circumstances changed and it seemed possible or desirable.

Maintaining a “position” is not doing good, though.

What you seem to want to argue is that what is felt to constitute doing good may vary from person to person. That’s true but it does not follow that one cannot persuade somebody to do good. I have given examples of this, viz. persuading someone to make a charitable donation, or, during the pandemic, to look out for neighbours as a result of a publicity campaign. Would you deny that those are examples of successful persuasion?

Edited October 23Oct 23 by exchemist

I think it also needs to be pointed out that doing good and being good are not the same thing. One might do something considered good but the motivation for doing so might be neutral, or perhaps even evil.

24 minutes ago, swansont said:

There are things some people consider good and that others do not.

Some people can be persuaded by the carrot, some compelled by the stick and some do not care. Some will be contrary just for the sake of being contrary and some owing to other motivations.

I agree largely.

Does "the common good" retain currency?

Society too splintered now?

3 hours ago, exchemist said:

Maintaining a “position” is not doing good, though.

What you seem to want to argue is that what is felt to constitute doing good may vary from person to person. That’s true but it does not follow that one cannot persuade somebody to do good. I have given examples of this, viz. persuading someone to make a charitable donation, or, during the pandemic, to look out for neighbours as a result of a publicity campaign. Would you deny that those are examples of successful persuasion?

Yes ,it is a good thing to encourage people to take care of each other.

But is it not a case of reminding them of something they were already partly minded to do anyway?

How often would it happen for someone to say that they thought it was a bad idea but they had been convinced by someone else that it was in fact a good idea?

Are we more likely to follow examples (good or bad)?

Again the charitable organisations,do they compete for donations from people who already donate to other charities?

1 hour ago, swansont said:

I think it also needs to be pointed out that doing good and being good are not the same thing. One might do something considered good but the motivation for doing so might be neutral, or perhaps even evil.

If you do something at your own expense ,would that count as "being good"?(maybe the result could be bad but the motivation or will was good)

Something...road...paved.. something .intentions ....

Time short atm, but will say that one lens to look at this through is the anthropology lens at the hunter gatherer culture we all come from. Altruism is easier for us at familial and small group levels than in the highly abstract realms of modern nations. We all (most of us) grasp helping others, compassion, and community welfare at the HG structural tier, but more education (or indoctrination, depending on your POV) is needed to expand our tribal notions to the human tribe and Earth's whole surface. Unfortunately, global survival requires a retrofitting of a brain built around nomadic bands of maybe a hundred people or somewhere in the level of magnitude. That brain has real struggles trying to understand that driving an SUV to the store to pick up some steaks for dinner, enjoyed in a 2000 sf dwelling with teeshirt climate control year-round is going to, amplified in the aggregate, burn down forests and fail crops and flood a coastal city in Indonesia. (More later)

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Does "the common good" retain currency?

We are, and always have been, moulded by society from birth (conceivably a little before that). For better or for worse. I say that, because it is not a matter of 'good' or 'bad' per se, Rather a matter of behaving in sympathy with one's immediate environment. And this environment expands from the womb to immediate family, to extended family to community. And for most of our history, there it stopped. The common good was literally behaviour that served the interest of one's community of several hundred to perhaps a thousand people in one's immediate environment. This is what we are evolved to do, and along the way developed cultures to justify, record, and embed the necessary conditioning process.

Does it retain currency? Of course it does. I suspect I'm not the only one here to have covetted a neighbour's wife on occasion, yet managed not to take it beyond a fleeting private fancy for... reasons. Does it really matter whether those reasons are based on fear, altruism, empathy, or religious conviction? I'm not overendowed with any of those, yet still always steered towards safer waters. Apparently, even the 'covetting' bit was a mortal sin so I wouldn't claim that this choice was necessarily 'good'. Just seemed the better option at the time. The key point is that the social conditioning worked one way or another.

@exchemist gives a very good example of how this idea is still valid in the vastly extended communities of our modern nation states in his attitude to income tax. What I would like to discuss further is the role of the tax advisors who didn't understand his disinterest in tax avoidance.

2 hours ago, geordief said:

Society too splintered now?

