The Good Decision tries to look at both sides of any aspect of ‘good’. Otherwise, how can it be good if the bias of one’s mind is set to deny the errors of one’s way? The consequence of this examination of conscience no doubt is that occasionally this website offends someone who didn’t expect offense knowing this writer’s history and tendencies. The truth for me now is a general sense that both conservative and liberal view points are missing critical points, which would be the only way we could get into the big mess we are currently trying to correct.

Empathy, forgiveness, and conscience seem to be words representing existential space that our culture wants to avoid. This project called The Good Decision (thegooddecision.org) is founded on the reality that every decision contains an inherent amount of organic violence. We are human beings that must think, consider, and judge. Even those among us who ‘don’t judge’ have judged and expressed their aversion to judgement. In every decision something thrives and something doesn’t which adds up to humility and imperfection; a universal state. More than anything else in our current leadership, the cold arrogance, and delusional sense of perfection bother this writer most. Every decision we make carries the weight of imperfection. Some indigenous and earth based cultures knew this intuitively and tried to account through prayer and planning for this organic, possibly spiritual shortcoming.

There are safeguards in our religions against the hubris of perfection. Those safeguards are manifested and worked through the sacred skills of empathy, forgiveness and conscience. Politics and state craft are not games of winning and losing, or celebration and grieving. Every “victory” carries a loss and every loss represents the need to shut down and inventory the elements of one’s approach to life. “Good” is an elusive word that grows, matures and transforms within us, our decisions, and that buzz saw we call conscience . So stop and take a breath, a moment, a month or whatever it takes to let your heart’s ‘good’ catch up with the day’s sometimes tragic circus of events.