On the Inconvenient Virtue of Doing Good for Its Own Sake
My brethren,
Let us consider, with unflinching honesty, the uncomfortable reality that virtue is neither lucrative nor reliably applauded. The cosmos, for all its silent majesty, does not concern itself with the moral bookkeeping of men. There exists no divine ledger where our deeds are tallied in golden ink, no cosmic tribunal dispatching medals for civility. One may live a life of unblemished charity and still be struck by misfortune, mocked by the wicked, and forgotten by history.
And yet, to act with goodness, though unacknowledged, unrewarded, or even rebuked, remains not only possible but essential.
The modern mind is tempted, alas, to believe that righteousness is transactional: that for every act of kindness, there shall come an equal and opposite applause. Thus have we built a marketplace of virtue, where good deeds are bartered for praise, likes, eternal reward, or at the very least, a faint glow of smug self-satisfaction. We have, in short, confused ethics with economics.
But the true moralist, that rarest and most stubborn of beings, holds a different view. He does not ask, what will I gain from this? But rather, is this the right thing to do, regardless of the outcome? He is not swayed by the promise of reward, nor deterred by the certainty of punishment. His is a virtue grounded not in expectation, but in conviction.
It is no great moral achievement to act justly when the world smiles upon the act. But to persist in goodness when the world is indifferent, or worse, hostile, is to possess a kind of courage that borders on the divine.
This, then, is the paradox of the good deed: that it may go unnoticed, unthanked, and even punished — and still be right.
To perform the good for the sake of reward is not goodness, but cunning. It is virtue in costume, ethics in the service of ego. The philosopher knows: The good is good, not because it is seen, but because it is. Therein lies its purity, and perhaps its tragedy.
You may feed the hungry and be accused of meddling. You may speak truth and be cast out. You may act with unselfish heart and be met with mockery. Yet what is the alternative? To do nothing? To wait for applause? To let evil go unchallenged until it is convenient to resist?
No. The just man, even when ignored or maligned, remains steadfast. He does not need the approval of the crowd or the confirmation of heaven. For he knows, as all sages have known, that integrity is not a coin to be spent, but a flame to be carried.
Therefore, dear reader, do good. Do it in obscurity. Do it in peril. Do it while muttering under your breath about the maddening injustice of it all, but do it nonetheless. For in a world increasingly obsessed with outcomes, the one who acts purely for the sake of the act is both a rebel and a saint.
And should you be bitten by a dog for your troubles, take heart: you have joined the grand tradition of the bitten, bruised, and blessedly unbothered doers of good.
Wear gloves. But go anyway.
Satirically yours,
The Honourrebel Siriguboy
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