Moral Purity vs Moral Volume?

[OldTrees]

For those of us that believe in morality, we think there is a duty to goodness. However is that a duty to be a good person or a duty to do good deeds? Obviously those duties overlap significantly which obscures the issue. Also it is likely that the answer is somewhere in between.

[Treldon]

That's an interesting question.

Personally I don't feel any duty to do good or be good - though many probably expect me to feel either. It's simply that it is the more beneficial in the long term - plus it beats the alternative.

[Higurashi]

Some years ago when I had finally managed to calm down my own life, I sat down to get a feeling for the balance of the world in terms of destruction/construction and chaos/order, and based on my experiences I felt like the destructive side was winning. With many points and factors in consideration, I eventually decided I believed in three things (that were also rationally sound to me).
A: I, and every person, has the power to influence this balance and therefore which way the world progresses.
B: Any kind of change is better than stagnation because the potential for something is always better than no potential.
C: In the end, constructiveness and order can achieve more than their opposite.

From then on, I made an effort to help people whenever I could and over the years I ended up saving several lives.
If you believe in A, you believe humanity has power (the potential to influence the state of things).
If you believe in B, you can judge yourself and others for not doing anything.
If you believe in C, you can judge yourself and others for not doing good deeds.

Without doing any good deeds, you can't influence the state of things and therefore can't be a good person. However, someone who believes in goodness and wants to be good almost always influences others around them through example or simply through communication. This is a good deed since it carries the potential for positive change, so not doing any good deeds when you're a good person is rather difficult.

With all that said, it's not always possible to devote yourself to good deeds because your own life might not be in order yet. This is where empathy and understanding come in to suspend your judgement until a later time. Additionally, there's the question of how much you should demand of a person for them to earn the quality "good". On one hand, extremely few of us use all of our potential for good or even against stagnation. On the other hand, devoting yourself too much can affect you negatively because of neglect of yourself. It's a balancing act that only each individual can perform and be aware of.

[OldTrees]

@Higurashi
I am not sure the connection between your post and the initial question.

A rephrasing of the initial question via an example would be:
Imagine 2 people.
The first goes out and does a lot of actions with moral character(actions that can be moral/immoral) and does more good than ill. (Moral Volume)
The second goes out and does fewer actions with moral character but does much more good than ill. (Moral Purity)
Which path is better?

[Treldon]

The problem with said scenario is that it's hard to determine just how much good or ill any given action does.

For example, if you save someone from being hit by a car, and a week later that same person goes on a shooting rampage, how much good have you really done?
I know, extreme example, but it gets the point across

[Higurashi]

@Higurashi
I am not sure the connection between your post and the initial question.

However is that a duty to be a good person or a duty to do good deeds?

Without doing any good deeds, you can't influence the state of things and therefore can't be a good person. However, someone who believes in goodness and wants to be good almost always influences others around them through example or simply through communication. This is a good deed since it carries the potential for positive change, so not doing any good deeds when you're a good person is rather difficult.

It's a pretty straight-forward answer. If you want it condensed: it's the duty to do good deeds (but good people almost always perform good deeds). The rest of the post provides background to my conclusions and premises for the answers and the answers themselves to questions you've now asked as well.

Imagine 2 people.
The first goes out and does a lot of actions with moral character(actions that can be moral/immoral) and does more good than ill. (Moral Volume)
The second goes out and does fewer actions with moral character but does much more good than ill. (Moral Purity)
Which path is better?

This is a slightly different question and closer in meaning with the thread name. As I mentioned in the first post, I think there's value to any moral action compared to inaction. In order to accurately determine what the ratio of value is between volume and purity we'll want to quantify it, which proves difficult in an objective sense. We can try to do it in a subjective sense for starters.

I've personally always been the type to pick my battles and strike where I think I'll do the most good. This is because the individual energy we possess is limited and therefore the risk of mistakes increase as we exhaust ourselves trying to go for volume rather than purity. I mentioned this in my post as well. A balancing act.
Considering I think all humans have this energy distribution and mistake problem, it becomes a less individual and more general rule, which is nice as we come closer to an objective clause.

Edit: In addition, besides the chaos factor that Treldon is mentioning, there's also the question of how good the individual is at determining if an action will cause good and how much good it'll cause. A lot of people mean well but cause harm inadvertently because a lot of people are not all that bright or experienced.

[OldTrees]

The problem with said scenario is that it's hard to determine just how much good or ill any given action does.

For example, if you save someone from being hit by a car, and a week later that same person goes on a shooting rampage, how much good have you really done?
I know, extreme example, but it gets the point across

Actually this uncertainly is what grew into the question. I believe humans are inherently incapable of differentiating good from ill on any level. This prompts the question of action vs inaction (and ratios thereof). However it is harder to answer under the inherent ignorance premise and thus I asked without that premise.


@Higs
Thanks for the clarification post.

I don't think B(change is better than stasis) is self evident even from a less skeptical stance than my own. Your summarized argument(if applicable along the entire time line) seemed to measure value only in the chance for eventual total victory rather than including the value of the current progress. There are scenarios/questions where this metric is applicable(trying to reach land before you drown). However those scenarios/questions presume something that negates any incomplete progress(you drown regardless of how far from shore you stop swimming). It is not self evident that there is something similar in the case of moral progress.

However if we accept B then the question is easily answered on the side of Moral Volume > Moral Purity.

[Treldon]

I don't think we can accept B as is. Stagnation is not by default worse than any kind of change, since change for the worse is obviously worse.

And stagnation is the lack of change, not the lack of potential.

True, stagnation often turns out to be actually a slow decline, but that is still preferable to a fast decline - unless you take its potential to motivate people. But even if someone is motivated, their action or its result can still be for good or ill.

(I'm not sure if I actually got anywhere with this...)

[OldTrees]

While not applicable to all premise sets,

If you believe that humans can learn from mistakes on moral actions(aka become better at doing good by observing when they do ill), then pushing oneself to the point where you make mistakes is a way to get better. Thus collectively pushing ourselves to that point is the way to collectively improve. (Argument supplied by my mother)

While not applicable to all premise sets, it does seem pretty convincing for the premises sets where it is applicable.

[Higurashi]

Generally, mistakes are the best way to learn, aye. However, if you exhaust yourself, you also temporarily impair your ability to learn and observe. In addition, it's fine to advocate mistakes when no one else suffers from them, but in this case you have to actively involve others. I think taking input from others on how someone works is the first step if you're not sure by yourself.

That's on an individual level though. If a good person accidentally harms another good person, they should be able to understand and forgive. This means that, collectively speaking, your mother's argument is sound. That requires that the group of good people are aware of each others' goodness and willingness to understand and forgive.

This is very achievable through communication, but this is when we arrive at the classic societal problem: how do you unite people? The answer has, historically, been a clearly defined belief system. This is why you'll often find me partial to confucianism (which is even based on the idea of a perfect society through "beautiful conduct", but isn't without flaws), taoism and even buddhism, rather than religions with deities.