As someone whose university years were spent pouring over Plato’s dialogues, I cannot overcome the urge to ask this question.
When is something good? Who decides? There are many things that people think of as being good, and many who would think the same thing is bad. For example, I think ice cream is good, some might claim - because of its sugar and high fat content - it is bad.
Are so-called binary pairs; good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, right and wrong, just and unjust, so easily differentiated?
I think capital punishment is bad, but others would disagree. Socrates would further the debate by asking something like, If someone is justly put to death, then who is harmed more, the executioner or the executed?
But, back to the original question, what is good?
When I think about ‘good,’ words like quiet, spontaneous and fleeting come to mind. Good often happens in small ways and is easily forgotten. It’s not uncommon for a person to recall every detail of some slight committed against them 20 years ago, but have difficulty in remembering something good that happened to them more recently.
We seldom acknowledge how good we have it, especially when we think we don’t. Imagine criticizing your government publicly - and who doesn’t - and then being arrested for doing so.
Unfortunately, for writers like Canadian-Iranian blogger Hossein Derakhshan - currently serving a 19-and-a-half year prison sentence in Iran – freedom of expression is a luxury. However, for organizations like PEN Canada, exiled and imprisoned writers are not forgotten and their causes are pursued until justice is served. This is good.
So is the idealism of U of T students; Brigid Burke, a fourth-year undergrad studying anthropology and sociology, and third-year undergrad Nymisha Chilukuri, studying developmental biology and religious studies. I had the pleasure of interviewing them for a story about World AIDS Day events taking place on U of T’s St George campus.
Burke and Chilukuri, and the rest of the U of T’s Millennium Project committee, have organized a People’s Ribbon Campaign, and are asking the university community to wear something red and meet them at King’s College Circle on Dec. 1st at 3 p.m. to help create the largest human-made red ribbon.
The purpose of this event is to bring awareness to the Canadian government’s lack of progress in reaching United Nations Millennium development goal number 6; to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.
They also want to inspire people to act and be less complacent when it comes to solving these problems.
For Burke and Chilukuri, giving money or buying something ‘Red’ at the Gap, are acts designed to make us feel like we’re contributing to the solution, without engaging us critically. Who among us knows how this money is spent? Me neither.
By shopping or giving money we get to feel good because we are doing something. And, of course we are, because let’s face it money is important to this fight. However, it also absolves us of any responsibility. Do you know the details of goal number 6 and why only Scandinavian countries are meeting their obligations?
What these students see are citizens, and their governments, all too willing to let corporations handle the problem. Do we know how corporations plan to halt HIV/AIDS or malaria by 2015? What are their policies, and how much will the bottom line determine their actions?
In 1994, Bill Gates established what would become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to help improve people’s health in developing nations and to provide opportunities for education to citizens of the United States.
The foundation employs over 800 people, manages a $36.4 billion trust endowment and has given $23.91 billion in research grants for things like improving soil conditions in Africa, or developing malaria vaccines. How can this be anything but good?
It can’t, unless of course the world becomes Gates’ world. But that’ll never happen. Right?
I think this is Burke and Chilukuri’s point. What will the world look like when major corporations are allowed to take-up the world’s problems without input or questioning from its citizens?
Is it wrong to question the motives of companies who establish foundations or actively support charities all in the name of doing something good?
A history professor of mine once said, “Thinking critically does not necessarily entail a rejection.”
So, the next time you’re about to do something labeled ‘good,’ think about it.
