About

Rationale

Why do this?

There are a great many of us who criticize, but there seem to be very few who offer proposals.  This is an effort (an admittedly crude one) to provide proposals rather than just criticize.  The hope is to provide concepts and visions that people can evaluate for themselves, provide countering visions and ideas against, and out which may come a general consensus of a common good that is worth pursuing.

Backdrop

A: This system is terrible, the worst ever.  

B: What should we do instead?

A: Ummm…..

(Crickets chirp in the background. Very long pause.)

A:  Well, restructured loquacious anachronisms dictate ameliorated recapitulation.

B:  Ah, sorry, I didn’t understand that.  What would you suggest?

(Another very long pause.  More crickets.)

A: I’ll have to get back to you.

General Rationale Notes

It is harder to have a view of the good in any one area without first having a view of the overall good.  It is difficult to set oneself in motion along a justifiable path without first having a view of the good one is aiming towards. This site seeks to provide reasonable proposals for the common good, and the understandings and beliefs that underpin them.

We must by necessity serve nature; we should all strive to serve the good.  While each person may define and pursue the good for themselves, some elements of the good affect many or require the support of many, and therefore require a shared (or common) vision of the good in order to effectively pursue it.  This site is intended to be a study of that common good.

Many have written on this topic, most far more intelligent and experienced.  However, each generation must find for itself the good as makes sense in their times and circumstances.  With the decline of religion, there seem to be few institutions or people addressing what the good is.  This site is intended to be a study of the common good.

What’s in a name?

The good?  The good is what we are all trying to find, even if what we find is so far apart that it may be unrecognizable to others.  The word “good” however is so broad and undefinable as to be almost meaningless.  In general, it is the better rather than the worse, everything we value, anything we hope for, and a general ideal to strive towards.  

We are each free (ideally) to pursue our individual version or understanding of the good as we see fit.  For example, one person may see and understand the good as playing the flute, another as practicing yoga, and another as observing wildlife.  In general, these need little support from other people for each of these individuals to pursue their own version of the good.  

There are other aspects of the good however that require more consensus from the group in order to pursue and achieve them.  For example, if we believe a good idea for a road design linking our houses should be a certain way, we need a general consensus and agreement from the group in order to effectively realize that good.  These types of the good require a shared and consistent understanding and consensus.  The word common has origins in Latin meaning shared by many or used jointly, and in Proto Indo-European conveying the sense of moving together.  It is not the intent to try to tell people what their individual version of the good may be for them, but rather to provide concepts and ideas for when we must move together.  These types of the good could therefore be called the “common good”.

The word study has origins from the Latin word studeo meaning to strive or apply oneself, or more generally to strive toward or pressing forward.  It conveys not only the action of striving toward, but also the state or habit of this work or the place where such work takes place.  Ideally this is what the this site would be, both the work of pressing forward the common good, and a place for such work to reside.  Study also happened to be one of the few TLDs still available. 🙂

Ah, thorny red petaled devil, you still smell as sweet to me.

A Note on the Third Person Singular

In this site, when referring to a single person where the gender of the person is not relevant (but rather only that it is a single person) the non gender specific singular third person pronouns shown at the right are used.  While these may be somewhat awkward and clumsy on first use, the intent is to remove the bias of using the traditional default of the male third person (“he”), and to avoid the need to write a longer form ( such as “he or she”) in order to convey the intent of gender non specificity.  

Table of Gender Non Specific Third Person Singular Pronouns

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