The Highest Good

The Highest Good is an important and essential concept for someone who pursues an enlightened, liberated, and purposeful life. It is defined in many ways by many thinkers throughout history. 

Aristotle defined the Highest Good as "eudaimonia" or flourishing/happiness. 

The Stoics believed it was "living in accordance with the laws and rules of nature."

Plato described it as the pinnacle of his theory of forms called "the Form of the Good" which was the perfect mental conceptualization of goodness in its ideal perfect sense. Something he believed all Kings and leaders should be able to understand and have an idea of in order to be effective and legitimate rulers.

The Buddhists believe Nirvana, the extinguishment of suffering, is the highest good, which should be the goal of all sentient beings. 

For me, personally, my "Highest Good," the pinnacle of goodness, rightness, and wholesomeness that I set above all others comes down to 3 primary paradigms of existence; 

1.  The pursuit and achievement of the ending and extinguishment of all suffering throughout all of reality (including the realms where suffering is consequential for sinners and mistake-makers, like hells and purgatories.) 

2.  The bringing of light and illumination to all darkness in existence, including the physical reality as well as the darkness in the hearts and minds of sentient beings and through this process the eradication of all deception, delusion, ignorance, insanity, and stupidity throughout all of the infinite, boundless existence.

3.  The enactment, procurement, and establishment of perfect, divine, "Higher Justice" and the institutions, systems, and processes that foster, nurture, and produce this divine justice.

These three paradigms, for me, form the Highest Good conceivably possible in existence. I can't really determine in my thinking if any of the three is greater than any other. They are pretty co-equal. 

The extinguishment of suffering for all sentient beings should constitute the goal of any man of compassion or decency. 

Suffering is the great affliction, the great weight, the great curse of existence, and all wrongness, evil, and wickedness directly involves it, is a direct response to it, or traces its causal roots to it. You won't find a single person who has evil or wickedness in their heart and mind who didn't have it develop in their heart and mind in response to an immense suffering in their lives or throughout the course of it that was out of their control, just like rotten apples don't get rotten without an external influencer, like a parasite or disease, inducing the rottenness. The extinguishment of suffering would emancipate consciousness and all conscious beings, making it of the highest Goods possible.

 Even the eventual extinguishment of Hell and places of punishment and wrath would eventually have to occur in order for this goal or paradigm to achieve its completion or finality. In my Highest Good even hell and wrath couldn't last forever. At some point all fires of suffering have to be extinguished.

Bringing light to darkness and the eradication of deception and all that comes from deception (delusions, ignorance, insanity, stupidity.) Essentially the eradication of mental blindness. This would have a direct effect on the first paradigm, as this mass enlightenment and the eradication of deception would equip people with tools, strategies, and ideas that can help them eliminate and weed out the causes of suffering in their worlds.

The third one, perfect justice, is no less in significance then the other two. I would define perfect justice as being inherently reparative and restorative at its core, not condemnatory, retributive, or destructive. Divinity is expressed the greatest through reparation, correction, constructive processes, and healing. 

Anything that restores something back to a state of grace and goodness or makes something broken whole and complete again or makes something weak into something strong or makes something errored into something correct or makes something unclean into something clean or purifies something impure or turns something disgusting into something wholesome or brings righteousness to something unrighteous or turns something ugly into something beautiful or heals something crippling and seemingly unhealable or redeems a sinful person instead of condemning them or turning something worthless into something priceless and infinitely valuable has done far greater and more divine justice than any other forms or conceptions justice could ever take. 

Not only is it greater justice to do these things, they are far more glorious actions and achievements than condemnation and destruction could ever be. 

All three paradigms serve to restore and bring existence and conscious beings to a state of perfection and wholeness. 

This, dear friends, is the highest good.