What is good?

First my apologies for scripting my thought after a long time

In the last post, i had discussed about objectives. I had concluded saying that the objective must lead us to good. Before setting such an objective do we know what good is. Is good absolute or relative?

A person may think working sincerely is good, another may think drinking, smoking is good. A thief may think robbing successfully is good and so on. So if you question yourself you may think which is good for you may not be good for others. The term good becomes more of a personal asset. For the matter when we say something is good, doesn't mean it is good throughout our lives. Our tagging of good is just temporal and is time variant. For e.g. we have bought a car today. If anybody asks us how is the car? We say "It is good". Say after 5 years if somebody asks the same question, we would rather say "I am planning to exchange it with the new one". The tagging of something as good has changed with time. Another e.g. When we go to a sweet shop and eat a sweet, we feel it is good and may order for another. Some people may stop eating the second sweet but some may still go on until their love for the sweet has just saturated. So a sweet which was once a good entity may not retain its goodness after some duration. If that is the case then what is good? is it just a time varying temporal parameter? If so then how on this earth can we ever set a objective which leads us to good!

We being part of a society, a country, a species must and should have a unified definition for good which in fact is good for everyone. Good as translated in Kannada is "ಒಳ್ಳೆಯದು (spell it as 'olleyadu')" and as translated in Sanskrit is "सत् (spell it as 'Sat')" when traced back to their origin (the source word ಉಳ್(ul) in kannada and सत्(Sat) in sanskrit) means Eternal (ageless, endless) something which has no decay, no death. So can we tag something as good on this earth which must be ageless, endless, which has no decay, no death? We should also note that our Earth is not endless, it is not ageless, it has death! So can we find what is good and if at all we can find that then we can attempt to fix our objective which will lead us to good...

Goals are as different as we are

As per recent reports the total population on earth is 6.793 billion. Do you think all these people have a single goal!

In this vast world, it is difficult to find a person very much similar to another. Even if you find two very similar looking humans, they may vary drastically in many other features like their voice, tastes, listening capabilities, interests, thought process, behavior ... So with such wide and varied set of homo sapiens can we ever think of a common goal to all.

Fixing an objective/goal in one's life has to be done by each one us and no one else can decide it for us. But how will you ever know what your objective is? whether your objective is good? whether your objective is right? whether your objective is truthful?. When we cried for the first time on this earth, did we once for all decide we want to become engineers, doctors, teachers, businessmen, laborers... NO, through out our lives many people have influenced us directly/indirectly to choose the right path. Parents, Guardians, Teachers, Friends, Elders, Legends, Books ...

When we go to a store to buy clothes, food items what do we do?. We list out the commodities we want. We quantify them by counting the number of members in the family. We select them based on our tastes and interests. When we go to the store, the store keeper suggests us the commodities which match our interests. Here shopkeeper is like anyone of the above mentioned set of people. The commodities in the shop are like the different objectives and we are the people buying them in the shop. The people who inspire us to set a goal/objective are like sign boards who tell us where to go.

The objectives/goals are progressive and they get revised at each turn of our lives. It is just like climbing a hill. First we reach the foot of the hill, then we climb to certain distance and take rest, then we come close to the summit and so on. But the most important of all these is the first step we take towards the long journey. So how should the first step be? Let us take this question progressively. Let us assume the first step should be such that it should lead us to good. But what is good? How do you define good? Can you define?