Doing good or "doing" good

The last few weeks of travelling have brought about some different perspectives. One of the things is that I realise that there are two types of people or ideal types. One type of person aspire to be good which means that they want to do only good things regardless of the consequences- believing in divine intervention in the course of live. Another type of people aspire to be useful. This means that they are agnostic to beliefs and believed that being useful and utilitarian in their belief should be a way of life. That means they disregard superstitions, traditions and culture and believed that the furthering of human good should be the only criteria. To them seeing is believing.

I used to belong to the latter group. This means that I have almost no regard for norms so long as they useful for myself or for the general good. I am not narcissistic in the sense that I only care for my own welfare but I also consider the general welfare or good of other's in general as well. Take for example, I would sometimes put my relationships with other's in jeopardy if I feel that telling them in a strong way would have a better effect than a soft approach.

But as I grew older, I begin to realise that maybe I was wrong in assuming that my point of view would be the correct one. And I begin to take a softer approach. I would begin to be more tactful in my ways and do not assume anyone who does not see my point of view are simply dogmatic in their ways.

At the same time, my belief in myself as the controller of my destiny began to be questioned in that I began to see that there are certain things not within our control and sometimes, the world can conspire in a way which would reward those who did good and punish those that have done bad or evil things. These are things that we cannot see nor foresee and the universe has a way of making things right and I began to believe in "divine" intervention- not that God has a hand in the things but rather the universe has it's way of righting the wrongs and rewarding the righteous. This was something that was not knowable to the human mind.

But such an approach was such a passive one that it leaves one quite not in control of one's lives and leaves one quite out of touch with reality sometimes. At the same time, having approaching things from the perspectives of working for my rewards, at times, it goes against my instinct of working for things. But at the same time, I begin to realised that my life has been cleansed in the sense that life was much less complicated and I do not chase for the material things that I was so used to be going after. I can feel the effects of both sides.

I think the lesson we can take away from this is that for the intelligent, who believed that self-hood is the one only way to good, one might take a step back and see that sometimes, simply doing good is simply a direction towards self-enrichment. To those that thinks doing good was the only way forward, perhaps seeing alternatives would already be a way of doing good in itself.

As for myself, I am still trying my best to internalize both perspectives and hopefully I can come up better out of this.

Inside Out

It has been some time since I have written anything as I have been trying to get back to the groove of things after being away for two weeks. I was at the bookshop on Saturday, trying to get some ideas on things to write today when I realised that every time I learn something or I write something down,  my perspective changes and along with some parts of my personality. This means that I am no longer the same person every time I encounter something new- for better or for worse.

Going further, I begin to realise that how little some people have changed over the years in spite of so many impending changes in their lives. They seem to have remained the same person over the so many years. Are they resistant to changes or are they simply dogged in their perspectives on life.

I was watching the cartoon " Inside Out" on cable the other day, and it shows how people have changed as they begin encounter different emotions in their life, how certain memories are destroyed and then rebuilt again into more beautiful "islands" again coloured by different emotions of both "joy" and "sadness". It then dawned on me that could these people be simply coloured by the same emotion all the time, unwilling to let "negative" emotions into their lives and make their lives more colourful. So much so that their lives have remained the same all these time.

It is my belief that there are some people whom are so dogged in their beliefs and so set in their goals that they are incapable of a range of emotions that would have made them more "human" and their lives more colourful. It is as if their blunt tool of facing everything with positivity made them a cartoonish personality which are incapable of complex emotions. In pursuit of their goals, they are willing to forsake imbuing meaning into their lives. It is like their pursuit of outward and material rewards have made them less "human" and more two dimensional.

Maybe, I have not spoken to them in years, but my impressions of them online and brief encounters face to face gave me an impression that they have not changed over the years. Overpoweringly positive, almost devoid of human emotions. Or maybe, they prefer to keep their negative emotions out of the public eye and keep to themselves in private but what mental conditions would have arise should they keep such private/public divide so distinct.

I have learnt over the years to keep some of my negative thoughts and emotions out of the public eye as they might negatively affect someone but nonetheless, I have always acknowledged them and aim to overpower them with positive thoughts. But this is not before experiencing a whole myriad of emotions and displaying them quite overtly. This meant that I have experienced a whole lots of negative thoughts before I decided that some of them should be kept out of the public eye. I have a range of emotions but for some of them are simply suppressing their emotions just for the sake of portraying a positive image to everyone.

We should embrace these changes in our lives, acknowledge our fears and biases and fully experience what life has to offer us. We should be positive but not before acknowledging the facts in our lives and that we are emotional creatures as well.

I hope for those whom embraced a positive way of life to also try to include those negative emotions in their life. Embraced them and make them a positive force in your life. 

No Post for 2 weeks in August

Hi all,

I won't be writing any posts for the next 2 weeks as I will be travelling.

I will be back on the third week of August.

Cheers,

Eugene