Well, I gotta keep my reader happy. Here's a post that is still in progress. Maybe I'll complete it one day.
Good and Evil?
I really started asking this question after picking up the Autobiography of Gandhi. I've only gotten through the first 70 pages, but it's pretty clear that Gandhi was a petty, stuborn man. The first 70 pages detail the early part of his life from his youth in India to his education in England. Most of the book he goes into painful detail about vegetarianism, and his struggles to be a vegetarian in England. Also he painfully details the cost of everything, and talks about exact circumstances of his living situation. Simply put, the first 70 pages is excruciatingly boring, but I think it's important to know this side of a great man.
Knowing this side of Gandhi got me thinking, if Gandhi had been born in a perfect world, he'd just be some crazy old Indian man who insisted on making all his own clothes. Maybe he'd be a nice guy, but he'd probably just be annoying to be around. What made Gandhi a great man was the fact that he was not born in a perfect society. His "petty" and "stubborn" personality traits became amazingly useful in his stuggle for an independent India.
One of the first incidents that Gandhi was involved in took place in South Africa. The British had brought Indians to South Africa because enslaved Africans in Africa would simply find a way to leave and go home, so Gandhi was a second class citizen in South Africa. Indians were forced to carry identitification papers. But then, a group of them staged a protest, and Gandhi starts burning these papers right in front of the English troops. The sergent warns Gandhi and Gandhi keeps burning the papers. Then the officer beats Gandhi, but Gandhi continues to burn the papers until he is beaten to the point of unconciousness. Here, stubborness, which is a vice for most people, is a virtuous act of integrity.
It dawns on me that good doesn't really mean anything without evil. The concept of good wouldn't even be worth talking about if evil wasn't so prevalent, but this idea begs another question. Is good good? Is evil evil? Or is it all just made up?
There are 2 main questions that I have to ask to answer that question. Are we natural creatures? And, How much of life is just made up in the first place?
First off, In nature a lot of horrific things happen naturally, no pun intended. The worst natural thing that comes to mind is the fact that the female praying mantis bites off the head of her partner while mating. There are countless such examples in nature, but they all would be completely horrific if they routinely took place in human society. Yet for the preying mantis, it's simply a convenient way to obtain the nutrients necessary for egg development.
Perhaps, killing someone for a million dollar insurance policy has the same conotation. That person will then have one million dollars. They can provide for a family and ensure their continued survival if they so please. If we are just natural creatures. If we did just get here thanks to evolution. Should evil rather be conseidered a natural act of self indulgence?
I'll get back to that, but now the next question - how much of this is made up? Every person on a certain level is just a product of the society that he exists in. I once heard of a tribe of Africans that whenever they would walk into a room with chairs in it, they would just sit on the floor. That tribe had never seen a chair before, and had no way of describing it, and if told to use it, I bet they'd break it into pieces and use the wood to make tools. This is a simple example of how things that we take for granted are really just creations of our mind in the first place.
But other cultures are a little more troubling. In many tribes they routinely torcher adolescents as a rite of passage into adulthood. One tribe I saw on television, they whip the women. Not to make the women subservient, rather the women take on the lashings enthusiasticly, taunting their whippers. As the women are taking lashings, the adolescent men are preparing for a running of the bulls of sorts. The men have to jump across the backs of several cows without falling. If they fall, they are excommunicated from society. If they make it, they are now men. The women beg to be beat with whips in order to prove their commitment to their brothers rite of passage to manhood. The men performing the whipping often don't even want to be there as the women defiantly beg for more whippings. The only members of this society that are disgruntled with the whole arrangement are the poor group of men that fall during the run. They end up living a sad and lonely existence.
I can think of many more examples, but they are all from primitive societies. A theme that I'm aruing with this example is that some cultures have rituals that can lead to happiness within that culture. However if these rituals were practiced in our culture, they would only be seen as pure evil. The women being whipped beg for their lashings. In this case, the action of whipping a woman is not inherently evil, rather it is the context by which that whipping is taking place that makes the action evil. In other words, the context is evil. The action is not evil.
At this point in the inquiry, I re-ask the questions. Are we natural creatures? And, How much of life is just made up in the first place?
And unfortunately, the answer is that I don't know. I started out to write this post with the intention of organizing my thoughts and drawing an inciteful conclusion. I hoped to prove that we are indeed more than just natural creations, and there are inherrent truths such as good and evil. Ultimately, the only thing that I have to go on to answer these questions is faith. I can't reason my way to a conclusion.
IMO, the fact that these existential dilemmas can't be soundly reasoned through is one of the ways that God likes to fuck with us - well me at least.
