I am inclined to agree with Beagles. We're not the Shadow and we cannot look into the hearts of men. If the good deed is done that should be good enough for society, and indeed there is no law that you have to have goodness in your heart, you just have to do what society thinks is good. But Beagles adds that it's not as good as doing the right thing for its own sake.
Let us consider cats and dogs, solitary and social animals. Myself, I don't like it when animals do tricks, something just a little bit too authoritarian for my tastes. Let us further consider the Rock Cats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5Oko13Le44 You'll note that there are no Rock Dogs, and I suspect that dogs might not be able to carry a tune, but they could surely do a better job than those cats. We've all seen dogs do tricks and it's pretty ho hum, but cats, not so often and usually not as well. Animal trainers will tell you you can get a dog to do a trick just by giving him a good boy and an ear rub, but with cats you have to come up with the treat every time, or the cat soon loses interest.
The dog is pleased to please his lord and master, the cat demands a treat on the barrel head. In that sense the dog is being gooder than the cat. I suppose one could quibble that doing a good deed for your lord and master is not quite as good as doing it just for its own sake. In religion I have always wondered why one should worship God just because He is all-powerful and created everything, including us, I mean it doesn't necessarily mean that He is a good Guy.
But we won't go there today. I think that what we think of as a really good person, a person who does good for its own sake rather than the banana split, gets pleasure out of doing good. So in that sense is he really being really good? Isn't he just doing it for a mental rather than actual banana split?
Maybe that's like a how many angels can dance on the head of a pin question, or what Beagles has referred to as a bull session, the sort of thing that guys do late at night in an army barracks or dorm room. Say Joe, did you ever think about why... You know your church and your school and your political leaders are always preaching at you, and you are a young guy and they don't like it when you talk back, and you don't really want to do that either because it will just make the preaching go longer. Once you get away and start ruminating on what they said, it doesn't make that much sense, it doesn't hold together, so when it's just you young guys together and no old guys who would just repeat the same bullshit, you go Say Joe, did you ever think about why...
I agree again with Old Dog that the reason sex is such a big deal is that it is disruptive. Not so much the act itself, if the girl doesn't get pregnant or some disease, no harm no foul. But if she does get pregnant, maybe the guy is a bum and there is another mouth to feed, and if she is your wife you might end up feeding the mouth of another guy's kid, and if you are the wife, maybe hubby will leave you and the kids for that hussy. But all kinds of shit happens to families, disease, bad blood, madness, but none of them seem to be as big a deal as sex. And I lied before when I said if there is no kid it's no big deal. It is a big deal. Sometimes in history more, sometimes less, but always up there. And I think it's in our genes. It's not just our elders preaching at us that sex is bad, it's something we feel in ourselves or else it wouldn't ring so loudly. Why is that?
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