Hi everybody. Welcome to Active Self-Protection Extra. Today I'm going to start a series here on John's brief. It's just a little different than what we have normally been doing. We normally talk about legal standards here, but you've heard me talk on the channel a whole bunch about good, sane, sober, moral, prudent people, but I've never defined those terms necessarily for you. So today we began a five part series on what it means to be a good, sane, sober, moral, prudent person by talking about good to win the fight after the fight. You need help after a use of force. I trust firearms legal protection to help me win the fight for the rest of my life. From their 24 7 attorney answered hotline to coverage for the use of all legal tools, firearms, legal protection has you covered get a discount by signing up at the link below.
So I'm just sitting here today at ASP headquarters worldwide, known as my home office. And this right over here is the computer that I make the daily narrated videos on. And what I want to talk to you about today is the first of our five part kind of mantra. We talk about being a good saint, sober, moral prudent person all the time, and that is more than just a legal person. So when we talk about legal briefs and we say, what is the standard of legality of what we can do? And sometimes we talk about that difference between can I shoot someone, should I shoot someone? Must I shoot someone? I always say, listen, I want to raise the bar here. I want us as the Second amendment loving community, as a firearms carrying community is a self-defense community. Even if you don't carry a firearm to be better than simply legal, better than meeting the minimum standard.
So I look at this sometimes in the perspective of in order to maybe get a job or be a cop or these things, you got to pass a standard, right? You got to get a shooting qualification of so much. And so many people think, okay, I've met that standard. That's enough. I'm good for it. And that's as far as they go. But whether that's a post qualification or the FBI that's not striving for excellence, that's accepting mediocrity or the minimum standard necessary. And in this series, I want to talk about going well beyond that to training ourselves internally and in our behaviors to excellence. And the first of those is good. And what does it mean to be a good person? I think we've got to be kind of thinking about this one a little bit and spend a little bit of time here. And I know some people are going to roll their eyes in the back of their heads because I'm going to spend a couple minutes talking about mata ethics and what does that mean and how do we define good as opposed to evil or even neutral, oh oh D and d nerd stuff here because I'm going to bring it back to something as simple and goofy as Dungeons and Dragons, and then how I define that idea of good and how that can help you in your striving for excellence as a self defender.
And I think that is a good discussion for us all to think through. Now, first of all, I think that there's an idea that everybody is the hero in their own story. Unless you're severely psychopathic, like the number of people who think, no, I'm evil and I enjoy being evil. And evil is the best thing, are very few, even mass murderers are the heroes in their own story. Even severely psychopathic. People think they're good. I think back in the movies to Tony Montana and Scarface when he's at his mom's house and he looks at his friend and he says, what? I'm a good person. I don't kill nobody looks at his friend, not lately. So he even thinks he's a good person. Oh, if you watch Scarface, he isn't nowhere near what we would define as a good person. So simply a self concept of I'm good isn't enough.
We have to think about a standard of goodness and what makes for good. This is the definition of meta ethics, which there's kind of three disciplines of ethics. Actually taught ethics for a couple years at the collegiate level when I was a college professor. Mata ethics is kind of defining good versus evil. It's understanding what is it and how do we define what it is. Good is. The next one from there is normative ethics, which is our baselines of behavior and how should we act, what's our principles of action? And then finally, it's applied ethics. How do we take those normative ethics, which should of course be built from meta ethics and apply those to any individual situation. Well, today we're going to come up to the top a little bit and talk meta ethics. And if we're going to talk meta ethics, I'm going to tell you there's a big study here, and philosophers have spent their entire lives making these discussions and trying to figure out what the best way is here.
And I'm certainly not in a 10 minute video on active self protection, extra going to be able to unpack all of ethics for you. And I'm sure we've got some ethicists in the audience. And if you are and want to discuss it in the comments, I'm all about it. I am even having taught it at a collegiate level, not the highest level of practitioner of teaching ethics. I just want to give us some things to think about here. So the first thing that I want to talk about is a psychological definition. And if you go look for psychological definitions, the most common one that you're going to see is the definition that involves empathy, that good equals empathic in some capacity. And of course, empathy is not feeling what someone else feelings. That's sympathy actually pathos. The idea of the Greek term sum pathos means to feel with pathos.
Being feeling soon means like synergy like together. So sympathy means to feel with them. Empathy means entering into feelings to m pathos means to enter in. So empathy means to be able to identify with, to enter into someone else's feelings without necessarily feeling it yourself. So having concern and care for the lives of others, the benefit of others. That's the kind of definitional psychological definition of good. And actually, you know where we find that it's kind of funny if you talk to DD nerds, oh, DD nerd alert, I'm a DD nerd. We used to play it in the office of my church, my pastor's office when I was pastoring a church on Sunday afternoons. And it's funny, if you go read through all of the alignment charts and the various DD stuff, they actually don't define it very good, except for in the third edition.
In third edition of DD, there's this definition that good is altruism, respect for life and dignity of all sentient beings. So when you say, okay, are you good, neutral or evil? Are you lawful? Are you neutral? Are you chaotic? In good In third edition, at least the folks who wrote D and d define that again as showing altruism. That's actions acting in the best interest of others without concern for self respect for life, respect for others, and the dignity of sentient being. So we start to see this definition of good coming out of either of those that is other centered, that is seeking the welfare, the experience, and putting yourself in community that all have this right, and that the lack of that tends away from good and towards evil. Now, if you know me at all, if you know anything about me, you know that at my core I am a follower of Jesus.
