Good
I have no objection
to most uses of this word. The pizza was good is a perfectly valid,
if subjective, statement as far as Im concerned. (That is, as long as
were all aware that its subjective and its OK for me to
not like the pizza, even though you think its good.) What really gets
up my nose is Good with a capital G the kind
thats the opposite of Evil with a capital E.
Personally, I dont think Good works as a descriptive term
for much. Life is just too complex. I cried at my parents memorial service
and someone said, She was a good daughter. Maybe it was a sweet
sentiment but it was as meaningless a compliment as I could think of. Good
because I was crying? (Right at that moment crying for my own sorry ass and
my loss and certainly not for my parents at rest in the ground...) Good
because I was attentive while they were alive? (Somebody had to do stuff for
them, and Im an only child...) Good because I never complained?
(Maybe they just didnt know me well enough to hear it...)
This may sound like a small-time gripe, but project it out for a moment to
Thats a good philosophy or Mine is a good Goddess
and attach all the same almost invisible strings that came with the Good
Daughter statements. Nothing is ever simply good.
What this breeds is the same kind of amorphous absolute-sounding-but-actually-subjective
view of the world as the loose use of the word Evil. But its
really more insidious because its usually packaged in the form of a
compliment.
What to do about it? Watch your mouth and your thinking will follow after.
Try to love the complexity and subjectiveness in your life and precision in
your speech. These arent easy things to do and I tend to doubt that
anyone is ever completely successful at it. But striving to eliminate those
useless words Good and Evil from our everyday vocabularies
would be a start!
Norma Hoffman
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