We are not redefining good and bad, we are qualifying them in order to examine their relationships to each other. Remember that there is no total good nor total bad, there is each within the other. So we are going to attempt in this exercise to explain how qualifiers qualify qualifiers, and the uses of good good, bad good, good bad, and bad bad.
We generally consider good to be that which we like or is helpful to us. Bad is that which we do not like or is not helpful to us. In common usage, good is an adjective that qualifies the subject of the verb. If some thing, or act, is good and helpful to our purpose, then it qualifies for our approval. It is good. For instance, good is a good qualifier. There is no rule in our language stating that qualifiers can't be qualified, and I find this to be good and useful to my purpose.
Let's look at the word bad as a qualifier. I believe that which we consider bad is most often something that we don't understand or just consider not useful to our purpose. I'm sure it doesn't help to know that the origins (found in the American Heritage Dictionary) of the word bad reveal that the words abide, confide and fiance' stem from the same Indo-European root word. Earlier usage of the original word gave us the words faith and fidelity. I am not sure this is helpful to my purpose, but it certainly isn't bad, just distracting. Got the idea? If some good thing is not helpful to us, it isn't bad, it's just a lesser good, a bad good, and only to the observer. If some bad thing or act is helpful to us, even though we don't like it, then it may qualify to be a bad bad, a bad that is good for us. If you are still with me, good.
To explain good good let's first describe something that is without exception good. Chocolate cake comes to mind. All chocolate cake is good, and a chocolate cake that you are holding in your hands and not feeling guilty about is a good good if your purpose is to eat cake. If you are threatened with a tremendous weight gain, armed robbery or sugar diabetes as a result of having or eating the cake, then the fact that you are holding it becomes a bad good. The cake cannot become a bad good, for no chocolate cake is bad unless it has explosives in it. If your possession of the good cake is bad for you, then when you hand it to me it becomes a good good, for I have no fear of having my cake and eating it too. Good good for me, two bads for you.
To begin to understand good bad and bad bad requires a temporary reversal of our understanding, or as F. Scott Fitzgerald pointed out, an ability to hold two opposed ideas in our minds at the same time and still retain our ability to function. Are you still functioning?
Explaining bad bad and good bad becomes a little more complex because of some ancient folk wisdom that says your poison may be my medicine. Rather than use poison as an example, let's use storms. A hurricane is generally considered bad due to the fact that there is often great loss of life and property when storms come in contact with our domain. Storms interfere in the lives of those who live where storms strike. They are, however, not just unrelated evils that come into existence to give humans a bad time. They too must serve some good purpose related to balancing Nature's energy on the face of the planet. We have to qualify storms in relation to what or whom is being served by their existence.
Now, imagine that you are a hurricane (or himacane) and you are trying to be the best you can be. You want faster winds, heavier rains and more tornadoes. All the other storms in your hemisphere notice that you are a good storm. The better you are as a storm, the worse it is for those humans who stand to lose life and property in your way. Relative to storms, you are good, so you are an example of a good bad, but only if we unfairly judge all storms to be bad. Over on the other side of the equator there is a little storm that can barely knock down a grass hut. Relative to storms, this puny storm is a bad storm. Relative to the humans who need rain, this storm is a good storm because it causes no damage or harm and is thereby qualified, by our new reckoning, as a bad bad. This time, two bads make a good.
Let's stop a moment and consider relative time through history in our qualification of good and bad. Certain times and places in fifteenth and sixteenth century Europe have no appeal to me if I am a potential visitor through time. Life could have been real bad relative to what I enjoy now in North America. If I were to bring a sixteenth century Euiropean forward through time to downtown Megalopolis, USA he might find it a bad place to be. I think, therefore, that our perceptions of good and bad have relevance to our environment and conditioning. I understand that some Europeans thought conditions were so bad in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that the right (and good) thing to do was to get on a boat and sail westward to the new world. Such a trip was often bad. If life had been so good that no one wanted to leave Europe, then we might not be on this continent today. To me, that's bad. So here we consider that what was bad for some then is good for others of us now.
In the past few years language has changed enough to further complicate this study of good and bad. In his book 1984, George Orwell bifurcated all being into varying degrees of good and ungood, thereby eliminating a large number of adjectives and expletives that are certainly unnecessary if you care to Newspeak. I rather like the idea of simplifying language, but don't find it so double plus good that he dropped the word bad for the word ungood. My entire treatise is potentially ungood good without the word bad, and good ungood if it serves no purpose. With all respect for Orwell, if his idea of Newspeak is ungood, I find it to be an ungood ungood.
One of the curiosities of our language in the '80s was the ability of certain of our youth to label as bad that which they perceived as extremely good, and in the '90s clothing that hangs loose on the body is called tight. Cars, motorbikes, particular feats of daring or stupidity, or just the ability to be among the right crowd, have the prerequisites to be bad. This phenomenon attests to the flexibility of our language and our use of it, and tests the person unfamiliar with the colloquialism. However, I have yet to hear anyone refer to an extremely good time as a bad time, or explain how good became bad. It was bound to stick because Hollywood sucked it right up. I don't think many teenagers today could handle this consideration of good and bad. Who knows how bad bad bad is?
The simplification of our language seems like a good thing to me, but people, cultures and boundaries change, and if a language is to survive, it too much change. Is change bad? We are so reluctant to change that it appears to have become a good bad. If we are to survive, an attitude shift is required. Change must become a bad bad, something we accept even if we don't like it. If change is a good bad, we are lost. Well, you may be lost, but I'm not. I'm going to adopt a language of my own and make a few changes here and there. For starters, war means peace and peace means war. Wanna make war? I guarantee it'll be a bad peace.
As a last example in this exercise we'll study one of the most powerful double negatives in use. Have you ever wondered why a person fears most his "worst enemy"? This term, according to the rules presented herein, requires reconsideration. Since enemy denotes a force unfavorable to our plans, then worse force, a bad bad, may not be the one most counterproductive to our designs. An enemy is often an adversary that forces us to be stronger, more creative, or more productive. Remember what the Second World War did to the American economy. Our worst enemy is a bad bad, our best enemy is a good bad.
Sometimes friends become our enemies. Well-meaning friends and family often fight with us to convince or coerce us to do what they think is best for us to do, or not do. If this friendly enemy is correct, and saves us great embarrassment, loss or injury, then we owe them more than thanks. Think again about your worst enemy and see if perhaps one of your best friends hasn't earned the title. I can't hope that we never meet our best enemies, for they are probably the ones from whom we will learn the most.
It should be ovbious that good and bad are both matters of a person's point of view. If you're not a person but a storm or a chocolate cake, then it can be assumed that you certainly have a different point of view. If this exercise seems a little far-fetched, consider the definition, presented by Ambrose Bierce in 1911, of "Radicalism, n. The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today." This is good. Better, this is a good good, for it may give hope to those who consider the status quo to be only good bad. Today's changes are tomorrow's status quo.