What is Good?

Life used to be simple. You go to a bookstore and walk wherever you want, pick up whatever you want, and buy whatever you find interesting.

The same applied to music stores (are there any real music stores anymore), or cinema halls.

Or to grocery stores. Or to clothes stores. And to food outlets.

It doesn’t seem to be the same anymore, wherever you go, whatever you do. Especially in the digital world. The digital world apparently promises endless opportunity to everyone. Anyone could write a book and post it to Amazon. Or anyone could make music and post it to Spotify. Or you could make a product and open an e-commerce store. Or cook something you do very well, and supply through a food delivery app.

But now, there are the deciders in the middle. It started with being some kind of help to let you choose. Like the salesmen in the clothing malls that used to direct you to the brands and sizes and fittings you wanted, and then to the trial rooms.

So, it’s not that simple anymore. The deciders tell us what is good now.

This one is good, because many people say it is good. Or that one is good, because people like you say it is good. Or another one is good, because you yourself said something like that was good. And so on. and so forth.

More and more of the deciders are now programs. They decide not based on what is good for you necessarily, but what is good for those who programmed them, perhaps.

So then you have millions of books and thousands of songs and hundreds of dishes that may be good, but no one ever looked at, because the deciders never said they were good. There may be no agenda, or there may be. It may just be simpler, easier, better business sense. What started as a help to decide what is good is no longer just that.

So, the question is who decides what is good? And is it good for you? Can you even get yourself into a position to decide what is good? Is it even possible to get a good needle in an unending haystack?

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