*Empathyâ„¢ comes into it perhaps - but more so I think its just a geneticly programmed predisposition to follow the herd - afterall, what the majority does, will be regarded by said majority as ‘good’, ergo - a predisposition to do good/be good within the context of the social group you find yourself born into.
One man’s horrific act of Canibalism, is another man’s excuse for a bit of a knees-up and a dance round the fire. ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are flexible little buggers.
*Empathy - the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, all the better to judge when they’ll walk through the cross-hairs of your rifle. Ooh - cynical…
Assuming this question is a spiritual religious one, it Depends on what scriptures you read. The Zohar gives a clear description of Why both God and humans are good and evil at the same time.
Having said that the torah mentions this also, as does Daoism Hinduism and Buddhism in plenty of detail. So there is plenty there to chew over if your interest in this question is a spiritual one.
I wasn’t trying to prescribe spiritual or religious understanding in particular, just interested in the apriori assumptions we have to make. Our spiritual and religious views may certainly color our understanding of our basic nature, but I would not limit the discussion to those narrow viewpoints entirely. There are other ways of looking at our basic nature outside of spiritual or religious grounds.
So, if we use the herd instinct viewpoint, then good and evil can only be culturally derived? It would follow then, that absence of a monoculture guarantees good and evil, with much confusion cross-culturally. Perhaps the birth of philosophy comes from cultural reductionism?
It seems you have seldom experienced a flow state, when everything just seems to workout, starts falling into place and provides you with a very satisfying feeling at the end of the day. If you work in a care home like I do, there is a lot to be gained by creating such a state whilst nursing the residents. It is often a question of getting through the day without frustration and exhaustion.
Have you read The Alchemist? Paulo Coelho says that whenever we want to do something, follow our destiny - the whole universe conspires to help us. We simply have to be open to it.
I have experienced this many times. You might be working on a particular project, you meet someone in a coffee shop who has the key to the next piece of the puzzle and so on…I get a sense that when this happens, everything is happening exactly as it should.
I’ve experienced my share of flow states and in fact I’m paid to create them. I’m not the hero of the geriatric sect for nothing.
My afternoon business is as a keyboard/vocalist/entertainer working with many senior centers and nursing homes doing my hour shows. That hour is pure sleep and that is all that is necessary or wanted. I maintain this flow state through the flow of music . It works for me because my inner work has made me more or less free of the egotism that forces others in this business to feel awkward and condescending around the elderly. Hence, these people know with me they are appreciated. I simply transform, for a short time, the exhaustion of depression into a joy of communal participation and a feeling of self worth. As with any audience, there are those that are oblivious and others that are very perceptive.
In this musical work I help people sleep and feel good about themselves. My inner work with others though is for the purpose of awakening. From that perspective flow by itself is just sleep but creating a flow through the observation of ones inner states is “walking on water”, where ones “presence” isn’t pulled into oblivion from the normal unconscious slavery of our reactions to external life This is a religious board so I feel obliged to make that distinction regardless of how naive it may appear.
The flow state can either come accidentally or through the lawful results of conscious awareness or awakening
Hi oh Liquid one.
You have two possible destinies. The first and usual is what the Buddhists call samsara and the Christians: dust to dust. The second which is related to fate has to do with human evolution.
One destiny is to evolve which means being like a salmon and swimming upstream to the source and the other is to be part of the flow that turns in circles riding the wheel of samsara. The universe approves of both and helps with both. Which destiny do you mean?
Don’t think a thing about it. My inept ramblings bring out the educator in everyone.
So splain this to me. These factory settings. They can be over-written you say. Does this mean that I can be evil one day and good the next depending on the over-write? Isn’t there just a bit of dissonance in all of this? How many over-writes till there is confusion? Isn’t there a point where we have to decide whether man is basically good, or basically evil?
Nice to know it works for you, but what I was talking about was a flow state whilst working hard physically and mentally, whilst working up a sweat helping the immobile and also while coping with people with various forms of dementia. It is a demanding task that has to be achieved seven days a week and I am pleased if I manage to create a flow state whilst doing it. It seems to me to be a little different to an afternoon singalong.
Where the salmon uses physical efforts to return to the source, with man it requires consciousness. Our unconscious participation in the energy flows of nature just follow the cycles of nature that at times seem wonderful and horrible at others as described in the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Intuition is valuable because it reveals something. Acting on it requires consciousness because without it, what was revealed just gets distorted and becomes part of the natural flow that comprises samsara.
