Why is it considered a good thing that God made the world to be good to people?

The Ramchal in the beginning of Mesilas Yeshorim explains why God created the world. He says that God wanted to be a Meitiv, and to do that he made us and gave us needs, and then gives us what we need. Through this, he is being a Meitiv.

My question is why is this called being Meitiv? Say I were to create a living thing out of paper and I am nice to it, would I be considered a nice person for creating it? It would seem not because to whom was I Meitiv? The paper wasn't lacking anything and it wasn't a favor to the paper to make it alive. So too to whom was God being Meitiv by creating us if originally we did not exist?

Excellent question DeepThinker.

I myself have actually been asking this very question over and over again for a while now, and I’m sure others have too, especially when one (willingly or unwillingly) screws up (from a Torah prospective) and is now facing harsh punishment and is being killed, scraped and destroyed with enormous guilt and is like "see, i didn’t need the whole thing in the first place". I can most certainly see one crying out to Hashem from the depth of their hearts (as Rashi says in last weeks parsha) the saying we have for the bee "don’t sting me and don’t honey me, thanks but no. One learns the Choves Havovois Shar Bechuna (and some in the Hakduma of the next gate Ovoides Alokim) who so elegantly describes the good of Hashem and how much we are in debt to him, it’s an amazing new eye-opening prospective on the good Hashem has bestowed upon us, but yet on the same note one cannot help but think "who asked for it in the first place".

This is a loaded question and is probably best to discuss face-to-face, it surly requires a whole lot more than a short response in a random post, but, just to touch it on the surface, i'll give you an analogy. Say you work for company ABC, a very large company, employing lots and lots of people. You are earning a comfortable living. One day management announces a new program, anyone is free to participate or opt-out if they choose to. They announce: "all employees who will go out of their way by doing such and such will be greatly and enormously rewarded", no it’s not your job description, not on your contract, you're free to choose what you want, you won’t lose anything -you currently have- by not joining, you simply won’t get the reward. So you're sitting there reading the announcement and thinking to yourself, hmm, should i join? i am comfortable as is, I’m not lacking anything, should i, should i not? At the end you decide to opt-out. All happy about the wise decision, you watch other folks go out of their way for years and can’t stop thinking how thankful you are for opting out.

After a few years, management gathers all those who opt-in and hands them a $50,000 check! Ok, so you feel a little pinch, no doubt, but you swallow it, you tell yourself "it was the right decision - i made the right decision". The month after, management gathers everyone again and hands them another 50k check... Ok so now you need to start telling that little voice to shut up "It was the right decision, leave me alone". Month 3 comes along and there is yet a 3rd 50k check, you now find out that those 50k checks will continue on until it reaches 50 million dollars… you gasp! The decision about not opting in is suddenly becoming very shaky. Month 4 really did it for you, you find out that they get a lot more than the 50 million, everyone is also getting their own beautiful 10 acre summer home in some dream spot with picture perfect grass and palm trees, a yacht, a powerful ATV and there are loads of amazing terrains to cover in that dream spot and out-of-this-world scenic views with mountains. At this point you lock yourself in your office alone and can’t help but cry. Now I want you to close your eyes and try your best to put your heart and mind in that position, now imagine that the company never actually included you in the offer, you never knew, or perhaps you knew but you couldn’t participate even you wanted, how ANGRY would you feel? The analogy is pretty self-explanatory.

The Rambam in Hilchus Tshiva says that this world has absolutely nothing to do with reward and punishment, when one has -what we see as- “good” it’s not good, and the bad isn’t bad, its simply that if an employee is productive, they get a better computer for them to be even more productive, when an employee underperforms, he/she will probably not be getting a new computer any time soon, it would be pointless, but the new computer has NOTHING to do with the pay check. The Chuves Halvuves in Shar Betuchan has a whole explanation about reward in the world to come. He asks, why doesn’t the Torah/Tanach/Chazal tell us what the reward is? We have no idea what good they are talking about. Yes we have a whole lot of good/bad details about this world (next week’s parsha for example), but zero about the world to come.

So one of the answers –and its deep, you really have to “get it”- is that our brain can only comprehend what we know, we can simply not understand what we don’t know. So, if we hear that doing so and so will make us rich, we know what that means. For the world to come, there is not a good enough “good” in this world to begin to formulate a fraction of an image of the good of the world to come, meaning, even if you will use your wildest imagination of "good", using all of what your brain is currently capable, it won’t even closely resemble the “good” of the world to come, all we know is that it will be good. Now, you KNOW that Hashem can most certainly create AMAZING good, even using the “this world” type of good and the “this world” understanding, like for example, oh I don’t know, say a paradise island with breath-taking views, picture perfect temperature, full of amazing beautiful colorful flowers sending a scent of joy, with stunning butterflies all around… So yeah, we know he can deliver it and knows how to produce it. Now, take the island, the 50 million, the 10 acres, the yacht, and multiply it a trillion times and use the above analogy, how ANGRY would you be? How much would you cry for not opting in?

