Plutarch tells the following: An old man in the Olympic games being desirous to see the sport, and unprovided of a seat, went about from place to place, was laughed and jeered at, but none offered him the civility; but when he came to the Spartans’ quarter, all the boys and some of the men rose from their seats, and made him room. At this, all the Greeks clapped and praised their behavior; upon which the good old man shaking his hoary hairs, with tears in his eyes, said: Good God! how well all the Greeks know what is good, and yet only the Lacedaemonians practise it!

     I think of this story often.  The Greeks knew what was good, but only the Spartans practiced what was good.  I think of today and how situational ethics has seemed to undermined any absolute standard of what is right and what is wrong, and I cannot but feel some envy of the Greeks who as Plutarch claimed knew the right and the good.

          There many definitions of the word “good.”  I know that I really can’t add anything to the mountains that have already been written on this subject, so I wonder why I even talk about it.  Much of what I write on these pages is an effort to clear things up in my own mind…to help me straighten the tangles out.

          It seems to me that in order to have any concept of good one must proceed from a particular viewpoint.  The viewpoint that we all have, of course, is the human viewpoint…or at least that’s where all of our standards  begin, I think.  I find it difficult to believe that anybody knows anything about an ultimate good or evil which would be outside our experience.

     We tend to think of that which is good as being something that impacts our lives in a positive sort of way.  The absence of good is “not good,” bad or evil depending upon the severity of the impact.

   We can think of some things as being good if they impact us directly.  The satisfying of hunger and thirst, for example.   Being social primates, however, what is individually good is not always good for the group.  Many times it is, but a conflict can arise if the two are not compatible.

     From an evolutionary standpoint what is good could be considered as anything that adds to  increasing the number of our surviving offspring.  This isn’t necessarily incompatible to individual and social good, but it can be.

      The idea of what is good and not good, has expanded far beyond the individual and the group, of course.  It can be applied to the larger social group, the country, and even more inclusive, to the species.

    There has been a tendency to apply the concepts not only to our species, but also to other species, to the ecosystem, and ultimately to the Earth itself.  So it seems that what is good, and what is not good, can be applied to many different levels.  Ultimately I believe that these ideas began with the individual, and then became more inclusive.

I’m sure that most people have thought about this question at one time or another.  The answer that a person arrives at will determine his attitude towards various practices in our society.

Does a person become a person at fertilization of the egg?  We know that the oocyte is alive and that the spermatozoan is alive, but neither of course has the ability to become a person before the egg is actually fertilized and the two nuclei fuse to become a cell that has the potential to develop into a fully formed person.

If you believe in a soul, then when is this imparted to the developing ball of cells?  Does this occur at fertilization?  Does it occur at birth?  Or is it a becoming, a gradual process that occurs as the fetus develops?  If you don’t believe in a soul then substitute “person” instead.  When does a person come into being?  It gets even  more complicated when you consider chimerism, when two plus fetuses fuse to form one!  I have written about this here.

I often think of these questions when I read about the arguments for and against abortion.  Abortion opponents have it relatively easy.  They simply declare that a person begins at fertilization and are done with it.

Abortion advocates have a harder time it seems to me.  However, I assume that the abortion advocates have reached some sort of conclusion in their own minds in regards to these questions.  Since I’m sure that nobody advocates murder, then it follows that the advocates of abortion must not believe that a fertilized egg is a person.  In fact, I often hear somebody making the statement that the very early fetus is simply a lump of undifferentiated tissue, as if this proves that it couldn’t possibility be a person.  Of course any student of Embryology knows that from almost the very beginning there are intricate structures forming in the ball of cells–including a brain and heart, etc.

Since such people must not believe that an early fetus is a human, then I always wonder just when they believe a fetus becomes a person.  It is a curious problem and the ramifications are numerous. Some say that a baby really isn’t a person until it can live on its own.  However, in some cases this would mean the teenage years at least. Others say that a baby is not really a person until it has the full physical capacities of a person–until it has fully developed in other words.