I am a child of the one true king. That is my singular identity. And so if you'll allow me just a bit here, I'm not going to proselytize a whole bunch, but Jesus defines good in Luke chapter 18 verse 19, when somebody calls him good teacher and he says, why do you call me good? There is no one good except God. Now there's a whole lot of discussion theologically on what he means there, but I think that in Jesus's mind, God himself is the definition of good is correct. Now, I also think we can look at creation in Genesis one, and as God created, he sees the thing and does the thing and he says, it's good. I like that. So good kind of has that idea there of fitting and whole and correct. Then another day of creation, it's good, another day of creation.
It's good, looked over all of creation. It's very good. So I take it from that, that when God looked over creation, he says, no, this is like me. This is what is correct, what is fitting, what is whole, what is in its place and arranged in its place such that everything is correct and at peace. That to me is good. Everything is correct in that piece, arranged in its place with all of the other things. It would be a definition of good. So if I take that definition now, you go, wait a minute, John, where did you get that from? I got that. From thinking through this process and thinking through meta ethics, how do I define these things that to me, the focus on ethics has to include self some. So that idea of good has to be, if it's not bringing me to the place of wholeness, rightness, integrity, and by integrity I mean oneness like that I'm not broken in pieces, but I'm all one integrity.
The core of that is the word integer. Integer being a number, a whole number. So integrity and peace and correctness and fitness. Fitness, in other words, being fit for where you are. Then if that doesn't include me, then it's not good in my world. And that if it doesn't fit in that world around it as well, which includes recognizing their search for their wholeness, unity, integrity, and peace, then I can't have that for me. If I don't have that in my community as well and in the place in which I sit and live and that expands outward for me, that's an awful lot, right? So here's a thought for you. I'm going to give you a few words that good. What I want us to seek out is an internal focus on that which is whole, that which is right, that which is fitting and that which is best for me and others.
Lemme say it again, goodness. To be good, to be a good person means I focus internally on that which is whole, that which is right, that which is fitting and that which is best for me and others. It means seeking the healthy whole best version and bringing that with me to others. In my interactions with empathy. It means I recognize my place in a community of people and in my world, and again, I am aligned internally to care for others, to seek right, to seek wholeness and to seek peace. So that definition is both ways. So some people are going to say, well, wait a minute, John, if I'm seeking others best, if I'm looking for their good, so I can't use the term good in the definition of good, but if I'm seeking to maximize benefit to them or whatever, well then it seems that that altruism or selflessness is the ultimate part of good.
I would argue no, that somewhat, the definition also has to include me, that if it is not seeking my best, highest, integr, integral, unified, peaceful center, then it's not good for them either because I am at my best in and among the community of people that I live in, in my world and in my environment, in the entirety of my existence when I have that as well, and that is good, that I think matches the definition of God's good. And so when God all by himself exists in community and in perfection, which he does of all times, those are the qualities that he has. And so when I say I want you to be a good person, what is the core of that? Now, remember, we've still got four more, right? We've got sane, sober, moral, and prudent. So we're going to talk about how those add to the definition in the weeks ahead.
But today I want you to sit and think for little while about your internal compass and what are you seeking in your internal life? Because to me, evil says no, I don't exist for wholeness. I exist for self benefit. I exist for gratification and for pleasure. I think gratification and pleasure are not wholeness, though it wholeness can be its own gratification. It can be very pleasurable. I think that if I don't recognize my place in the world with others, I've left good. So in other words, when I am self-seeking and I take from others wholeness, uniqueness, dignity, presence, or property in order to feed myself well, then I have left good and I have moved towards evil. We don't want to do that, right? We don't want to take that shift to the dark side to use another pop culture icon from that. Instead, I want to recognize I have a place in the world and that place is to seek my highest and best it is to seek wholeness, unity, goodness.
In that full sense then is this idea of peace. That's a Jewish concept of shalom, of wholeness and peacefulness and rectitude in my internal life, and I seek to bring that into the outside world and have that in relationships with people and in my interactions with my society. So your homework is to think through, how does that work out in your world? How would you define good? And how do you seek good in your own soul and in your interactions? I think that this is not legal, right? This is not a legal standard whatsoever. We don't require people to be good. We won't require people to be good morally and to seek the interest of others and to seek wholeness and integrity and not just what's best for me, but what's best for everyone. And we're going to talk about all that in the weeks ahead.
We really can't, but we can strive for it personally. We can say, this is what I seek to be. I seek in my own personal life. I'll give you my own personal philosophy. I'm a child of the one true king. I seek to think and feel and act like Jesus in my world. I seek to be at peace internally with myself as whole and complete a person as I can at total peace and have goodness exude from me in seeking that for other people in my world, seeking peace and wholeness and unity and the best for them. And if you do that well, then I think that you've aligned yourself with the good. And as you do that, that will start to work its way out into your defensive mindset as well into your protective mindset, defensive mindset, proactive mindset that puts you on a path of good. So I want you to write that down. Spend a little time thinking about that today. Maybe get out of pen and a paper and jot that down and let me know in the comments what you find in your own path and your own discussion of that. Next week we're going to talk about sanity and how sanity and goodness aren't really the same thing at all, but why sanity is so important to us as self defenders. Hope it helps you. I.
YouTube Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXQqVXF8NNQ&list=PLkjkKbdZgxVDVyMvzKn27k3rT7dL25j5D
Credit: John Corriea, Active Self Protection Extra