Talk:No good deed goes unpunished

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Concept[edit]

The concept of "No good deed goes unpunished" can be thought of as something of a contrapositive restatement of Bernard Mandeville's "A Private Vice is a Public Benefit", IMO.

The wiki articles on Mandeville and his "Fable of the Bees" are excellent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.9.222.208 (talk • contribs) 21:54, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Original Source[edit]

It was used by the character Avon in Blakes 7 in the late 1970s. Surely "sources" like a play from 2012 are later? 2.31.164.57 (talk) 17:10, 12 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Inverse?[edit]

Is the usage of inverses of this ("no bad deed goes unpunished", or "no good deed goes unrewarded") noteworthy? They have to do with extremely potent karma. ThighFish (talk) 03:16, 20 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This expression is a play on conventional Western/Christian morality. Karma is a concept in Indian philosophy which isn't relevant to this article. --Macrakis (talk) 23:05, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Upgrade[edit]

@Macrakis:, do you want to suggest this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests? We may be able to move this article to GA status. --evrik ^(talk) 16:58, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Evrik: No, despite the improvements that you and I have made recently, I think there is a lot missing that we need to improve. We need to document the development of the ironic usage better. We need to talk about the rhetoric of irony. We need to rework the Aquinas discussion, which doesn't read very smoothly.

I'm also removing the irrelevant aside about karma. This article is about the English-language expression which is a twist on a Christian expression, and unrelated to Indian philosophy. --Macrakis (talk) 22:47, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

We also need to document variants better, e.g., "there is no good deed without punishment" [1]; "sooner or later you must answer for every good deed"

--Macrakis (talk) 23:03, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The book Why do we quote seems to have some relevant content, but I don't have access to full text. --Macrakis (talk) 16:45, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Let me think abut this. In the mean time, I am restoring the karma section. It completely fits in this. --evrik ^(talk) 18:51, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The concept of karma is related the concept of divine justice, but this article is not about divine justice, but about an ironic twist on it. Kindly leave it out until we reach a consensus on the talk page. --Macrakis (talk) 23:59, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

it fits. you haven’t really made a great case for why it doesn’t belong. Please leave it in until we figure this out.--evrik ^(talk) 01:38, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Your assertion that "it fits" isn't a very strong argument. Anyway, edit warring isn't the way to resolve this; following WP:BRD, it should be removed until we agree on the talk page. --Macrakis (talk) 16:53, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]