The War Within - Between Good and Evil - Bheemeswara Challa (psychology books to read TXT) 📗

are a must and some are optional, but everything we
do, it is possible to do it differently; what the French call nostalgie de la boue,
to live a simpler, downsized, or less indulgent life. For, with everything we do
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we have a choice—to do it callously or kindly, maliciously or magnanimously,
helpfully or humiliatingly, insensitively or compassionately. Even when hurting
another person is unavoidable, it can still be done in a manner that minimizes
the hurt and harm. According to the theory of karma, we have no control over
what happens in our lives, but we have choices about how we react, and how we
react is what creates new karma, which can be either good or bad karma. If we
react with consideration, compassion and sensitivity, and try to see the situation
from the other person’s viewpoint, good karma will be generated, and if not, the
bad. In other words, every day we make our own future. We must also remember
that everything in life is a habit, and it can be cultivated and nourished and
nurtured through what we do. That is why childhood and adolescence are so
important, to make sharing, kindness, and compassion habits.
We ourselves have no idea how we might react to competitive situations
that call for compassion. In fact, it is possible, as recent research has shown,
that situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make decent
men and women do horrible things. What you become depends on who you
happen to be, and who you are intrinsically. The social setting and the ‘system’
can pervert anyone. But what is unclear is that while everyone is susceptible,
who would be more likely to crack or snap, and why. Or, who is more likely
to take advantage of the situation, or who is more likely to abuse their power.
The answer lies in what goes on within the person in question. Our specific
response to an external situation is but an indirect extension of the struggle for
control of our consciousness. Not able to connect the two, we are left perplexed,
befuddled, and saddened when we see how easily good people can be seduced
to act immorally and rudely, which reminds us that we might not be who we
think we are. We must also remember that although we view good and evil (and
the Upanishadic preyas and sreyas) as two hostile forces, the fact is that both
cohabit our consciousness and are constantly engaged in a power struggle, and
one cannot exist without the other. It is equally important to remember that the
border between the two is highly permeable, and almost anyone can be swayed
to cross it when pressured by circumstantial and situational forces. A good man
can do bad, and a bad man can do good.
In our troubled times, everything appears out of joint and upside down.
These days, “fair is foul and foul is fair”, as the witches say in Macbeth. All that is
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good or fair to others, can be evil or foul to them, and vice versa. Many people,
even as they go with the flow to get along, sense in their bones that contemporary
human society is descending inexorably towards catastrophic collapse, and that
man himself is a ticking time-bomb. Capitalism, the dominant economic system
of the day, rooted as it is in the ideology of growth for its own sake, has turned
cancerous. Something must be terribly wrong with our world, when what has
so far served as a metaphor for sacrifice, the selfless love of a mother, is called
into question, when man is bent on making himself an appendage to his own
creations, and when we seem ready to face any meltdown rather than give up
the trappings of the good life—which we often confuse with having a ‘good
time’, the preyas or the pursuit of the pleasant—mediated by technology. It is
no longer a remote or improbable possibility. Scientists say that it is a now-ornever
situation, that to contain and combat climate change we need to bring
several drastic changes that include lifestyle changes like eating less meat, riding
bicycles, and flying less. Barring the pro-growth fanatics, we will all applaud and
agree but few, if any, will factor in climate change in their daily decision-making.
That is so unpalatable that we are prepared, in desperation, to undertake highly
risky experiments like geoengineering (the use of scientific methods to artificially
control the environment, particularly the world’s temperature) in order to deal
with the problem of climate change. And it applies across-the-board to all other
serious problems that require changes at the individual level. We must remember
that any problem we encounter is at least partly of our own making, and the
solution must also include actions of our own making. Instead of moving on in
this direction, we, so to speak, pass the buck to technology and tell ourselves that
it is technology that got us into this mess and therefore it is again technology
that can get us out of it. The mind is the mischief-maker; it does not let us feel
responsible or that we can make any difference. So it looks as though we are
inexorably headed for a climate catastrophe or something similar or worse, in the
lifetime of today’s adults, not of the generations to come. But like mortality, we
viscerally believe that we will escape the doomsday even if the world goes down,
that fire and brimstone might fall on everyone’s head but we will still be standing.
In fact, our addiction to convenience and comfort might well accelerate
the impending apocalypse. What is worrying is that we are getting so damn good
at creating addictive, attention-grabbing diversions that it will gradually become
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almost impossible to avoid addictions to various forms of entertainment. The
key word is ‘attention’. Everyone wants to hijack your ‘attention’. For companies,
our attention translates into their profit. Gadgets are another example. We know
that excessive use is bad, particularly for children. It has come to the stage that
the very people building these glowing hyper-stimulating portals have become
increasingly terrified of them, and are trying to keep their own kids off them.
And so could our mind-less or mind-driven (it is hard to tell) obsession with
automation. For historians like Yuval Noah Harari, “The automation revolution
is likely to make some areas of the world extremely rich and powerful, while
completely destroying the economy of others”. That would further widen the
already wide chasm between the rich and the poor, the elite and the lockedout.
