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competition
November 2009 
"Better" is not "Good"
Posted on Jun 3rd, 2009
by 
I-P
I-P
I often get the impression that people think I am a perfectionist about certain things. I'll make an observation about a certain aspect of the political, socio-cultural status quo (i don't think its ever about anything that might reasonably be called trivial) and get the impression that I am being some kind of party-pooper; that it is some kind bad manners to actually criticize the status quo dynamics of a group I am actually a part of when every one knows that the way to get along is to always be criticizing Them over There, those other people and their status quo. Often enough, "them over there" really can seem to be in worse shape with respect to whatever I am saying than "we" seem to be (at least superficially), but even when such is the case, this response misses my point completely, and when people respond to a critique of mine in that way I feel extremely frustrated.
If I criticize a situation for not being good, I don't mean "good" in the sense of "Better than some other situation somewhere else", or even "better than the same situation in the past". This is because I am not assuming that the situation I am criticizing is fundamentally separate from other situations or even from what it was in the past. Rather I am assuming that whatever is happening "here and now" is fundamentally "together-with" other situtuations, and thus either a part of a general dynamic of integration, of healing,of helping that whole, (including the only relatively separate "there and then"), or a part of a general dynamic that is further dissociating, fragmenting,repressing awareness of this inclusive whole; the wholeness of "Being/Becoming".
But it's simpler to separate space from time ("here and there" from "now and then") for the purposes of explaining this.
From the temporal point of view, this difference is like the difference between the process of composting or building soil and that of erosion and disintegration of soil. Soil can be in the process of healing (because the erosion has been stopped by say, putting in erosion bars) and yet still look pretty bad for some time (considered from a merely static point of view), while, on the other hand, a certain patch of land can still look pretty good (especially when competitively compared to other more damaged land) and still be in for serious erosion in the next big rain. The erosion process still has the fundamental character of being "bad" no matter what stage of the process one is talking about and in the same way, the composting process is equally "good" at t1 or t1000 no matter how different photos of the land taken at those different times would look; each stage of the process is equally good because the process as a whole is good so the competitive comparison between one stage and another of the same kind of process makes no sense.
Thus if I criticize a state of affairs as not being "good" I am referring to which Kind of process it is currently given over to, rather than comparing it to some earlier or latter stage of that same kind of process. It might be perfectionism to expect eroded land to instantly be intact loamy soil in a climax forest but in is not perfectionism to withhold ones approval of the situation until there is some reason to believe that conditions have been changed enough so that the erosion has been stopped and things are moving back in that direction rather then further and further in the other one.
Moreover, (focusing more on the spacial than the temporal now) the process going on in the soil-building dynamic is, in subtle ways contributing to All the land around it and indirectly making it easier to reverse the erosion in whatever sick soil exists anywhere, since of course that all other land is not fundamentally separate from it at any rate. In the same way, part of something being good "Here" is its contributing to things being good "There", since "here" and "there" are only relative distinctions and not fundamentally separate. Thus "competitive justification", justifying conditions "here" in terms of them being "better" than conditions "there" also makes no sense.
Of course there are many people for whom the idea of "Good" itself is suspect and in the analogy I have presented they would probably just assume some supposedly amoral and aesthetically neutral scientific, philosophical, or or even allegedly spiritual "view from nowhere" (usually involving reference to immensities of time and space or to allegedly themeless variations between cultures) in which there is nothing to chose between composting or erosion, between good and bad. The idea of "Good" (whether it be good soil or good health or anything else) would be considered by them to be merely "subjective", "qualitative" and therefor somehow...well...not....Good (unless one is a post-modernist, in which case things are reversed but not essentially changed). Of course in such objections the now "four-letter" word "Good" would be replaced by a bunch of other, usually longer, words and accompanying circumlocutions that amount to the same thing but are dedicated to the end of preventing such views sounding as silly as they otherwise would).
The present post is not meant to be primarily a response to such people and arguments and I only mention them to suggest that assumptions of primary apartness (this time the primary separation of "the Objective" and "the Subjective"), as well as a corresponding version of competitive justification are also at play here as well. After all, if the subjective and the objective are not fundamentally separate but (like,here and there, and now and then) co-manifest and mutually defining, then judging one of them better than the other (whether or not one is willing to admit to doing this) also makes no sense.