It requires an inner sincerity that is rare and stretches our ability to stay on course to its maximum. This has become part of my admiration for Simon Weil. She became so human from her need for inner sincerity that she probably appeared to many as inhuman.
Hi Bob
No offense taken. A task is a task and presence can be a part of either since presence takes it all as the same. The nature of our resistance is what causes the division.
Sorry - I missed this in my hurry to smooth my favourite Angel’s ruffled feathers…
Yes - I think broadly speaking, if a global monoculture existed, evil above the level of the ‘petty’ individual type - would be reduced to a background hum - though there would have to be a very stringent allotment of resources involved, lest inequality breed dissent. Ever happen…? Nah, not in my lifespan.
And yes again - philosophy at its most noble tries to bridge the gaps of credo and race - to find uniting truths and socio-psychological foundations common to us all. That it frequently fails is more a problem with its presentation of ideas than anything else. “Slowly-slowly-catchee-monkey” is something philosphical revolutionists forget to the detriment of many. People are allergic to abrupt change.
Look Ma !!! We agree !!!
Day to day is too shorter an interval to bring about the sea-changes of the soul you speak of.
I meant more of a phasal deveolment:
*We come out of the chute with a predisposition to copy our peers and parents in thought, word, and deed. In accordance with this, we learn our parents skills, adopt their language and absorb their morality or its lack.
*Then comes the greying, the slow setting of the cement. We become disillusioned, lose our hope/wonder for life - seek the familliar, the reassuring. Unless of course, a new and shiny super-parental figure arises - charisma and wisdom (real or flawed) oozing from every media-friendly pore - and zonks us back to phase one, robotic copying of our new Mum/Dad.
*The cement sets - and the values of conduct we have developed and hold become concrete and almost wholly immovable, change is resisted because the values we have adopted throughout life have become such an important cornerstone of our basic identity - that to change them in any significant fashion would be analogous to destruction of self. The world may move on but they stay behind, clutching the last snow-globe snapshot of a world they could recognize and function in.
(As an aside, a thought I had last night… Relevant to the hyper-dad figure, Isn’t it funny how in stories and to an extent in real-life, we automatically forgive/ or just plain don’t notice the more mundane tresspasses and sins of those we percieve to be ‘heroes’, no-one considers the amount of collateral damage and misery that would inevitably follow Superman’s throwing of the monster from planet X through that office block… Just so long as the beast is vanquished. Just as we begin life believing that our parents can do no wrong - it seems that “larger than life” figures in the real-world trigger this response in us too. We are always surprized when final proof arrives that the President/monarch fucks around. We are always shocked to find that the popstar - who’s done so much great work for charity… turns out to have a darker side. We load these figures up with our hopes and dreams of an impossible perfect ‘wise’ and ‘good’ human being, squint our eyes like lovers to blur their image into what we want to see, and are fundamentally stricken when they tumble and fall. Perhaps it is not that we have an actual tendency toward good or evil individually , but a tendency to seek/hope/believe that it is possible in absolute forms in others…)
So anyway - humans - inherrantly good, or inherrantly evil…?
Our will has to be free in order for us to come to an understanding of who and what we are. Following a religion blindly is not following the Word of God, it is following the letter. Following the Word of God is more about understanding who and what we are and acting in accordance with that. As children of God we are the same as God - only immature. As is the case with our physical lives, a child can never become mature unless he physically goes through the pain of growing up and learning through experience. There is no difference with the spirit. We are talking about a level that is deeper than the eye can see. That is where free will comes into it - we have the capacity to transform ourselves by observing ourselves in both positive and negative circumstances. The positive and negative circumstances allows us to use our conscience to choose. (The deeper nature like xanderman says is neutral so without the physical mirror is unable to ‘see’ itself). The problem that human beings face is an attachment to good and bad. Judgements about good and evil abound - when in fact the very fact that judgement arises is a tool for us to see ourselves.
My feathers were never ruffled, I just wanted to move the discussion along…
I’m a bit surprised that we haven’t heard much from those with strong religious convictions. How can man be neither good nor evil by nature? What ever happened to original sin? Why would Christ be necessary if we had inherent goodness? Didn’t he die for our sins?