Good and Evil?
I really started asking this question after picking up the Autobiography of Gandhi. I've only gotten through the first 70 pages, but it's pretty clear that Gandhi was a petty, stuborn man. The first 70 pages detail the early part of his life from his youth in India to his education in England. Most of the book he goes into painful detail about vegetarianism, and his struggles to be a vegetarian in England. Also he painfully details the cost of everything, and talks about exact circumstances of his living situation. Simply put, the first 70 pages is excruciatingly boring, but I think it's important to know this side of a great man.
Knowing this side of Gandhi got me thinking, if Gandhi had been born in a perfect world, he'd just be some crazy old Indian man who insisted on making all his own clothes. Maybe he'd be a nice guy, but he'd probably just be annoying to be around. What made Gandhi a great man was the fact that he was not born in a perfect society. His "petty" and "stubborn" personality traits became amazingly useful in his stuggle for an independent India.
One of the first incidents that Gandhi was involved in took place in South Africa. The British had brought Indians to South Africa because enslaved Africans in Africa would simply find a way to leave and go home, so Gandhi was a second class citizen in South Africa. Indians were forced to carry identitification papers. But then, a group of them staged a protest, and Gandhi starts burning these papers right in front of the English troops. The sergent warns Gandhi and Gandhi keeps burning the papers. Then the officer beats Gandhi, but Gandhi continues to burn the papers until he is beaten to the point of unconciousness. Here, stubborness, which is a vice for most people, is a virtuous act of integrity.
It dawns on me that good doesn't really mean anything without evil. The concept of good wouldn't even be worth talking about if evil wasn't so prevalent, but this idea begs another question. Is good good? Is evil evil? Or is it all just made up?
There are 2 main questions that I have to ask to answer that question. Are we natural creatures? And, How much of life is just made up in the first place?
First off, In nature a lot of horrific things happen naturally, no pun intended. The worst natural thing that comes to mind is the fact that the female praying mantis bites off the head of her partner while mating. There are countless such examples in nature, but they all would be completely horrific if they routinely took place in human society. Yet for the preying mantis, it's simply a convenient way to obtain the nutrients necessary for egg development.
Perhaps, killing someone for a million dollar insurance policy has the same conotation. That person will then have one million dollars. They can provide for a family and ensure their continued survival if they so please. If we are just natural creatures. If we did just get here thanks to evolution. Should evil rather be conseidered a natural act of self indulgence?
I'll get back to that, but now the next question - how much of this is made up? Every person on a certain level is just a product of the society that he exists in. I once heard of a tribe of Africans that whenever they would walk into a room with chairs in it, they would just sit on the floor. That tribe had never seen a chair before, and had no way of describing it, and if told to use it, I bet they'd break it into pieces and use the wood to make tools. This is a simple example of how things that we take for granted are really just creations of our mind in the first place.
But other cultures are a little more troubling. In many tribes they routinely torcher adolescents as a rite of passage into adulthood. One tribe I saw on television, they whip the women. Not to make the women subservient, rather the women take on the lashings enthusiasticly, taunting their whippers. As the women are taking lashings, the adolescent men are preparing for a running of the bulls of sorts. The men have to jump across the backs of several cows without falling. If they fall, they are excommunicated from society. If they make it, they are now men. The women beg to be beat with whips in order to prove their commitment to their brothers rite of passage to manhood. The men performing the whipping often don't even want to be there as the women defiantly beg for more whippings. The only members of this society that are disgruntled with the whole arrangement are the poor group of men that fall during the run. They end up living a sad and lonely existence.
I can think of many more examples, but they are all from primitive societies. A theme that I'm aruing with this example is that some cultures have rituals that can lead to happiness within that culture. However if these rituals were practiced in our culture, they would only be seen as pure evil. The women being whipped beg for their lashings. In this case, the action of whipping a woman is not inherently evil, rather it is the context by which that whipping is taking place that makes the action evil. In other words, the context is evil. The action is not evil.
At this point in the inquiry, I re-ask the questions. Are we natural creatures? And, How much of life is just made up in the first place?
And unfortunately, the answer is that I don't know. I started out to write this post with the intention of organizing my thoughts and drawing an inciteful conclusion. I hoped to prove that we are indeed more than just natural creations, and there are inherrent truths such as good and evil. Ultimately, the only thing that I have to go on to answer these questions is faith. I can't reason my way to a conclusion.
IMO, the fact that these existential dilemmas can't be soundly reasoned through is one of the ways that God likes to fuck with us - well me at least.
posted by robbo at 6:56 PM
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