One year. It seems like a long time, but this morning as I contemplate the task I've given myself, 365 days feels far too short. That's because I've finally launched my expedition into the realm of morality and the human soul. My quest is to discover the answer to what I suspect may be an impossible question: What is goodness?
This is the kind of question that sends you down the rabbit hole where one question leads to another and then another. What is "good"? What is a good person? Can I be good if I do what's right for myself and for others? If so, then what the heck does "right" mean? Is what's right for me, the same as what's right for you? Are there times when that varies and times when that's the same? Is what's good in one culture the same as what's good in another? Should it be? Can I harm another human being by doing what I think is right? How can I tell when my good becomes evil for someone else? How can a society (better yet, my society) become good? Is that even possible? What would a good society look like? Can we even conceive of that? Why not?
And so one and so on...
I suspect that to truly answer these questions would take a lifetime. All I can do is find the best answer I can in a mere year. As crazy as this seems, I'm looking forward to this quest. These are questions that have baffled me, and in some ways haunted me for decades. I'm thrilled to finally be giving myself the time and permission to look into them.
The logbook of my quest is my new blog, In Search of Goodness. That's where I'll be doing most of my blogging in the days to come, although I'll continue to post periodically on In This Moment. Within the next week, in fact, I plan to begin posting excerpts here from an unpublished interview with writer Karen Joy Fowler that I conducted several years ago at WisCon.
Please come by for a visit at In Search of Goodness. Check out the new digs, and most importantly, let me know your answer to my question: What is goodness?
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