Since morality, and the fight against evil keeps resurfacing ad nauseam, i will try to explain the blind spot of classic western “linear” morality.
I am not decreeing something here. I will describe a problem through raw neutrality (or at least i aim to do so), and i welcome everyone to tackle it as they see fit.
So without further ado, western idea of morality prescribes the following:
- Good and evil are mutually exclusive categories with a permanent line between them
- Good is ontologically superior. Evil is destructive but lacks the power to create
- Good and evil are not complementary or necessary partners
- It rejects the idea that good and evil change based on time, place, or personal perspective
- Human choice is the bridge between the two. Humans have the freedom to choose, while nature has no choice or agency
The fundamental issue with western idea of morality and good/evil is that its human derived and human conduct/choice is it’s measure.
There is a side story here with how (since its prescribed by humans through human value) it would create the obvious issue of “no man stands above another” which western morality cheats by outsourcing their own values to god, specifically christian values, in order to tilt away from “we cannot tell you how to live your life” to “but here is my dude called god who is the owner of this reality and he absolutely can tell you”. However, this is largely offtopic here and now.
The system works if the only goal is to prescribe the direction of social interactions and to guide what is good and bad conduct, but the framework its using for doing so utterly abuses the larger existential implications and creates massive blindspots in it’s own framework.
This is what brings us to the question of what is good and what is bad in it’s truest sense:
In it’s primordial form good and bad is simply presence and absence.
The lack of need, and the need to fill the lack.
Good and evil
Life and death
Is and is not
Yes and no
1 and 0
This primordial description is valid, because it fits into nearly all systems going forward:
- It works in physics where one state is high energy and the other is in low
- It works in psychology where one state is sated, at peace and the other is in need, forced to seek
- It works in sociology where one state is a high trust society of unified values and customs, while the other is one that is fractured and seeks the points by which it can connect and form
- It works in biology where one state is has no stressors which would motivate it to move and change, where the other is internally “motivated” by stress to satisfy it’s needs
- It works in economy where in one state the house/business/we is fully solvent, abundant and sustainable, in the other its collapsing, cant be sustained, has a deficit
- It works in metaphysics where good is static and bad is the engine that moves all
and so on and so forth
It is no exaggeration to describe this as one of the most fundamental laws of this reality and universe. There is nigh nothing in it that would go against this formula lest we tread into the quantum realm of theoretical physics.
Some eastern philosophies tend to this. Such as taoism which describes the relationship between these forces or states
The eastern philosophies do not deny the idea that good and evil are in a fundamentally connected relationship. Not only because one would lose conceptual meaning without the other, but because only together can they form a coherent system.
When someone with a western idea of morality looks at yin and yang, they see two opposing forces fighting eachother. What escapes them is precisely the relationship between the two: The circle. That the two compose the one.
And the one is the moral foundation for eastern philosophy. The one is the circle. The tao.
Even the western idea of evil is considered to be a beneficial part of nature and existence, as long as it fulfills it’s role within the tao, like how death makes room for new life.
This brings us to the fundamental problem with western morality.
Western morality does not ask how the universe works, how nature works, how all things work.
Western morality asks a different question: Given free will, how should we conduct ourselves?
It is deeply pragmatic if nothing else, but its a complete catastrophe in it’s execution precisely because it does not contend with anything except itself, it’s human derived notions and how human beings feels about things.
When you try to extrapolate western morality onto any larger framework, it breaks and kills everything. INCLUDING itself.
I will bring a specific example that models this issue. Just one. The problem of liberalism.
Western society views more and more freedoms as a net positive, pushing everything more and more towards “good”.
More prosperity, more benefits, more wealth, more rights, more freedoms, more more more more more more everything. And its clearly failing. The system is falling apart. Human beings, human ethics, human values, human everything is in decay despite everything being better.
And western morality cannot even conceptualize the problem, because it cannot describe it within it’s own framework that it goes against the nature of all things. But even in doing so follows the same path of the circle: It perpetually destroys and rebuilds itself, always chasing that unattainable moral good it desires, always failing and destroying itself in the process just to try and fail again.
In conclusion:
This has been the source of many debates on this forum to no end. I wrote all of this down in order to touch upon one of the most fundamental failings of western morality, society and philosophy and it’s worst offender: pragmatism.
The 19th century American branded notion of “lets reject the quest for absolute cosmic truth or objective metaphysical reality” and simply go for “the value, meaning, and truth of an idea are determined entirely by its practical consequences and usefulness in human life”
I acknowledge that a human moral framework needs to account for human needs as well.
Questioning that would be insane.
But i hope that what i wrote highlights that the western framework for determining good and evil is so antithetical to the nature of everything including that of humans, that it cannot result in anything other than destruction.
Since i have been writing this for a couple of hours now, alternating between writing and looking/comparing different concepts and terms, im pretty sure that i missed a lot, so i might come back and edit things based on feedback if there is any. For all intents and purposes, look at this as a conversation starter.
