To be good, is it necessary to give to charity? To be religious? To believe in God? To refrain from sex?

To be good is it necessary to make a pile of money? To be successful?

To be good, is it necessary to give a dollar to that homeless person on the street that you pass by?

To be good is it necessary to be a liberal democrat? A conservative republican?

To be good is it necessary to be loyal to your country? To your religion?

My own definition of what it means to be good is that it is necessary to have a good balance between acting on behalf of yourself and acting on behalf of others. I realize that it is a very nebulous definition but it's the best I have come up with. It's almost circular reasoning because I am talking about a "good" balance, but my point there is that it isn't necessary to completely live for others, you can live for yourself too.

By my definition, someone who gives up all his money and property to the poor is not any better than someone who doesn't, because the person giving away everything doesn't have that balance, he's shifted too far to one side.

So the person who gives up everything he owns to the poor and becomes a pauper himself doesn't strike me as a good person, but rather as a whacko idiot.

So it then all becomes a matter of defining what a good balance is, a good balance between self-concern and concern for others.

Hitler fails the test. Why? Wasn't he looking out for the Aryan race? Trying to make the so-called Aryans a great race? He fails because he didn't give enough concern for the people he victimized. He wasn't considerate enough of their rights. He stepped all over them. Not a good balance.

When a CEO of a major company like Coca Cola or something decides to give himself $100,000,000 one year, that's also not a good balance. That money should be spread around more, not just to himself. So I define that as evil. Remember we're talking "good" here, and the other side of "good" is "evil". I consider it an evil act to take that much for yourself because it is always at the expense of others. For "evil" you can substitute "satanic" or "demonic".

Using value-judgment words like "evil" or "satanic" to describe economic acts may be uncommon but I do it all the time. I think it is perfectly appropriate. It dovetails well with the old saying about the love of money being the root of evil. Money symbolizes selfishness, and I am saying that selfishness isn't the root of evil, it IS evil. They are synonymous. Obviously it doesn't literally have to be about money. It can be about equities, bonds, tax breaks, property, oil, any damn thing.

It's easy to play semantics with any argument, and it ends up with someone saying "Come on, you know what my point is." English is a very inexact tool, especially when I'm using it.

I often say that government leaders should be the shepherds of God's flock (or Nature's flock, if you prefer, I don't give a shit). They are in a unique position to help or hurt us all. Their main job is about apportioning money. Getting it, spending it. And when they do so out of selfishness, they are being evil. When they see to it that they and their goombahs make out like bandits while the rest of us get screwed, they are evil. And that pretty well describes what they do all the time, so I consider America's government leaders to be evil. They aren't looking out for us. If they were, college tuition would be reasonable, credit cards would be limited to a reasonable rate of interest, and prescription drugs would cost a small fraction of what they cost now. These shortcomings of our country are the direct result of corruption and evil at the highest levels of government.

That's one of the main reasons that patriotism seems like such bullshit to me. Because what it comes down to is that patriotism is interpreted as support of devils, of selfish bastards who screw us every chance they get, and are only kind to us when they have to be, to stay in power. It wasn't the leaders of government that reduced the work week from "all day" to what it is now. They fought that, tooth and nail, with cops bashing heads of union guys, cops being the instruments of government power in that instance.

Another fault of patriotism is that it excludes. It says that only certain people are to be considered. But God made us all. I see it as an affront to God (or again, to Nature if you prefer) to put your own people above all others and care only about yourselves, your group, your nation, your religion, and so on. We are all one. The unit here is humanity, and no smaller unit will do. It is not "good" to do harm to the guy next door.

So I define morality or goodness as a good balance between acting on behalf of yourself and acting on behalf of all others. Anything that impinges on that, such as patriotism or religious affiliation, has the potential if misused to be a form of evil. For example, Germany pounding Belgium was patriotic but evil. Pagan Romans sending Christians to their deaths was evil, although it could be thought of as being in support of the Roman religion. Get it? It's simple.