There is a grave risk that killing could well emerge as another convenience
to get out of an annoying inconvenience or to circumvent an impediment.
Euthanasia—or physician-assisted death (PAD)—although still illegal in many
countries, is emerging as the go-to response in an ever-increasing range of
circumstances, many of which would have been considered not too long ago as
not meriting the extreme step. Some zealots say that anybody who is unbearably
suffering an intractable medical condition should have the option to die. No
more do we believe that there are causes worth dying for but none worth killing
for. We may start killing each other as indiscriminately as we now kill other
species. And then, as the Greek philosopher Pythagoras said, “for as long as men
massacre animals, they will kill each other”. Like a wounded tiger that turns a
man-eater because humans are far easier to bring down, people might find it
simpler to kill one another. Killing in war, as Einstein said, is nothing short of
mass murder. And there are no more taboos left—that a mother can’t kill, that
a child cannot kill, that love cannot kill, that a machine can’t kill, ad nauseam…
And from nature’s point of view, that would be the most convenient, and the
most natural. Injunctions such as thou shalt not kill, go against the very grain
of nature. Without any killing the natural order will go haywire. And man, far
from being a non-killing animal, has consistently been one of the most ‘efficient’.
Nonviolence, not as abstinence from violence or withholding of wickedness, but
‘as a way of being present’, was never integral to human life. Violence is another
name for injury, and it is injury that is the essence of the human way of life. What
is new in modern times, is that the likelihood of violence turning lethal is now
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greater than ever before, partly because the available weapons of violence have
themselves become far more deadly. We can kill with bare hands but it requires
more effort. Earlier, the weapons available during social upheavals were relatively
rudimentary: swords, bows and arrows, and occasionally guns. And we have
developed a taste for quick-fixes, much more so when we lose our temper. We
have also developed a thick skin to stay alive. Every day, we are faced with a new
horror or atrocity that takes its toll—spiritually, emotionally, and physically—
on what it means to be human. We may mentally shrug it all off as of no direct
concern to us, but deep inside, it takes its toll and strengthens the forces of evil
inside, which are in a constant state of war with the forces of goodness, virtue,
and righteousness. The irony and tragedy is that we are, as Dr. Zaius of the film
Planet of the Apes (1968) says, “a war-like creature who gives battle to everything
around him, even himself ”, while he is blissfully oblivious to the most important
war within his own consciousness. And we are equally oblivious to the fact that
it is the waning fortunes of good in this war that are responsible for much of the
turmoil, mayhem, and misery in the world. We must always be cognizant that
contradiction and collision define us both within and outside. We are always
at war inside and outside. We are at once the observer and the opposing forces.
How we orchestrate and oversee the war shapes what happens in life.
We are truly at a watershed in human evolution, a total rupture with
all that had preceded the present. Man himself has come to be a modern-day
Bhasmasura, the Hindu demon whose touch could reduce anything to ashes.
That power was given to him as a boon by the gods. But when Bhasmasura
turned around and wanted to test it on the very god, Lord Shiva, who had
given him the boon, Bhasmasura was induced to put his hand on his own
head, thereby burning himself to ash. Does a similar fate await us? What we
are doing essentially is to dehumanize everything we touch. Many believe that
things cannot continue like this forever and that the long-expected doomsday,
the apocalyptic event, is now unavoidable. And that belief affects our behavior.
And up front, none of us is innocent. Nothing simply is the same anymore—
not human nature, not human behavior. Everything seems topsy-turvy, and
all values are turning upside down. While divisiveness and acrimony pervade
present human society, harmony eludes us. Man today is restless, even as he is
more powerful than ever. He has always needed an anchor, a harbor, a crutch
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and a refuge to navigate through life. That role was for long performed by myth,
magic, mythology, religion, and God. None of them are passé but they are in
retreat, if not in disrepute. Our devoutness to the gods is in danger of getting
dwarfed by our devotion to gadgets. And as gadgets increasingly shape everyday
practicalities, there is mounting concern about the addictive nature of staring
at the screen or the ‘black mirror’. The concern is not only that excessive screen
exposure breeds bad behavior but, even more, that it is reconfiguring children’s
brains and, as a result, there is growing realization that gadgets should be treated
like tools, not toys. While, like with every tool, it depends on how we harness
it, it is important to note that visual communication is the most magnetic and
affects the brain most. The point though is that all technologies can be a boon or
bane. For example, it is generally considered that video games are addictive and
are bad for kids. But research suggests that empathy-training video games like
Crystals of Kaydor can change the brain and help adolescents recognize emotions.
It is never too early; studies show that including empathy into its curriculum can
help even preschoolers. If we can change the mindset of the young (toddlers to
youth), and make them more caring and compassionate, it can become a big part
of the contextual change in the war within. So, it once again depends on us, on
what goes on inside us, how we use a gadget or a game.
Technological change, powered by the fusion of traditional technology
and modern science,