This was supposed to be a comment at the Wall Street Journal. It did not allow it through even after I deleted the Weezer lyrics. Who knows why?
In any event, since I typed it and can’t post it, here is a post related to this interview.
I’ve been reading economics a lot, and it has taught me to not just look at what did happen, but also for what did NOT happen, and why. Crime is equally an absence of lawfulness, as lawlessness is an absence of order.
Some years ago I was driving to Indianapolis in the winter when it occurred to me that while we can easily imagine degrees of evil, we cannot so easily imagine degrees of goodness. Evil, in the popular imagination, is more or less doing anything other than play fair, and becomes worse quantitatively: the more crimes you commit, the worse you are.
It is this fundamental lack that has made the serial killer a hero in many movies, like Hannibal and the Saw series. He (or she) is non-bourgeois, where normality is being stuck behaving in the a corner somewhere, treading an endlessly dull hamster wheel. Think Steve Buscemi at the end of Conair. Or, as Weezer put it:
I can’t work a job
Like any other slob,
Punchin’ in and punchin’ out and suckin’ up to Bob
Marryin’ a bitch,
Havin’ seven kids,
Givin’ up and growin’ old,
And hopin’ there’s a god.
In any event, this set off a long series of reflections on the nature of Goodness. How do you become “Gooder” and what is the advantage of this, relative to seeking power and sensations?
My short answer is that the stronger pleasure you feel in being alive, and in sharing in the joy of others, the “gooder” you are. Happiness can be exponential. It is a matter of luck, but living right enables you to buy a lot of lottery tickets, up to all of them. The end result of sharing Buddha’s tenet that all of our lives fall far short of what is possible–that life is suffering, in the popular translation–is to further it. I see no end to this path.
For those with an interest, I have published much of my thought here: http://www.goodnessmovement.com