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Goodness

Goodness is not niceness. One of the most subtle and pernicious ways of undermining the notion of Goodness is by equating it with banality, with Ned Flanders, with goody-two-shoes, with boredom.

A truly Good person, on the contrary, is relentlessly alert, relentlessly engaged, passionate about what they do, and open to experience.

It is bad people who are dull: they are stuck in tedious manias, endless rage, and an inability to process experience. In the end, the “greatest” sadists this world has ever known were incapable of more than evanescent enjoyment, and that at a very low grade level.

This is an important point. Jesus went after the money changers with a whip because they deserved it. There is nothing meritorious about being an affect-less doormat.