Good in America

     On Wednesday, Matt started talking about Franklin's attempt to explain, in his autobiography, how to construct a society that promotes "doing good."  As he was talking about virtue-ethics and different ways of looking at the idea of good in society, it reminded me of something I read for my religion class by Plato. In a conversation between Euthyphro questions Socrates about a universal good.  He asks if the gods love things that are good because of their nature of goodness or if they are good because the gods love them.  In other words, is there a universal good that everyone recognizes and lives by or have we created an idea of what is good as a society?  I wonder this especially about the United States today.  I feel like a lot of the time, Americans decide what is good as a society.  We make an idea of what is good that fits our culture and the way we live.  This has been seen through the different decades.  Earlier in our culture, like we saw as we discussed the Four Freedoms, smoking was looked at as glamorous and the thing to do.  It was considered, I think, "good" throughout a lot of the 1900's.  Now, our culture has changed to an overall view of smoking as "bad."  Now we throw aside the social aspects of smoking and value more the consequences smoking has on health and on the environment.  I feel like Americans look at things and decide for themselves if it is good or not.  As a country, I don't feel like we look up to one universal code of good in order to choose what we believe is good or bad.  We oftentimes make that for ourselves.  It's definitely something that could go either way, and it's not easy to see how this decision is made when you're looking at a whole country.  I think it's something interesting to think about, though, especially in a culture like ours which so emphasizes the influence celebrities and public figures and media have on the people of this country.