The Good, Bad and Ugly
Posted on October 29, 2009 by Trent Strong
A word is a unit of language that represents meaning. What makes a word good or bad? Can a word or subject also mean both good and bad? It would be irrational and self-negating for a word to be both good and bad. It would be like saying “It is so good I won the lottery…” and then moments later say “This is so terribly bad! Curse you scratch offs!” It would be simple to say things are to be good, bad or neutral. Neutral would be things you aren’t involved in directly or subjected to. (Of course they can still be morally good or bad but remain neutral to your life)
An example of something neutral would be watching a car drive down the street. You could easily turn this example around and say, in fact, it would be a bad thing if you were on the road being moments away from being run over. A one hundred and eighty degree flip into the opposite direction would say it would be a good thing if you seen the car pull up and announce to you that you’re the winner of an online sweepstakes for a million dollars. However, we both know the situation could not be good, bad and neutral all at the same time. If this were the case the sentence “I watched a car drive by as I was run over and won a million dollars.” would be completely rational and logical. But anyone with a brain can tell you that a sentence like that is ludicrous.
Let’s examine the word government. Thomas Paine once suggested that “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.” Many of those in politics or those who have long heated arm-chair type debates will agree with this statement, but how can this be? In this case necessary would be a good thing. Obviously for an astronaut a rocket ship is necessary to travel in to outer-space and it also gets his goals accomplished, so the overall net worth of the word is good. At the same time however, it is evil – which of course is bad. So basically it is a good bad? This hardly makes any sense at all. It would be like a rapist pleading to a judge that he raped his victims with kindness and goodness. Logically the word government can not be both good and bad.
If it is good, then everything that happens and results from government is good as well – if it wasn’t then government wouldn’t be good to begin with. If I went out and beat up old ladies everyday for 10 minutes you could not claim that I am good because the other portion of my day I spend helping old ladies cross the street. So if this is the case murder, theft, deception, incarcerations, war and force the government does everyday is also good. This is obviously not the case as any rational person could see.
If the government were neutral then it would not affect our lives at all. Meaning no taxes, no drafts, no war, no dictations, no jails, the list could go on endlessly. This clearly is not the case as we see with the constant wrong-doings of the state.
So the only possible answer is that government, in essence, is bad. Since it can be neither good, bad nor neutral. (In that case it wouldn’t exist!) Once we distinguish the inconsistencies and contradictions in our lives then call things for what they truly are, we will be free. Until the truth is clear, fog will blind our path to freedom.
Comments (6)
Something can be both good and bad though.
For instance, chemotherapy might cure my cancer and allow me to live for 30 more years, but it also might make me feel sick.
Or a deep tissue massage might hurt while I am getting it, but afterwards it could unknot my muscles and make me more flexible for weeks.
Working out tears your muscles but they grow back bigger.
Not to mention the entire spectrum of good and bad that come along with any human relationship..
Dan,
Each have a net result though. That is what you must really look at.
If you take chemotherapy and it makes you sick and you end up dying because of it – bad.
If you take chemotherapy and it makes you sick but eventually heals you – good.
Working out too hard day after day without letting your muscles recover will result in over-training – bad.
Working out hard everyday and giving your muscles adequate time to recover and grow – good.
In a relationship with a spouse who treats you kindly 95% of the time and beats you the other 5% – bad.
In a relationship with a spouse who doesn’t beat you at all and compromises situations and issues with you – good.
Sorry to sound extremely redundant. I just want to get my point across.
The net result of having governments has been humanity thriving. We are up to a population of 7 billion now, we’ve gone through scientific, industrial and technological revolutions, etc.
What proof do you have that government has contributed to that number?
And what proof do you have that populations, standards of living and technological revolutions in a stateless society would be less than that of the state society?
I suppose in that number you don’t count in the government sponsored genocides, democides, wars, torture, declination of living, incarcerations, devaluation of ALL currencies through printing and governmental spending and artificial inflation, direct government stricken poverty, over a quarter of a billion deaths linked directly to government, so on and so on…
It would be like a medieval era doctor saying, “See, I cured your broken toe by removing your whole leg. Your toe isn’t broken anymore! Without me your toe would still be broke!”
It doesn’t seem to be coincidence that once government emerged, ten thousand years ago or so, thousands of other technological advancements followed.
Humans lived for millions of years without government and barely advanced technologically at all. We never had scientific advancement until we created organizational structures to protect and serve people.
Technology in the free market doesn’t thrive with the presence of government.
The exact opposite is true. All technological advances were made without the hands of government touching it.
Free markets are a much more powerful tool for innovation, technological advances and scientific breakthroughs.
If anything I believe government is holding back the strength of the entrepreneurial brain by laws and subsidizing the scientific and technological communities.
Besides, even if your statement were true, let’s say that government improves technological advancements and scientific breakthroughs by 15%, you are saying that 15% is worth giving government your life, your children’s life by the means of unfunded debt and liabilities, your money and labor, giving the “right” to initiate force and the “right” to bind you into an involuntary contract, a monopoly of power/violence and your freedom. This list would be fairly lengthy, so for time being I’ll leave it at this.