Hope this helps a little.

-Yossi

Plato,

(Responding to your comment on my previous post. Posting a new answer due to the character limitation in the "comment" box)

It was actually Plato's position that the purpose of the universe exists for there to be good. Plato believed that this world is an imitation of the eternal world (Art in this world be considered a copy of a copy). So in essence, it’s all about good.

Socrates (Plato's teacher who was Aristotle’s teacher) held that one can’t reach true understanding unless one works with the concept of "I only know that I know nothing". I cannot agree more! It was actually my opinion even before I read snips of Socrates philosophy. You see, how can we ever learn what we do not know? Either we already know what we are looking for, in which case we don't need to look, or we don't know what we're looking for, in which case we wouldn't recognize it if we found it. True knowledge is in my opinion not what we know but what we don’t know. I always say “the ignorant is the most knowledgeable where the true knowledgeable one is the least knowledgeable”. One cannot know what they don’t know unless they know. As the Torah says, Moshe Rabainu was the most humble man on earth.

One might ask,

1. Isn’t that notion (I’m an humble person) the most Gavah (pride) ever?
2. C’mon, didn’t Moshe Rabainu know that he is the ONLY person who spoke to hashem face-to-face and how much MORE he is than other people on earth?

The answer is simple, Moshe Rabainu knew Hashem more than any other person on earth, truly recognizing and understanding how big Hashem is, and as such, he had true knowledge to know that he doesn’t know, and that’s TRUE knowledge thus becoming the most humble person on earth

Following the above logic, one inquires and asks for one of two reasons 1)ignorance (that they know) 2)knowledge (that they don’t know). When ones question(s) stems from ignorance, he/she will not recognize the answer even you put it in front of their eyes. The ignorant asker is asking with the concept of knowing and as such can never see, recognize, understand the truth. Knowing that one knows is by definition in its self a lie and false, especially on the question of life. You see Plato, in order for one to ask whether not existing is better than existing (or Vice versa), and to then truly understand and recognize the answer, one needs to exist and not exist to then reach a conscious level of knowledge of “knowing that they don’t know”. In our current state, we cannot attain “knowledge” of not existing, only ignorance, and as such, one asking about not existing with the false mindset of knowing, will NEVER recognize or reach a true understanding about existing Vs not existing. At best, we can apply understandings of our current known state towards the unknown stats (like the analogy I drew), and following Plato's philosophy that this world is an imitation, the puzzle pieces would come together perfectly well.

See these following two links for further reading!

Purpose of the Universe
Socrates Knowledge

EDIT

Responding to DeepThinker's comment,

that was not my main point. My point was that not lacking something doesn’t mean status que. Freezing a situation doesn’t mean its fixed to its current state, because factors of relativity play a major role (i.e. in relative to other occurrences such as people getting 50 million bucks, I am sad, even my fixed situation without the relative factor is good). So if Hasham has all that massive (real) good, I mean it’s a fact, he has it, and it’s a trillion times better than your WILDEST fantasy, u’d crave it SO badly, not having it would be worse than hell, so he was “Meitiv” to create you and give it to you. So, was he Meitiv for creating? You damn right he was! Is he now even MORE Meitv for giving you all that amazing good while on the way that massive good, you bet! Apply yourself to my analogy and you will fully understand and feel it. My other post was for Plato. If I understood the comment correctly (and maybe I didn’t) Plato argued the following: Fine, there is Good out there, it’s all amazing, but why is it all there in the first place? Here is an idea, how about none of this exist in the first place, not us and not the good, just a whole lot of nothing (communist thinking :))? To this I responded that by logical reasoning, the question is a question of ignorance, the question is asked on the basis of “I don’t know that I don’t know”. The question is flawed.

From a philisopical point of view it 1 is better then 0. So it is better to exist and enjoy then not to exist at all! That itself is the goodness!

I disagree with your [rhetorical] question. If you were to create a piece of paper and do good to it (and it would be conscious of that), surely you would be a meitiv! I do not understand why you think otherwise. How does 'the paper wasn't lacking anything' change the fact that now a good thing is being done to it?

Posting as an answer again, my response to the comments is too long. Sorry :(

Hi Yehuda, I’ve actually never acquired any official (in the capacity of a class/book) philosophical knowledge, I wish I did! This is pretty much the way I think. Though negative philosophy (as in seeing all of life from a negative light) is SO real (for me anyways), it literally destroys ones will to live, everything becomes pointless (hard to explain). I find to always agree with everything it says, which is way too scary. I actually do have questions on my own pertaining the philosophy of opposite gender gravitation and beauty, would it be appropriate to post on this site?