What is the Nature of Good?
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The Interrogation of the Good
By Brecht
Step forward: we hear
That you are a good man.
You cannot be bought, but the lightning
Which strikes the house, also
Cannot be bought.
You hold to what you said.
But what did you say?
You are honest, you say your opinion.
Which opinion?
You are brave.
Against whom?
You are wise.
For whom?
You do not consider your personal advantages.
Whose advantages do you consider then?
You are a good friend.
Are you also a good friend of the good people?
Hear us then: we know.
You are our enemy. This is why we shall
Now put you in front of a wall. But in consideration
of your merits and good qualities
We shall put you in front of a good wall and shoot you
With a good bullet from a good gun and bury you
With a good shovel in the good earth.
Thanks to Categories+Sheaves
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Love comes to here in time,
and numbers all the things
of Beauty in the house.
A single room is shown to be
– a Unity, within and every where.
No point of view is stood apart.
No word is made to say,
this space is empty,
or, this place is full.
Only Light Itself is come
– a meerest Touch of Brightness
neither mind nor body can deny.
It the feeling-hearts explanation of Reality.
It is Reality, plain spoken to the feeling heart
– and by the Heart alone.
It is the Beautiful, Itself.
The happening of Truth and therefore necessarily The Beautiful too is not through the mind – it is at the heart.
Truth is not a proposition argued over against other propositions.
Truth is self-evident, because the feeling-heart authenticates it in the moment of reception.
Truth is an embrace, just as love is. You do not get argued into love. It is self-evidently right.
One responds to Truth as one does to love, simply through recognizing it. It is not about argument, not about the domain of mind and its endlessly multiplied dualistic litanies of yes/no/maybe.
I hereby interttupt my bacchanalian partybus ride though tbe D.C. Metropolitan area to bring you the following message:
The other commenter can suck my Willliam Bronk. While I’m touched by this gesture, I have to note that I would have chosen a fistful of Bukowski if I had known the relevant contextualization in advance:
there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day
and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace
those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love
beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average
but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect
like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock
their finest art
Bravo, Aurini, bravo.
I find that poem by Bukowski, “The Genius of the Crowd”, to be ironic. On one hand I think it’s very insightful, but I also think it’s rather sad. Many who preach love do in fact have a lack of it – that’s why they explore it. They find a hole within themselves and struggle to find it again and again until, for some of them, they find it and begin to acknowledge love in their lives once again (though the trick is to realize it comes from within, not from preaching and not from stating their belief for external validation). The twisted ones are the ones who preach endlessly as if they’ve found love, but really are just continuously seeking validation because they’re so deeply hurt that they can’t or won’t come to terms with the hurt inside them (I think this is the plight of many of the ugliest liberals). Bukowski on the other hand seems to grow more bitter and jaded, rejecting any notions of further change or struggle while simultaneously lamenting his own struggles – like one who can’t move on from the past. In my opinion, that’s not noble, but sad and pitiful.
“Truth is an embrace, just as love is. You do not get argued into love. It is self-evidently right.”
I believe this to be the nature of virtue. It is not learned via socialization or coercion. It is right because it is. It creates a positive narrative for us that we can see as individuals.
you may be interested in looking at the usage of “Good Men” as portrayed in Sarah Hoyts “Darkship Thieves” and “A Few Good Men”
It’s used as a bitter joke. They are utterly evil.
Incidentally – the “Good Man” as you describe him sounds like a subset of “Nice Guy”.