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

of its own, and is now unstoppable and all-conquering. Afflicted with a
‘plague’, we look for a panacea and a pill. With a pandemic in the air, we want to
survive with a closed nose or a mask. With a tornado howling outside each one
of us, we think that our thatched roof will stay intact. But our crafty mind, afraid
that we will blame it for all our malevolence and misery, throws up a seductive
crumb: Have we all got it all horribly wrong? Are we missing the wood for the
trees? And contrary to all that depressing detail the media highlights, are we, as
some ‘optimists’ argue, actually better placed than ever to act for the benefit of
humanity as a whole? Do we believe that violence is on the wane, and a subtle
spiritual renaissance is on the rise? We must also note that at the core of what has
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come to be called the New Age Movement, which seeks to harmonize science
and spirituality, and mind, body and spirit, there is also a visceral, sometimes
violent, reaction to the suffocating sweep of what we deem as ‘good life’. But,
more fundamentally, it encompasses another deeper tenet, namely the thought
that this life, this world, is not the entirety of existence, but merely one step in an
infinite voyage; that our personal consciousness is but a fragmentary projection
of a much greater wholeness. That the ‘divinity’ is ‘within’, intrinsic and allpervasive.
And that all forms of life, including animals and plants, have their own
intrinsic value. That bait is what draws so many of the young and the restless, and
‘today’s dead-end kids’ to obscure metaphysical bookstores, to cults and gurus,
swamis, lamas of all hues, spiritual workshops and seminars and meditation and
mystical retreats. To go out of the way, to think out-of-the-box, has always been
the way out in all turbulent times and in times of great change. That is at once a
potential promise and a seductive peril, an opening and an obstruction. It could
be a promise if we introduce greater clarity and make it more in tune with the
tasks and challenges the world faces which require changes in our individual
lifestyles. It could then be ‘transformational’ in its depth and scope and melt
away the malice and meanness, hatred and hubris that blight human life. On the
other hand, it could be a peril if it is turned into a cover for pleasure pursuits by
charlatans and charismatic self-seekers. Most of us are poised on what is called
the ‘hedonic treadmill’ and have to keep walking, and making more money. So
overpowering is money that we cannot seriously contemplate any contemporary
issue without reference to it. And if we do, it will fail because it is inextricably
interwoven.
One can with equal passion posit both ways, as our very understanding
of ‘being better-off’ and what ‘violence’ itself is, is blurred. For every moral
misconduct or ethical impropriety our mind offers an excuse or an explanation
and that enables us to lead ‘normal’ lives. All this agonizing thought, in Thoreau’s
phrase ‘quiet desperation’, has given birth to a new branch of science called the
‘science of morality’. Joseph Daleiden, Sam Harris, and Patricia Churchland,
among others, have argued that society should now consider normative ethics as
an important domain of science, and that it might be possible, using disciplines
like neuropsychology and metaphysical naturalism, to outline a generic basis
for moral life, or, to paraphrase JK Galbraith, to “search for a superior moral
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409
justification for selfishness”. But there are some who say that, contrary to popular
perception, for a moral life, it is not only a matter of following moral principles
and codes and applying them to daily life. It is, or ought to be, a process of
determining what kind of humans we should be individually and collectively.
Einstein, who described himself as an agnostic said that without ‘ethical culture’,
there is no salvation for humanity. The practical question is that while making
choices and decisions in life how do we differentiate the moral from the immoral,
good from bad, right from wrong. Even from a purely selfish point of view, the
problem often is that, as Rousseau said, “Our will is always for our own good
but we do not always see what the good is”. The new factor is not only ‘what
good’ but ‘whose good’. Most agree that a moral or virtuous life too is a means.
It is about the end that views widely vary, from honor (Homer), to justness
(Plato), to happiness (Aristotle). Religions generally say that being moral or good
is good for you to go to heaven, and it will be handy on the Judgment Day.
While by and large it was possible to describe and discuss, analyze and find
remedies and solutions to ‘moral’ problems in earlier times, it does not seem
possible now. The present ‘crisis’ constitutes a different class, not different degree.
In the contemporary context we do not know what is moral and what we need
to do to be moral, and also if certain actions are under any conditions should
be deemed wrong, or if they become wrong because of their consequences. We
are increasingly unsure if an individual is entitled to his ‘moral space’ which
is sacrosanct and immune to others’ invasion and how to balance it with an
increasingly elastic common good. But the essential question is: How best could
we contribute to it? The answer is stunningly simple: whatever you are good in,
do it for the common good. The problem also is most of us really do not know
what our ‘signature’ strengths are; we are more aware of our failings and foibles.
That requires a conscious and sustained work; it can emerge as an epiphany, a
sudden revelation or incrementally, but we will know. Then the task is to channel
and harness them to service something that is higher and larger than your desires.
We need to energize our energies, and also the ‘moral context’ of human effort
has radically changed. Every effort, however tiny and small, goes not in vain. The
Book of Golden Precepts says, “Learn that no efforts, not the smallest—whether in
the right or wrong direction—can vanish from the world of causes. Even wasted
smoke remains not traceless”.
