Good is such a loaded word. But to be ‘good at’ is not considered as loaded. Its synonyms are pretty obvious, as these, from one online dictionary:
Synonyms and examples: skilful (UK) She’s a skilful driver; skilled He’s a skilled mechanic;, able She’s a very able student; gifted She’s a gifted musician; talented He’s a very talented actor,; adept She’s very adept at dealing with all management issues; deft Her movements were deft and quick; accomplished He’s an accomplished pianist; competent She’s a very competent skier; proficient He’s a proficient horseback rider.
But The Good aspires to the absolute. It is the abstraction pursued by Plato and Platonic philosophers. It is solely self-sufficient in that form inviting no comparison or antonym. In Neo-Platonism, and Neo-Platonic Christianity, it is the vesrion of the Holy or achieved Goodness shared with a Good Universe or God to which evil or the bad has no equivalent force. Evil is to St. Augustine merely the negation of Good not its opposite. The doctrine of Manichaeism insisted The Good and The Bad existed together in a perpetual binary ever defining each other.
To be ‘good at’ is only problematic perhaps when it is compared to being ‘bad at’ something to establish a hierarchy of worth, but in what way is the phrase useful and hence why use it, since its synonyms above are more aware in gradations of skill, ability, gift, talent, and so on; gradations that match the reality of learning. Winnicott found the worst kind of parenting was that that aspired to ‘good parenting’ seen as a absolute, an ideal form and such parents, he believed set impossible tasks for themselves and their children in which everyone failed each other. rather, he claimed, be a ‘good enough’ parent, leaving room for relaxation of demand and gradations of skill cross the many tasks and sets of felt inter-relationship. Such parenting left room for falling short of the ideal, even failure without doing away with causes for improvement in achievable and sustainable ways. This is the case with caring or nurturing professionals: medics, social workers, teachers and so on. good enough professionals work to the extinction of their need in the person.
And yet things of pride and vanity as we are – we must always want to be good at’ things: to be able to boast them to others or even to be quietly superior about, in 5 nameable ways at least. To name five things in which you are ‘good enough’ at would be harder because all projects in live need many more than five skills in which one has a beginning proficiency, an appropriate adeptness, and little matter the grade of achievement in each for it is the suitability of the whole to our needs of the moment that matters. As the needs develop so can the proficiency to meet a near enough equivalence – a good enough one, one that fits the task but does not overwhelm the person in doing it or others needed to assist in completing it or putting it into active delivery, of which there will be a number necessarily. One such skill might be to know where assistance is necessitated and required and will rely on differences between people – but not those of good and bad but of variations in aptitude, education, training and dexterity – none of which need imply differences in absolute value because their role is complementary ans aims for that that is good enough not only in making or doing something but in realising the pleasure of the process of doing and making it.
A concert of good enough skills achieves a symphony of the good enough. The excellence is in the harmonies and their counterpoints in the whole.
All love
Steven xxxxxxxx
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