People are good—even people we profoundly disagree with, but good is not the same as the ‘The Good.’ People can be ‘good,’ but lack an understanding about one aspect of a certain issue, and so they can be ‘wrong’ even as they are ‘good.’ The good person is the law-abiding person, but the ‘good’ person may not understand the underlying evil of a law they obey—and so one can be deeply ‘good’—but also profoundly ‘wrong.’ This is the great paradox of society and politics. A good person always has more to learn, because good, by its very meaning, implies something which can improve—the ‘good’ can always be ‘better,’ otherwise it would not be ‘good.’ ‘The Good’ does not get better—it is ‘The Good.’ This is what Plato meant when he said every society must ask itself, “what is the good?” The Good is not the same as ‘good.’ If what is ‘good,’ on the other hand, is incapable of getting better, it is, by definition, not good. Good requires something outside itself in which to act good towards. Good obeys the law, but does not make the law, and does not necessarily understand every impact of the law—it merely obeys the good because it is good in a limited way. But we can see how if the law is bad, the good, by obeying that law, can, by being good, contribute to the bad. If people don’t understand the distinction between ‘good’ and “The good,” they will be more apt to fall into the error of overestimating what is merely ‘good,’ and underestimating the ‘understanding’ which is necessary to constantly make the ‘good’ better—and ‘better’ is at the heart of the definition of ‘good.’ We know that we if we step off a high cliff, science tells us we will fall to our deaths, and so we think we understand science. But this simple fact—gravity, is not understood by millions of ‘good’ people. They have never truly contemplated what this means. They have a vague idea that gravity is an attractive force, but beyond that, the real scientific fact and the implications of that fact are completely beyond them. Why do I keep falling faster? This very few people understand. They don’t understand why we accelerate by the same rate each time we fall. The acceleration of the fall is not understood. They don’t understand why, in the simplest sense, how gravity works, as a law, in the context of the lawful universe operating in parts, as a whole. This is because they know gravity as a fact, but they don’t know what the implication of the fact is. They don’t know the poetry of gravity. They sadly, only know gravity. They know they will die if they fall off a cliff, but they don’t know why. Even among the scientific, they are not scientific. They would need to contemplate everything—and they cannot do that. We cannot even know something as ‘good’ unless we see it in the context of some other behavior or quality—in which we clearly see it is ‘better than.’ Despite the fact that we say ‘these are good people,’ the ‘good’ is always on a continuum. “The Good” is different, and is absolutely good, and should not be confused with ‘good.’ One can be hated by ‘good people’ if one has an understanding greater than theirs. The understanding one will still suffer by being reviled by good people—it pushes them to make themselves understood. Great works of art, law, and philosophy are driven by this impulse: to be reconciled to the ignorant ‘good,’ who hate the artist or philosopher for the very reason that the people who hate him are ‘good’—-they are obeying someone else’s ideas rather than his—and it breaks the artist’s heart, or, rather, makes the artist want to become an artist in the first place—the ‘art’ is the act of fixing this problem—the sad fact of being condemned and misunderstood by people who are good. The desire to be understood is the most beautiful impulse in the world, so much so, that this is truly where ‘The Good’ resides. We said great art is the desire to be understood. We also know, however, that there are some things which will never be understood, and many bad artists and bad philosophers use this very fact to counterfeit ‘The Good.’ They have no desire to be understood, and when you don’t quite understand them, but are made to feel you ought to understand them, you are caught, and fooled, and you clap your hands and you laugh and you wave and you cheer when the naked emperor strides by. You are not in awe. You are embarrassed for the emperor, yourself, and the admiring throngs. So you shout your admiration, as loudly as you can, laughing both with, and at, the nakedness, while your happy shouts drown out every good in the world.