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The dilemma of human life is how one can be moral when all of us are
potentially equally capable of doing both good and evil. And we have no way
of foretelling what each of us might actually do under a similar temptation.
Compounding the dilemma is another reality: we are all made of the same mud
and mix but no one can ever be anyone else. As Zen master Kodo Sawaki said,
“You can’t even trade a single fart with the next guy”. We might sometimes
succeed in putting ourselves in someone’s shoes but not become someone else.
That ‘jeopardy’ becomes even more complex by juxtaposing another variable:
in the words of Shannon Alder, “No two persons can learn something and
experience it in the same way”. As a result, we can never, ever, be certain how
any of us will respond to any particular situation. Most of us are ‘bad’ because
we have convinced ourselves that that is the only way we can survive. Another
emerging factor is that the fountainheads of immorality and evil have shifted from
primarily private behavior to public performance, to governance, and practiced
by those who are supposedly there to save us. The greatest evil is not now done in
those sordid “dens of crime” that Dickens loved to depict. The locus is not even
concentration camps and labor camps. There it was visible. Instead of Auschwitz
we have Abu Ghraib. Instead of the Gulags, where people were worked to death,
we have professionals; in the words of CS Lewis, “quiet men with white collars
and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their
voices”.33 Those who don’t flinch in dispensing death as a part of their duty,
and are conceived, ordered and managed in clean, carpeted, warmed, and welllighted
offices.These are not only, in Lewis’ phrase “nasty business concerns” but,
even more, in elegant White Houses, Downing Streets, Elysée Palaces, Kremlins,
Zhongnanhais,34 offices of secret services and nondescript offices of apparatchiks
and bureaucrats. The State is now the chief source of evil, as much as those it vows
to eliminate. It oppresses as much as it claims to protect, uses violence, fearless as
it is lawful, brazen because there is no earthly higher power. Historically, in the
interests of the common good, most people, including great philosophers like
Plato, have exempted the State from the rigor of personal morality, and gave it,
for example, the ‘license to lie’. But it has now gone far and the common good
is no longer the primary motive, which is now the interest of the ruling class,
the politico-bureaucratic-business nexus. The Hobbesian premise that the State
is necessarily evil to protect self-motivated individuals from other self-motivated
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individuals assumes that the rulers of the State have no vested interest other than
ensuring fair play, and to protect the weak and vulnerable. That is no longer a
valid presumption. There are some like David Graeber who even say that the
State is a demonic force thwarting human freedom. Clearly it is a dangerous
hyperbole since it ignores many positives that stem from the State. Without
anything approximating a State what we call ‘society’ will implode in time.
The closest parallel to a state of society without a State is what has come
to be known as the ‘Paris Commune’, which offered to the masses—who were
increasingly disgusted with the soulless capitalist mechanization and utilitarian
State socialism, and were looking for a ‘humane alternative’—a beacon of hope of
participatory self-governance. But how it degenerated and disintegrated provides
a clue to what happens to human society sans any structure or enforcing power. It
illustrates what the dialectic between the ‘desirable’ and ‘desired’ ought to be and
is. We must not ignore that violent social conflict is as innate and spontaneous for
humans as social cooperation and accommodation. Furthermore, those who are
capable of handling State power wisely do not come to power even in democracies,
let alone dictatorships. Instead, those who come to power soon develop a lust for
the perks of power and they shed all principles to hold on to power; power ceases
to be a means and becomes the end. No system of governance, since at least the
Greek city-states, has been able to insure against this eventuality.
Whichever way it might be, the prudent course is to recognize that evil
remains a concrete, clear and transparent ‘moral problem’, an ordinary aspect
of contemporary human life. As Lars Svendsen35 puts it, “Evil should never be
justified, should never be explained away… it should be fought”. We must not
also ignore that the “forbidden truth and unspeakable taboo”, as Joyce Oates
reminds us, is “that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it
has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but
active accomplices”.36 No one is wholly immune to the allurements of evil; nor
has anyone exclusive rights over virtue. Evil is not, as some say, a parasite on the
good, implying that it has no independent existence; rather, it exists because the
good tolerates it, it is now a primary passion. Whether the human beast can best
be left alone to his instincts and impulses, dreams and desires to lead a worthy
life of utility, to his own self and to his fellow-humans, or if the focus should
move to the ‘circumstance’ of his daily life to influence his choices and actions, is
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moot. But that circumstance, good or bad, in itself and in its yield, is not entirely
a happenstance; it happens for a reason, to fulfill our own soul-driven desire. This
question is a signature snapshot of the fallacy of dichotomous thinking in terms
of binary opposition, such as either-or, black or white, good or bad, or all or
nothing, which is how the human mind perceives the phenomenal world. Of all
the messages that spring from Creation, the governing axiom is the ‘principle of
polarity’ or of ‘pairs of opposites’. It is called the dialectical doctrine of dwanda
in Hindu philosophy, and in modern usage it is often phrased as the principle
of polarity, aptly described in The Kybalion: Hermetic Philosophy:37 “Everything is
Dual; everything has poles; everything has its pair of opposites; like and unlike
are the same; opposites are identical in nature, but different in degree; extremes
meet; all truths are but half-truths; all paradoxes may be reconciled”. At one
level of perception,