I especially think about this when I read about late term abortions.  I have even heard of the fetus being “terminated” by the attending physician before it actually emerges from the birth canal.  Advocates of this practice seem to promulgate the idea that the baby isn’t a real person until it is born. Now this idea does simplify things.  It allows women “freedom of choice” and frees them from any potential guilt.  In other words it is acceptable to dispose of the baby as long as it occurs before the actual birth.  This is a nice convenient stance, almost as simple as the abortion opponent’s claim that fertilization is the beginning of the person.

However, this belief raises even more questions in my mind.  If a baby only becomes a person when it is born, then it seems a mite arbitrary in my opinion.  The only difference that I can see between the baby in the birth canal just before birth and the baby right after birth is location.

Also, just what constitutes full development in a baby?  Some used to say that the physical development of the brain didn’t cease until the baby was several years old.  However, more recent studies have  suggested that brain development doesn’t reach its full potential until twenty or thirty years old.   From such studies, some could make the argument that a person is NOT a person until twenty or thirty years of age.  This simplifies the question immensely!

Think about this a moment.  If a person is not a person until full brain maturity is reached, then we can determine with more confidence the time that personhood is reached and do away with all the previous uncertainty.

Now we can, with a clear conscience, throw our young people into the maelstrom of war.  They aren’t really people yet, so sacrificing them in this manner is perfectly excusable.  Also infanticide, or the disposing of babies after birth is now acceptable.  Newborn babies clearly aren’t people based upon brain maturity.  Capital punishment advocates now have an overwhelming argument supporting their stance if the accused is less than twenty years of age.  And so on and so on…I’m sure there are many other areas that will be impacted by this idea.

          I got to wondering what people mean when they say that a person is good.  I’m not sure why I started wondering about this.  I think it is because somebody told me that I was a good person on the same day that somebody told me that I was a despicable person.  The latter person enumerated all the things that made me a terrible person, and the other person simply said that I was “good.”

            So I was left with a list of things that made me “bad,” but I wasn’t sure about what made me “good.”  I think this is what started me thinking about the subject.  One can complete a list of things that make a person good, but after reading some of these lists that have been posted online (most by women oddly enough), I find that much of the criteria that is used seems arbitrary and shallow sometimes. 

       ”A good man puts the toilet seat down after using it.”

      Another one: “How could this person be good when he had racist attitudes?” The person was a slave holder in the 1700s (Thomas Jefferson).

       Or, “How could that man be good when he believed that his wife should stay home and take care of the children?”

      Also some said that a good man would have to be handsome!  Surely there are better criteria than these.  One thing that I have concluded is that a person should be judged by the values of the time and culture in which they lived, not by the current fashion of the day.       

      However, that being said, it seems that there are certain bedrock qualities that most societies and times would consider “good.”  I can look at my father and say that he is an outstandingly good man.  What are some of these qualities that he posseses that strike me as being particularly good?  I’ll try to make a short list of them:

A. Kindness: My father is an exceptionally kind man.

B. Considerateness:  He is exceedingly considerate of the feelings and rights of others.  Politeness could also be included under this quality.

C. Loving:  My father loved and stayed married to the same woman for sixty-six years.  Besides that he has always being very full of love for all of his family.

D. Faithfulness: Not only did he remain faithful to his wife, but he has remained faithful to his children, always supporting them with love and understanding even when he might have disagreed with them and their actions.  He has always been faithful to his beliefs also, never wavering in his support of what he has considered to be right.

E. Modesty: My father has never put himself forward, never bragged nor boasted.  He has alway remained a quiet man, never loud or obnoxious.

F.  Gentleness:  My father has always been gentle with his wife and children.

G. Honesty: I have never in any way seen any hint of dishonesty or duplicity in my father.

H. Trustworthy:  You can always trust my father…for his discretion, for his support, for his help, etc.  His word can be trusted completely.

I.  Despite being gentle and unassuming, my father has no qualms about standing forward and making his beliefs known when he feels that they need defending.  He is no Wilbur Milktoast!

    And so on and so on…one can make such lists, but when read over they seem inadquate and trite when compared to the reality.  I do believe that true goodness supercedes time and culture and is always recognized when encountered.