Philosophical Question III
Daily Meditation #184–8/25/2022
Philosophical Questions I & II
What is “deserved?”
Do you “deserve” anything?
Does anyone deserve anything?
If you hold a door, do you “deserve” a thank you?
What about if you swerve to miss hitting a pet dog or cat? Do you “deserve” to be thanked?
How about when someone misperceives a behavior towards them as bad when the actor of the behavior intended good?
Did the good actor “deserve” to be mistreated?
Does the misperceiver “deserve” “bad karma,” for lack of a better word?
If you and 99 others complete the same task but with different efficiencies and outcomes, do you deserve different rewards?
Or the same?
When you come into the world, do you “deserve” to eat?
To be given water?
Clean clothes?
A home?
What if we had known at birth that Mao Zedong or Stalin would become two of the greatest murderers and causers of mass suffering in the world, would they’ve still “deserved” to be raised with food, water, clothing and shelter?
Or would they’ve “deserved” to be stoned to death as infants?
What is the “line in the sand” for who deserves what?
What does anyone “deserve?”
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These are distillations from my coming book “YouDaimonia: the Ancient Philosophy of Human Flourishing.”
