Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Good and Excellence

Good and Excellence

Don’t pat your back too hard if things go well or kick your butt if they don’t. If you soar too high your wings don't just melt but you come crashing down, break through the crust of thin ice and sink into the morass. Just try and stay focused, be persistent and strive for Good and Excellence. I read a book title by a member here at WDC... “No good deed goes Unpunished.” That really got my attention. I will have to read it and get back with the writer. Before doing that however, I need to reflect on why I liked it so much.

Was it because it reminded me of the story of Job in the bible? Was it because I sense there is an eternal equilibrium between good and evil? What is “Good” anyway? What is “Evil?” For that matter what are Excellence and Chaos?

I define GOOD as knowing best and getting others to do it. This is the social definition but I also have a corollary or artistic definition. It is knowing excellence and getting others to see it. Thus the words Good and Excellence have a similar connotation but Good, is applied to how we live and Excellence applies to the fruits of our labor. One is a spiritual force and the other is materialistic.

If we do nothing, the world provides what I refer to as “The Natural Mean.” Like the default on a computer, Nature provides her own answer. We can improve on Nature’s answer or make things even worse. So, if we do something good, in a social sense, it means we improve on a situation as opposed to doing nothing at all. In the Artistic or Creative sense it refers to producing something that exceeds the natural order of things. For example writing a melody that exceeds the sound of the wind blowing through the trees. If the notes are randomly arranged they are Chaotic and resonate worse than nature's default. This means something has been created that is worse than doing nothing at all.