What's Good? #002
Feb 15, 2024
Preface: This is part two of an ongoing series. I suggest you read "What's Good 001" before jumping into this one.
As a refresher, in the last article we chatted about where the idea of "good" and "bad" came from. Not linguistically or philosophically, but inherently. Things that hurt or killed you were "bad." Things that did the opposite of that, things that helped you, or your group, survive and thrive were "good." This binary approach to "good" and "bad" often leads us to "too much of a good thing" which then turns the "good" thing "bad". This approach was fine for a time, but we now change the world so quickly and on such a scale that our trial-and-error approach to progress is quickly becoming unviable. We now, more than ever, need to be intentional and exercise restraint in how we change the world to avoid pinballing back and forth between potentially disastrous extremes.
Our short-sighted, mostly reactive, method of wayfinding "good" must be replaced with a more thought-out and intentional approach. If you know where you are, your origin, and you know where you are going, your destination, charting paths and making plans becomes significantly easier. We don’t have the luxury of a clear path, though, since we are dealing with vague definitions of consensus-built constructs. In effect, we must create our own map even while we’re wandering in the wilderness. Unfortunately, this first step of establishing a destination has been tripping up humanity for... well, forever. Rather than treating "good" relatively, humanity has tried, in myriad ways, to find a single universal definition for "good" and then used that label to categorize everything. This binary way of thinking is incredibly convenient for our primordial brains that need to quickly categorize things into "dangerous" and "helpful." However, the binary decision matrix quickly breaks down when faced with the complexities of relatively modern society. The fallacy of some underlying ultimate definition of "good" is one that must be dispelled if we're to make meaningful progress advancing society.
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Quick aside: I do, however, believe it is a vital exercise that you take the time to define "good" for yourself. It is no coincidence that many of the world's greatest thinkers throughout time have constructed their own idea of "good" through personal lists or codes to live by. Aristotle and Ben Franklin each penned their famous lists of virtues and Marcus Aurelius authored his meditations. Religions, worldwide, abound with attempts to codify good in various forms; Jesus' Ten Commandments, Siddhartha's Eightfold Path, and Dong Zhongshu's sharing of Guiding Principles and Constant Virtues are just a few examples. Other creatives leave behind works that share their model of good, like Maya Angelou's body of work or Ashikaga Yoshimasa's reflection of the beauty of imperfection, which became known as Wabi Sabi. It is critical you take the time to define "good" for yourself. Equally important is that you not mistake your personal concept of good for an absolute or universal truth.
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Historically, what a society has labeled as "good" has simply been an acceptable compromise between groups that enabled them to thrive and outcompete other groups. This is why, when Norm MacDonald highlights "good's" retrospective nature - "It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?" - he's right. "Good" isn't a single truth, or an unwavering guiding light. It's flexible and adaptable. It varies with the people who have defined it and the context of their shared experience. “Good” ends up being an acceptable compromise for most of the people participating, most of the time. (Or, perhaps more specifically, the most powerful people, which gets us into competing views of "good" and conflict, which we will absolutely get into another day.)
We achieve these compromises, mostly, by participating in massive shared fictions. As Yuval Noah Harari so eloquently points out in his book, Sapiens, humanity's greatest strength lies in our ability to get strangers to collaborate through shared fictions. Shared fictions, of all types, have been a major source of unification and net "good" to get us to this point on humanity’s timeline. From our most archaic institutions, tribal councils and religions, to our most modern frameworks like our various political systems, mostly capitalist based economies, stock markets, and media infrastructure, these systems have enabled millions, and then billions, of people to collaborate and live (far more) peacefully among one another than ever before. We have, largely, managed to create abundance from scarcity, and order from chaos.
Unfortunately, because these shared fictions turned societal systems have been such powerful sources of "good" for so long, we've naturally continued to shift society in their direction. In the pursuit of perceived progress we steadily march in the direction that places more and more power in these institutions with the belief that "more is better." We now find that even these systems can fall victim to the old adage of "too much of a good thing." Looking at three of our most powerful shared fictions, most of us can feel that something isn't right with each.
Our American political system - Born out of frustration and a need to protect our young country from external threats, a representative democracy is a model that has gotten a lot right. However, it has become increasingly binary (which John Adams warned us about over 200 years ago) as the left and right compete to retain political power rather than compromise for the welfare of the nation and her citizens. This increasingly polarized political system has become a short-sighted, reality TV caricature of what political office was intended to be. Our political system, as the foundation of our legal system, controls one of the most expansive and most important shared fictions to ever exist. While the system is intended to move slowly and surely, ever churning toward consensus, when beleaguered by internal power struggles, it's already lumbering progression slows further. Government, for a few decades now, has been woefully underprepared and underfunded to check or counter the rampant progress of emerging technologies and business innovation.
Our markets - While there has always been plenty of room to take umbrage with our markets, they have been one of the few forces that enabled more people to benefit from the collective power of America's economy. The advent of 24/7 media coverage, paired with the decoupling of many markets from their actual performance or potential, has made the stock market far more of a game now than it has ever been. Public companies are increasingly worried about their stock prices, and do not have the stomach to tolerate long term risks or unpopular decisions that include short term underperformance. Even if companies have leaders who feel a societal obligation to take the organization in a certain direction, this responsibility is overridden by their duty to shareholders. The failure of our markets to hold anyone accountable for anything other than financial performance incentivizes decision makers to act in ways that often directly contradict the best interests of society at large. The buck is constantly passed - workers answer to management, management to executives, and executives to the CEO, and this is where the transfer of responsibility should end. Regrettably, the CEO is usually answerable to the board, who are answerable to shareholders, who are (mostly) interested in only a single aspect of company performance - profitability.
Our media - I've already shared my thoughts on media's negative impact on the world; specifically, the ways media paints the world to appear far worse than it actually is. While media outlets once played a critical role in informing citizens, they have been corrupted by our attention-based economy that promotes content that generates "engagement." Pursuit of advertising revenue, as opposed to any commitment to contributing to the improvement of society, has become the primary driver in editorial spaces. (Spaces often owned by corporations focused on their financial performance and stock price.)
These outsized shared fictions all interact with one another, and each compounds upon the problems of the other. An increasingly binary political system pairs wonderfully with ad based media, as soundbites intended to demonize the "other" generate air time and attention for the politician. These “got ya” moments also generate revenue for the media outlets that share the politician’s content. This cycle further incentivizes both politics and media toward engaging in and sharing the worst behavior. Media savvy corporations or executive teams learn how to game media to bolster coverage, and thereby stock prices, to manipulate markets in their favor. The problems between lawmakers and companies benefiting from the laws they enact through lobbying and insider trading have been hashed and rehashed. Despite increased awareness of the issues and flaws in these foundational systems, we have little recourse to hold any sector accountable to change or to meaningfully alter the direction of their institutional inertia, which carries us further and further from more collaborative, community-minded models.
These systems are both a major problem with how America, and seemingly much of the world, is currently operating, and are also the primary tools we have at our disposal to move ourselves to a more equitable, consensus-driven place. Is it possible to escape this Catch-22 and leverage these broken systems to reshape society while also recalibrating the systems themselves?