Now, there is much more to all of this and its actually very hard to express all of it well in the language available, so the fact that I am usually being misunderstood in this matter of "Goodness" is not exactly a surprise. I suppose its just a part of the sort of cognitive dissonance and "culture shock" that is inevitable between someone consciously committed to the Life-Logical assumptions of primary togetherness and others unconsciously committed to assumptions of primary apartness. Moreover, since I am actually a member of both of these categories of person, I am sure I complicate and confuse matters considerably sometimes by not being consistent in my conscious understanding, that is, by not being consistently conscious. At the same time, life-logically speaking, I don't suppose I would be very useful if I wasn't really as prone to sick culture as everybody else.
(Even just my putting it in that way might invite this phony, static, competitive thing all over again in some people, but I don't think there is really any sure way to avoid a competative, alienated spin being put on what I am saying since, in a culture of apartness, thats what people do with everything. All I can do is hope that there is and remains in this post --and in all my writings--more encouragement and nourishment for what is Good in both myself and you the reader than for the sick culture in us both).
So, to sum up for now: For someone conscious of primary togetherness, "The Good" (whether in morals, or aesthetics or anything else) is the "Integrative Good"; the Good that Helps the whole to be Good. In other words, entity or situation "A" cannot be justified in terms of being better (whether in a specific respect or generally) than entity or situation "B" (which of course could then try to justify itself by being better than "C", which could... and so on in a way that would reflect only the progressive diminishment and fragmentation of the whole), but is only justified when it is involved in a process of "helping" B, and not only "B", but equally the whole "alphabet" as it were (including itself). By the same token, "A" is not "bad" (unjustified/unjust) because it is "worse" than "B" in some specific or even general respect, if in a general sense "A" is involved in such a mutually helping integrative process, whatever stage of such a process it happens to be at. Thus, cognitive assessments in terms primarily of "Better, Best, Worse and Worst" are totally different from assessments in terms of "Goodness" and are themselves already "Bad" (that is already part of a disintegrative process inwardly and outwardly), since they already assume and reinforce the illusion primary separation.
Also, (and this is, I guess, more of an elaboration than a summary), from this dynamic and paradoxical point of view, "A" (or any other "letter") is itself not a static or monolitic entity any more than it is a fundamentally separate one, thus both the Good and the Bad coexist "equipotentially" in every entity and every specific living situation and manifest only in terms of which is primary in a given actual moment of existance. Another way of saying this is to say that both good and bad are, relatively speaking alive, and so, creatures of the " dynamic actual" rather than the potential or statistical, in as much as any inner/outer situation can be met with integrative assumptions of togetherness or with dissociated and competitive assumptions of apartness. This is more or less analogous to the way an erosion process can potentially can be reversed--and then reversed again--contingent on changes in specific actual circumstances. The process can be reversed because it is not an absolutely "pure" or finished process of erosion (or soil building) at all, but contains within it its own opposite, which can always, in certain circumstances regain the upper hand. It is exactly like the paradoxical sense in which, although everybody does have "a piece of the Lie" and a "piece of the Truth", in any specific situation one or the other of these is Primary, so that one and the same person can be, in a Truthful moment, consciously acknowledging, engaging and healing their own "piece of the Lie while in the next moment they can be possessed by that same piece of the Lie, and so repressing and dissociating from it in a fit of phoniness.
Well that's not the best summary in the world (for example, I am fudging an important distinction between the "integral" and the "integrative" here; the next time I come in the neighborhood of this subject I will be more explicit on this point.), but it will have to do for now. Next time also, this same general idea will be treated and elaborated on in the context of applying the "Integrative Good" more explicitly and practically to the idea and ideal of Justice and specifically in terms of what I am calling "Integrative Justification".
