Be Good For Something
November 26th, 2006
“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of too much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.”
–Henry David Thoreau
I’ve never had to ask the question, “‘What am I good at?” I’ve never been the poor little kid who could neither hit a home run, sing in a musical, win the spelling bee, or graduate with honors. I couldn’t do all of those things, but I knew my strengths. I knew my talents. From the age of about five, I could write you a list of all the things I was good at.
It wasn’t until adulthood that I began to wonder what I was good for. And it wasn’t until much later that I began to wonder what it meant to be for something in the first place.
Although being “good” has its own moral and ethical implications, “goodness”, taken by itself and out of context, doesn’t mean much. I’ve long said that the concepts of good and evil require a point of view: nothing is good or bad in its own right, it is only so in relationship to something. Something can be good or bad for me or for something, but it must always have context. Being moral, or good, seems therefore a shortsighted goal: be good to what end? We each answer this question differently: some are good to avoid punishment. Some are good to promote human harmony. Some are good in search of heaven or reward. The point is that few of us seek goodness for the sake of goodness–we seek goodness in order to obtain some greater virtue, in order to make some greater claim.
The idea of being “good for something” pushes us closer to the true ideal. In order to know what we should be good for, we have to ask ourselves where we rest our hearts. We have to ask ourselves what we value most. We have to ask ourselves what it is we strive toward in the great context of our entire lives. To be good for something means to align with a goal, and to make ourselves useful toward obtaining that goal. I’ve called this, “radical utility”—aligning personal development with the furthering of some ideal, goal,or ultimate objective. As Niebuhr’s radical monotheism is the willful dedication of one’s life and faith to one ultimate value, radical utility is the the passionate working toward a shared goal, vision, or dream. It is to adopt a cause or a purpose and stand for it—to be a tool in its development and manifestation.
To say, “I am for something” is to claim a stake in an ideal or a dream. To stand for something means to be active, to command others to take notice, to represent that which we hold most dear. To be for something means to have purpose.
But I can expand this idea out of the personal and the spiritual. The differentiation between goodness and radical utility is the difference between decoration and design. It is the difference between niceness and kindness. It is the difference between dogma and activism. It is the difference between guilt and shame.
The extra dimension, the notion of “radical utility”, is what moves us from good to great. To take what is personal and make it public, to take what is public and make it personal–this is what crafts culture. This is what we are here for. This is the heart of human invention and innovation, and it is what inspires me every day to create a brilliant user experience in my web designs, or to “draw down the divine effluence for the benefit of the community” in my writing. Radical utility lies at the heart of both magic and design. It’s what makes other people love what we do.