Good returns (or does not return)

The breakthrough of the year is perfect for reasoning about the subject of good. It just so happens that in December and January, many of us truly remember that on the left side there is simply a heart. Christmas, fresh Year’s resolutions – you know. And it is during this period that it is peculiarly loud that erstwhile we activate our heart and bring any good to the earth, it will come back to us. What precisely could that mean?

Language abounds in proverbs and sayings that have as much in common with fact as I do with cosmonautics. Example one: “The fact lies in the middle.” The fact lies where it lies, all erstwhile in a while it may actually come out at an equal distance between the 2 positions, but there is no regulation in this. “Good returns” seems to me from this category: a repeated phrase, whose adequacy is not clear at all. He besides supports a self-interested ethics, which always increases my suspicion.

For good rewarded for evil punished

I think the slogan “good returns” contains 2 main assumptions. First, metaphysical, which sees any mechanics in the universe to identify the good, its flawless attribution and return. specified optics claim the right to describe the spiritual or quasi spiritual rule of justice, where for good we are rewarded and punished for evil. It is impossible to discuss this approach if the parties present a different view of the operation of this “returning good system”. Disputes on the stake can be suspended in specified a perspective, even more so, that the gratuity, as it is presented, can be far distant in time and space. How can we show or deny any relationship? In the final version, this causality is to be applied even to the afterlife (and this postponement should be measured at a completely different level). many examples of the fact that good does not return, do not seem to do anything against specified arguments.

Good – an illustration utilized in Warehouse No. 10/2024. Author Ada Zielińska.

Trade in good

The second option seems more promising to me in light of a possible polemic. It's about the social side of returning good. There are well-known principles of reciprocity, which by anthropology has already been seen in simple, illiterate communities – it is simply a alleged cultural popularity, independent of dimension and latitude. In this sense, donating the good is simply a social “zirant” of receiving the return. This, of course, has its structural conditions, starting with the request to know who the good returns to. For example, the Maori culture believed that the gift contains the spirit of the talented individual and should definitely return to the donor. To a peculiar person! But even if any acts of good stay anonymous, commitment to others builds in a group or community a peculiar image of a person. It's something I'd call being worthy of a generalized address to the good. In this way, social capital is built, which, at the time of trial, can simply aid a man. Of course there are no guarantees here, the automation of returning good does not exist. It is alternatively a question of the probability of increased virtuous everyday life. That's the simple principles of social life.

The problem remains for me. ethicswhich rises to foretell that good is coming back. It's specified good-interest based on cold calculation. I consider trade in good to be a powerful extermination of the thought of gift itself (to usage the language of Marcel Mauss, a French anthropologist and sociologist). On 1 side there are costs, on the another side there is simply a benefit – it must bind. This reminds me of volunteering in the eighth grade simple school, for which you get extra points in your advanced school recruitment. You don't request to be an alpha and an omega to know what specified a mechanic translates into: calculating, cynicism, and hypocrisy. Of course, this does not happen in all cases, but believe me (and I worked with youth on school volunteering for a fewer years), the appearance of good then reaches the peaks. If the expected return of good (all due to it) is the key motivation to do it, we bury the reflexes of the heart and cram in the costories. In the long run, it seems alternatively tiring to me.

Does good return, then?

Once so, erstwhile not, erstwhile is actually a reciprocated act, and erstwhile a random interplay of events. We most likely know many cases of nobility, but besides vileness, which did not turn into anything they deserved or turn into something completely opposite. Machinically, boomerangs and rashes come back. The slogan “good returns” is like many of his akin attempts to oversimplification the planet and to give it a peculiar run (also through marketing runs). I get it. But I besides know that, like any social phenomenon, good requires a description of dense, revealing various conditionalities, free from dogmatism and, above all, noticing the variability of human motivations. I think that the hard fact is socially better than the persuasion of the nature of the world. Magical reasoning is inactive good, but his strength in regulating our collective lives is already very ambiguous. Sometimes it's just plain harmful. In this sense, “good returns” does not sound more sensible than “good is OK”.