I-P
postscript:
In a previous post I spoke of "Goodness" as one aspect of a four-fold "Virtue" which also includes "Truth", "Beauty", and "Life". My dealing here with this aspect of the Good relatively separately should in no way be taken to reflect some change in that view. In fact, each of the other 3 aspects of this quintessential "Virtue" (and of course that "Virtue" itself) share the same non-competitive, mutualitistic, paradoxical and integrative quality that I am ascribing to "Goodness"( I have shown this somewhat even here in the present post as regards the aspect of virtue I call "Life"). Things could not really be other wise. Its because if this fundamental and paradoxical togetherness of "Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Life, that "Good Sense, Good Taste, Good Will, and Good Faith all go together.
If I criticize a situation for not being good, I don't mean "good" in the sense of "Better than some other situation somewhere else", or even "better than the same situation in the past". This is because I am not assuming that the situation I am criticizing is fundamentally separate from other situations or even from what it was in the past. Rather I am assuming that whatever is happening "here and now" is fundamentally "together-with" other situtuations, and thus either a part of a general dynamic of integration, of healing,of helping that whole, (including the only relatively separate "there and then"), or a part of a general dynamic that is further dissociating, fragmenting,repressing awareness of this inclusive whole; the wholeness of "Being/Becoming".
But it's simpler to separate space from time ("here and there" from "now and then") for the purposes of explaining this.
From the temporal point of view, this difference is like the difference between the process of composting or building soil and that of erosion and disintegration of soil. Soil can be in the process of healing (because the erosion has been stopped by say, putting in erosion bars) and yet still look pretty bad for some time (considered from a merely static point of view), while, on the other hand, a certain patch of land can still look pretty good (especially when competitively compared to other more damaged land) and still be in for serious erosion in the next big rain. The erosion process still has the fundamental character of being "bad" no matter what stage of the process one is talking about and in the same way, the composting process is equally "good" at t1 or t1000 no matter how different photos of the land taken at those different times would look; each stage of the process is equally good because the process as a whole is good so the competitive comparison between one stage and another of the same kind of process makes no sense.
Thus if I criticize a state of affairs as not being "good" I am referring to which Kind of process it is currently given over to, rather than comparing it to some earlier or latter stage of that same kind of process. It might be perfectionism to expect eroded land to instantly be intact loamy soil in a climax forest but in is not perfectionism to withhold ones approval of the situation until there is some reason to believe that conditions have been changed enough so that the erosion has been stopped and things are moving back in that direction rather then further and further in the other one.
Moreover, (focusing more on the spacial than the temporal now) the process going on in the soil-building dynamic is, in subtle ways contributing to All the land around it and indirectly making it easier to reverse the erosion in whatever sick soil exists anywhere, since of course that all other land is not fundamentally separate from it at any rate. In the same way, part of something being good "Here" is its contributing to things being good "There", since "here" and "there" are only relative distinctions and not fundamentally separate. Thus "competitive justification", justifying conditions "here" in terms of them being "better" than conditions "there" also makes no sense.
Of course there are many people for whom the idea of "Good" itself is suspect and in the analogy I have presented they would probably just assume some supposedly amoral and aesthetically neutral scientific, philosophical, or or even allegedly spiritual "view from nowhere" (usually involving reference to immensities of time and space or to allegedly themeless variations between cultures) in which there is nothing to chose between composting or erosion, between good and bad. The idea of "Good" (whether it be good soil or good health or anything else) would be considered by them to be merely "subjective", "qualitative" and therefor somehow...well...not....Good (unless one is a post-modernist, in which case things are reversed but not essentially changed). Of course in such objections the now "four-letter" word "Good" would be replaced by a bunch of other, usually longer, words and accompanying circumlocutions that amount to the same thing but are dedicated to the end of preventing such views sounding as silly as they otherwise would).
The present post is not meant to be primarily a response to such people and arguments and I only mention them to suggest that assumptions of primary apartness (this time the primary separation of "the Objective" and "the Subjective"), as well as a corresponding version of competitive justification are also at play here as well. After all, if the subjective and the objective are not fundamentally separate but (like,here and there, and now and then) co-manifest and mutually defining, then judging one of them better than the other (whether or not one is willing to admit to doing this) also makes no sense.