Tax advisors don't even make a pretence of acting in the common good. At least not the one's I've met. They are representative of a class of people who actively promote personal greed (another of the classical vices) over the interests of wider society for their own nefarious gain. This splinters society individual by individual and normalise destructive behaviour.

By extension, I would extend this to the entire edifice of neoliberalism, as individual greed does seem to be a founding principle of that economic model. It seems to be spectaculary successful at fracturing societies.

And then there is the principle of 'divide and rule'. How could this ever be a successful agent of social cohesion? The clue is in the name. The xenophobia that might have helped prehistoric tribes survive amongst hostile neighbours was at least partly understood as divisive in classical times. It is entirely out of place in modern nation states.

There's still hope. Many of us still have access to the ballot box. And Ukraine has recently shown us how to deal effectively with chatbots.

Simulpost with @TheVat

Simul, but the Abujan went a ways farther with it. I sometimes wonder if any ideology built on capitalism doesn't enshrine greed and the anti-egalitarian glee that can accompany being more prosperous. Thinking about how the divisiveness of MAGA, seeming often based on racial anxiety re immigrants, often expresses as a fear of diminished net worth - "what happens to your house value when they move in near you? What happens when they steal your jobs? How can teachers educate your kids for tomorrow's jobs when they're too busy teaching Latinos basic English" ...ad nauseam.

Subcultures that seek to disconnect from that and assert a collective and egalitarian ethos (Amish, Puritans, commune hippies, rad Greens, et al) tend to codify prohibitions on boasting, ostentation, and sneaking an advantage.

Maybe some hope - seeing more candidates do well on socialist platforms makes me think younger voters are moving away from the prosperity gospel. They certainly are seeing trad prosperity and accumulation of shiny bits as more of a mirage, so a Socialist candidate focused on basic affordability of essential needs gets seriously listened to. NY elected Mamdani, seeking to redefine doing good a little bit - maybe a wedge has gone in there. And, to the thread topic, can a collective sense of good be driven by some level of selfishness? A Gen Z'er who just wants to pay their electric bill might feel motivation to vote for public utilities, a classic type of socialism that many older Americans pretend isn't.

Rambling. Must breakfast.

IMO reciprocity has much to do with people doing "good". How can you expect others to treat you differently from how you treat them? There are other reasons, as well, like enjoying seeing others be happy but I think reciprocity is a big (maybe the biggest) one.

On 10/24/2026 at 6:50 PM, npts2020 said:

IMO reciprocity has much to do with people doing "good". How can you expect others to treat you differently from how you treat them? There are other reasons, as well, like enjoying seeing others be happy but I think reciprocity is a big (maybe the biggest) one.

Thought experiment for you. Imagine you are part of a nomadic hunter-gatherer community in palaeolithic East Africa. One evening around the campfire you have a debate amongst the elders about whether or not to stop your traditional practice of lethally excluding excessively sociopathic adolescents from your community.

a) What impact might the decision have on everyday levels of reciprocal behaviour within the community?

b) Does a) produce a paradox?

c) Which is the 'good' option: the reciprocal, or the non-reciprocal?

13 hours ago, sethoflagos said:

Thought experiment for you. Imagine you are part of a nomadic hunter-gatherer community in palaeolithic East Africa. One evening around the campfire you have a debate amongst the elders about whether or not to stop your traditional practice of lethally excluding excessively sociopathic adolescents from your community.

a) What impact might the decision have on everyday levels of reciprocal behaviour within the community?

b) Does a) produce a paradox?

c) Which is the 'good' option: the reciprocal, or the non-reciprocal?

a) It seems to me continuing the tradition would have little or no impact. It is only when things change that behavior has any reason to change, then you get into what is the sociopathic behavior and how is it affecting other members of the tribe? I don't think most people treat others any differently from how they expect to be treated themselves but I am not sure how one would go about objectively quantifying such a thing.

b) I don't see a paradox if everyone in the community would expect the same treatment for similar behavior. IMO it is the sociopaths that lack the capacity for understanding why reciprocity is generally a "good" thing.

c) "Good", like beauty, is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. It depends on what the goal is for any particular action. Murder is considered "bad" by most but in your example, is it "good" to murder a mass murderer or "good" to allow them to continue to be embedded in your society when it is pretty certain they will kill someone else? There is such a thing as Hobson's choice.

