Do No Harm vs Do Good
I know this is sort of a side rant of a topic, but I had a bit of a revelation the other day that I want to share. I was walking home from work, minding my own, trying to find some shade (the sun can be brutal here!) when for whatever reason I started thinking about the concept of Do No Harm vs Do Good.
I have no idea where it came from, but this why I like walking everywhere – and why I don’t wear headphones when I walk – I have ideas. This just come to me out of the ether. Although maybe if I did wear headphones, more of the ideas and thoughts and ruminations would stick around a little longer before leaking out my ear…
Anyway, I promised to try and be more focused with my posts and I have every intent to do so. Do No Harm vs Do Good. That sounds like some sort of religious parable, and I’ll be honest, my thoughts at the time this came to me were mostly religious in nature. However I’m looking at this concept from a strictly secular point of view. How do you define ethical behavior?
Until recently, I would have defined ethical behavior as pretty much anything that didn’t lead to harm coming to others. Those others could be fellow humans, domestic pets, non-domestic farm animals, wild animals, insects, invertebrates, or amoebas. Basically, I defined ethical behavior as Do No Harm. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this definition, it’s just that I found something lacking. You can go through your whole life, from childhood through adulthood and right up until your passing, and do no harm to anybody. Does that make you an ethical being? Or does that make you a hermit?
I don’t want to wake up one day late in my years and realize that I’ve been a hermit my whole life. So what does all this mean and what happened to that fabled focus? here we go:
Do Good
Two little words. They seem so simple sitting there. So obvious. and yet how do most of us miss them?
To be a truly ethical being, you have to mix some Doing in with your Not Harming. It’s active vs passive. And I’m tired of being passive. What action am I planning on taking? Slow down, I haven’t gotten that far yet. Thisis just a recap of the ruminating I did on that walk earlier this week. I’ll begin sorting out my thoughts and see what filters down and what gets stuck in the mesh.
Meanwhile, how do you define Ethical behavior? How do you balance Do No Harm with Do Good?
Great idea!! I think too often we think by not doing anything we help the situation but in a lot of ways we must do something to progress.
David Damron
LifeExcursion
Ummmmm… I’ve been having some similar thoughts as we move out of a pretty horrible decade, and have the opportunity to make a better one. Not many answers… just a lot of thoughts, but I agree: be active in your goodness! Thanks for the thought.
I’ve been thinking about the same things recently and I didn’t reach any definite conclusions. When I think of focusing on myself my whole life (not helping nor harming others), something doesn’t feel right about it. It’s like a have this urge to do something good for others, or for humanity in general.
It may sound pompous, but the more knowledge I gain and the more conscious of my actions I become, the more I want to do good rather than just do no harm. But doing good might actually be selfish too: doing good gives me more satisfaction and makes me feel good about myself. But I guess doing good for selfish reasons is better than doing no good at all, after all…
“Do Good” is so easy, really. Just wish more people would pick up on that!
Great thought, Jesse! When I’m focused on doing good, I’m focused on giving. I ask myself, “What do I have that others are in need of?” Sometimes it’s as simple as listening. The more I give, the more I realize how blessed I am.
@ Dave – You got it exactly right. It’s that difference between passive and active that really hit me.
@ Christine – I’m trying to focus on life on day by day basis…without loosing sight of the bigger picture. it’s confusing to say the least! But I would love to see some major changes happen in this decade as well, and I’m going to see what I can do to assist in that goal!
@ Andrew – Not pompous at all as far as I’m concerned! Theoretically the more knowledge we have, the more good we can do!
@ David – you would of course hit on the major sticking point!
@ Sunny – I’m in the process of getting my thoughts in order so I can expand on this idea. I’m trying to go beyond the usual ways of giving, into more unconventional definitions…stay tuned…;-)
@ everyone – Sorry for the delay in responding, for some reason WP didn’t alert me to these comments until just now, as I was responding to one on another post…ggrrr