Now, there is much more to all of this and its actually very hard to express all of it well in the language available, so the fact that I am usually being misunderstood in this matter of "Goodness" is not exactly a surprise. I suppose its just a part of the sort of cognitive dissonance and "culture shock" that is inevitable between someone consciously committed to the Life-Logical assumptions of primary togetherness and others unconsciously committed to assumptions of primary apartness. Moreover, since I am actually a member of both of these categories of person, I am sure I complicate and confuse matters considerably sometimes by not being consistent in my conscious understanding, that is, by not being consistently conscious. At the same time, life-logically speaking, I don't suppose I would be very useful if I wasn't really as prone to sick culture as everybody else.
(Even just my putting it in that way might invite this phony, static, competitive thing all over again in some people, but I don't think there is really any sure way to avoid a competative, alienated spin being put on what I am saying since, in a culture of apartness, thats what people do with everything. All I can do is hope that there is and remains in this post --and in all my writings--more encouragement and nourishment for what is Good in both myself and you the reader than for the sick culture in us both).
So, to sum up for now: For someone conscious of primary togetherness, "The Good" (whether in morals, or aesthetics or anything else) is the "Integrative Good"; the Good that Helps the whole to be Good. In other words, entity or situation "A" cannot be justified in terms of being better (whether in a specific respect or generally) than entity or situation "B" (which of course could then try to justify itself by being better than "C", which could... and so on in a way that would reflect only the progressive diminishment and fragmentation of the whole), but is only justified when it is involved in a process of "helping" B, and not only "B", but equally the whole "alphabet" as it were (including itself). By the same token, "A" is not "bad" (unjustified/unjust) because it is "worse" than "B" in some specific or even general respect, if in a general sense "A" is involved in such a mutually helping integrative process, whatever stage of such a process it happens to be at. Thus, cognitive assessments in terms primarily of "Better, Best, Worse and Worst" are totally different from assessments in terms of "Goodness" and are themselves already "Bad" (that is already part of a disintegrative process inwardly and outwardly), since they already assume and reinforce the illusion primary separation.
Also, (and this is, I guess, more of an elaboration than a summary), from this dynamic and paradoxical point of view, "A" (or any other "letter") is itself not a static or monolitic entity any more than it is a fundamentally separate one, thus both the Good and the Bad coexist "equipotentially" in every entity and every specific living situation and manifest only in terms of which is primary in a given actual moment of existance. Another way of saying this is to say that both good and bad are, relatively speaking alive, and so, creatures of the " dynamic actual" rather than the potential or statistical, in as much as any inner/outer situation can be met with integrative assumptions of togetherness or with dissociated and competitive assumptions of apartness. This is more or less analogous to the way an erosion process can potentially can be reversed--and then reversed again--contingent on changes in specific actual circumstances. The process can be reversed because it is not an absolutely "pure" or finished process of erosion (or soil building) at all, but contains within it its own opposite, which can always, in certain circumstances regain the upper hand. It is exactly like the paradoxical sense in which, although everybody does have "a piece of the Lie" and a "piece of the Truth", in any specific situation one or the other of these is Primary, so that one and the same person can be, in a Truthful moment, consciously acknowledging, engaging and healing their own "piece of the Lie while in the next moment they can be possessed by that same piece of the Lie, and so repressing and dissociating from it in a fit of phoniness.
Well that's not the best summary in the world (for example, I am fudging an important distinction between the "integral" and the "integrative" here; the next time I come in the neighborhood of this subject I will be more explicit on this point.), but it will have to do for now. Next time also, this same general idea will be treated and elaborated on in the context of applying the "Integrative Good" more explicitly and practically to the idea and ideal of Justice and specifically in terms of what I am calling "Integrative Justification".
I-P
postscript:
In a previous post I spoke of "Goodness" as one aspect of a four-fold "Virtue" which also includes "Truth", "Beauty", and "Life". My dealing here with this aspect of the Good relatively separately should in no way be taken to reflect some change in that view. In fact, each of the other 3 aspects of this quintessential "Virtue" (and of course that "Virtue" itself) share the same non-competitive, mutualitistic, paradoxical and integrative quality that I am ascribing to "Goodness"( I have shown this somewhat even here in the present post as regards the aspect of virtue I call "Life"). Things could not really be other wise. Its because if this fundamental and paradoxical togetherness of "Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and Life, that "Good Sense, Good Taste, Good Will, and Good Faith all go together.
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