Hobson's choice--- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice

2 hours ago, npts2020 said:

a) It seems to me continuing the tradition would have little or no impact.

Would it not cause some reduction in gene pool diversity? If exercised carefully could this 'survival by judicial selection' over many generations help to gradually improve social cohesion? Your statement seems to suggest by logical extension that you don't see 'domestication' as being guided by such processes, which would be counter to my (albeit lay) understanding.

I think our understanding of Hobson''s Choice is a little different (set work in our school Eng Lit class)

21 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

Would it not cause some reduction in gene pool diversity? If exercised carefully could this 'survival by judicial selection' over many generations help to gradually improve social cohesion?

This assumes complex behaviors at the level of "scary arse with little empathy and Draconian methods of problem resolution" are genetically mediated. Seems iffy, when there are so many environmental factors that can influence sociopathy. Anyway, it's possibly not all that much like animal domestication where there are specific allele complexes that affect the development of the amygdala (key player in taming) and allied "cuteness" markers.

And there are people who may score a little low on the empathy scale who, while not outside social norms, have a useful capacity to do hard tasks for the group. Where a high empathy member might be "you want me to just walk up and club those baby warthogs? No way, Ogg!" the lower empathy fellah might grab the club and get on with it, and the tribe has a protein rich baby warthog stew instead of them scattering into the thickets. I don't think any viable tribe would be excluding its club-ready standouts.

17 minutes ago, TheVat said:

This assumes complex behaviors at the level of "scary arse with little empathy and Draconian methods of problem resolution" are genetically mediated. Seems iffy, when there are so many environmental factors that can influence sociopathy. Anyway, it's possibly not all that much like animal domestication where there are specific allele complexes that affect the development of the amygdala (key player in taming) and allied "cuteness" markers.

I won't push it, but human society does have some debatable signs of domestication : fairly low in-group violence; a bit of neoteny - flat face, short canines etc.

21 minutes ago, TheVat said:

And there are people who may score a little low on the empathy scale who, while not outside social norms, have a useful capacity to do hard tasks for the group. Where a high empathy member might be "you want me to just walk up and club those baby warthogs? No way, Ogg!" the lower empathy fellah might grab the club and get on with it, and the tribe has a protein rich baby warthog stew instead of them scattering into the thickets. I don't think any viable tribe would be excluding its club-ready standouts.

This is the paradox:

"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."

This is not a binary choice: balances have to be struck. One reason I lean more toward the Golden Mean than the Golden Rule.

38 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

This is not a binary choice: balances have to be struck. One reason I lean more toward the Golden Mean than the Golden Rule.

Not just Hobson's choice but also a Hobbesian choice, haha, and all the balancing that implies to have a social contract. Paradoxes - giving up some of our self-sovereignty in order to gain more perhaps over our immediate domain. Ceding power to a state to use force in order to have more civil peace, and so on.

I don't want to go into the weeds, either, on domestication and neoteny. Plenty there to debate, no doubt. Though the flattened face might be more about dietary changes in hominins (and even some sexual selection in the mix). Above my pay grade.

OT: Amygdala Salad Gym A is a great band name.

On 10/27/2026 at 11:52 PM, TheVat said:

OT: Amygdala Salad Gym A is a great band name.

Emily is fond of Abba and Aha! Perhaps she keeps So Many Dynamos tucked away in a drawer somewhere. Who knows.

On 10/27/2026 at 5:09 PM, sethoflagos said:

Would it not cause some reduction in gene pool diversity? If exercised carefully could this 'survival by judicial selection' over many generations help to gradually improve social cohesion? Your statement seems to suggest by logical extension that you don't see 'domestication' as being guided by such processes, which would be counter to my (albeit lay) understanding.

Killing anything reduces gene pool diversity. Whether it makes a significant difference is another matter. It seems to me that once human ancestors figured out that they were better off in groups than as individuals, genetics would select the more social types since they ought to be the most likely to survive and propagate.