On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time. - George Orwell.

Really? Are you absolutely sure on that one?
If I were to ask almost any young person on the street what their long term goal was, it would probably be something like: "I want to be rich, royalty or a ninja." When you ask the average teenager their goals,you get something decidedly more short term, possibly something like this: "To get me a girl." Admittedly teenagers are also more likely to be idealists than other people and I'll talk about that another time. And when you get older you are even less likely to want to be 'good'. You're more likely to just want to just be nice and quiet in a little place somewhere until you can retire. And once you've retired then you just want to spend the rest of your life either with your family or as far away from them as possible.

I know that we can argue all night about our conception of what we laughingly to as 'good', but in all of these there is not much that isn't self-serving.
Call me a sceptic, but on the whole the best that people will do is to buy something for charity. Why do you think that so many charities have raffles? It's because they know that many people will pay to have a chance to get something, and it's cheaper than buying lots of things and selling them at a profit. Some people may have a weekly or monthly donation thing worked out with some charity, but that's a non event; on the whole that is a small part of a disposable income that goes out on a direct debit system so that you never actually see it.
I was talking to a friend about a similar issue, the issue of beggars. He said that it was so sad that no one ever gave them anything, to which I replied, how much do you give them?

Everyone seems to have an abstract concept of what good is, just like everyone claims to have an abstract concept of what bad is (or more precisely a strongly formed concept that essentially comes out as what I think isn't good), but then everyone settles for second best or neutral. Sure, we can justify it; justifying what we do is one of the easiest things possible - prison is full of innocents who committed a crime. But justification is a cop out. Our justifications always come short. Things like "I'll help later", or "I can't afford it at the moment" don't hold much water because we won't help later, and we can afford it now.

But anyway... Yeah.

In saying that, George Orwell has struck upon something. We don't want to be bad (which points to a natural law sort of thing). Our definition of bad tends to be (to steal a word from Orwell) Un-good. So we can claim that we want to be good in general. It's just that we manage to fail sometimes and we want a bit of leeway so that we can do other things without feeling too bad about it.

Playing a Mark

This is generally a phrase used in terms of a long con act, the mark being the target and playing being the con. Over the last few months I've noticed again that the last half of my life has essentially been one long con played to different marks and for no real prize; kind of adds a new level to the amount of stupidity that one person can do. But that was an aside. [Editors note: Just in case you hadn't noticed yet, Alphonse has problems staying on a point]. But that out of the way, how often do you play a mark? And I'm actually curious; how often to you act as someone that you aren't for whichever purpose? Do you act differently at work than you would like to be acting? Are you an actual confidence trickster who makes his living out of being whoever you need to be?

Psychologically there's a couple of reasons that people do this. It's either out of the desire to gain an advantage, or out of the need to allay a threat, perceived or real. You see this easily in the school yard: Kids lie to get out of trouble, or they lie to gain an advantage over others (ie, cheating).
It's interesting that one of these is often considered to be a positive thing - no one complains when a kid says that his dad will beat you up if you take his lunch [Editor's note: It has obviously been a while since Alphonse was that age] - but everyone will complain if you cheat on an exam. The same action has two completely different responses.

This wasn't the point that I was wanting to get to, but it's where we are now [Editors note: Told you he couldn't stay on a point]. No move made out of weakness is viewed negatively. As a clear and obvious example, a valid defence for homicide is that it was in self defence, and I think there are now precedents that would allow pre-emptive defence in the case of good evidence for a threat. Which would mean that you can take a pre-meditated action and essentially claim that it was an instant response to information that may or may not have been true. I'm not sure if this is the actual case as I don't have to keep track of legal precedents in homicide law any more.

Anyway, the point of that part is that a move made out of weakness is applauded when the same movement made out of strength, even to prevent weakness from occurring, is frowned upon. Even against the normal fairness of the world, that don't seem right.
Just something that struck me as interesting as I started to write about something completely different.