Is it good to be bad?

What is good, what is bad? What do we prefer, and why?

Go on, google a few antonyms.

Make it interesting, form morally opposing pairs. What do you expect to see? More of the "good" ones being searched? Certain "bad" ones getting more attention? What does it say about our own classification?  Out of sheer curiousity, I tried a couple of searches on Google  and here is what came out:

The "Good" ones outweigh the "Bad" ones, in terms of number of searches.Yes, yes , there are multiple reasons why this should be so, but the result is still there: Good > Bad.

Look at the list.

Love (Good) and Hate (Bad) are clearly the more easily classifiable ones, and do show that Good gets more search hits. The same thing happens with Happy and Sad, but what about Left and Right? Or Near and Far? The overall ratio of Good to Bad is 2.15. The individual ratios for the pairs are:

Love gets 2,68 times more hits than Hate, but the ones with the higher preference are hardly the more clearly Good or Bad pairs, like Left and Right. This might show that:

1. Classifications are purely subjective
2. Non moral considerations only can used when classifying
3. The meaning of words can change, relative to our worldview

Let´s visit these 3 things, using the first pair above: Near and Far.

Near and Far can illustrate all three points. Distance is something relative, and therefore flexible in meaning. To say that something is near or far from somewhere depends on at least two other points (in total 3), but may still not mean anything.

Clearly, in the picture, Y is far from A, while X is near. But this is neither Good nor Bad. Were we to observe just Y and X, we would not be able to even tell whether they were Far or Near from each other. So as soon as we see A we can start to discover the world as it presents itself to us, still free from thoughts of Bad or Good.

Imagine you are at point A. Is it good or bad to be far from a Death Star? The answer is yes. Far = Good, Near = Bad. What about the Fluffy Cloud? Would it be good go be near, bad to be far? It all depends on how relevant that cloud is to us at point A. And here is where things start to get interesting, for the options can well be any of 3: Good, Bad, Indifferent. It all depends on how our well being is being served by that Cloud. Too much or little rain from the cloud? Probably bad (floods, bad weather, droughts, scorching heat), just enough clouds to keep the garden alive and crops growing? Probably good. A single cloud among many? Indifferent, one would be, to that particular cloud.

In a more complicated way, one could think through word pairs like God and Science (in Google, rather ambigous, with a ratio of God to Science ratio of just 0,59) , or White and Black (not ambigous: a high ratio of 2,81) and see that subjectivity, moral considerations, and semantics (the meaning of something) determine whether something is Good or Bad.

Conclusion

When thinking about Good or Bad, keep an open mind, and consider carefully that we live in a world where classifications are the children of our own minds. We are in control, but this control is fluid and dynamic. We should not build invisible restraints for ourselves, but neither should we hopelessly give up declaring all is futile. Therein lies the key to our collective freedom.