This struggle is a constant in our lives!
Most humans don’t know what they are. I’m one!
Over millennium, artists have tried to capture the essence of humans and, as the unusual composite image above shows, many extremes have been canvassed (but not usually together).
The image on the left portrays the Devil. He is satanic, filled with evil. He is capable of profound cruelty, is said to drink the blood of babies, eat their flesh. He is said to live in hell, a place of fire and eternal punishment for humans who have fallen, who have sinned. We all have.
The image on the right is of Jesus, a saintly man who preached love and generosity and compassion, who is said to have performed miracles, who promised his followers life everlasting in heaven with angels and choirs and no suffering, no death. Given the chaos and pain of the world, that sounds pretty good, the type of offer you can’t refuse.
Many in the world worship a saintly version of Jesus or Buddha or Allah, etc. Some are disciples of Satan. And many have no faith and only believe in money and power or, paradoxically, in caring and compassion.
Life is a difficult journey between life and death. We are told many things. We are told many lies. I was brought up to believe in happily ever after. Eventually I worked out it was a lie.
How can growing old be happy? How can watching your body aging be pleasurable? How can watching love die as time passes bring joy? How can seeing the gross inequality in the world make you feel happy? How can war and killing bring anything but despair? And that children die of cancer and are born with terrible defects, how do we cope with these things?
I believe what humans are, good or evil, depends on their circumstances. It is like a lottery. A boy brought up in a Rio slum and a girl who is born to a billionaire family cannot be compared. There are a few winners and many losers. We spend most of our lives trying to work out what life really is (as opposed to what we were told it was) and by the time we see it clearly it is too late to change it.
Each member of each generation makes the same mistakes, messes many things up, marries the wrong people, makes the wrong choices. We all do.
And now, as humanity comes closer to its finale, we wait and we watch. We all know what is coming and we are powerless to stop it.
Look again at the image. How many humans are like the figure on the right? Most of us tend to be more like the one on the left. It is what we are as much as we might argue otherwise.
We are the Devil’s children! Look at the world we have created. By their works ye shall know them.
But it’s not our fault. Our genetic inheritance calls the shots!
Great article David! The death of my son has had me thinking a lot about such things the last few months.
One thing I did learn from his death is that everyday that I wake up is a gift. Even if I am greiving a loss that can never be replaced the simple fact that I am alive is still a gift and it is my responsibility to use that day the best way I can. I don’t know how many more I will have so I must use what I do have wisely. Not because I might go to hell if I don’t, but rather that I try to act in a way that lives up to what I imagine myself to be. I often do a bad job of this, but I keep trying and sometimes I even get it right.
Even the bad things in our lives can while not enjoyable can be lived with, learned from, and endured with joy still being part of our lives. I have fibromyalgia which leaves me in constant pain and exhausted everyday. I have had to learn how to live a very different life over the last few years. There is much I can no longer do, things I miss very much and many days are difficult. I try not to thing about that and have had to find new interests and ways of doing things that are within my limited abilities. I have choices about how I live and about how I see myself. I cannot chose to be sad or not over the death of my son, but I can chose to find what joy I can in my life, I can chose to try to be more good than evil. My genes have given me the ability to be good or bad, my choice. I try to make the right ones. I look at my young grandkids and realise that what they see me do will affect how they in turn behave. I try to be a good example. With as much joy as this aging body can muster.
Reply
This morning I woke up to find out about the intended execution of Troy Davis and concluded that we are living in evil times where evil rules. We all have to be so careful because of WHO is in charge. Things like this make me feel that existence is many layered. I want to believe in some healing to come out of this.
Then I found this video called, Know Thyself. Somewhat dry, but chock full of information:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2luC4AHmHE&sns=em
Reply
Jeannie and Grace, this is an important question. If we are inherently evil, then we will never achieve peace. If we inherently love war and killing and raping, then there is no hope for humans and we will eventually destroy ourselves especially when we have weapons like nukes.
Looking at what America has become and the direction it is heading in leads me to believe that there is no hope. If the nation that was supposed to be one of the ‘Good Guys’ can go off the rails so badly, what hope is there for peace?
Reply
rgl Reply:
September 21st, 2011 at 2:12 pm
David …
“Looking at what America has become and the direction it is heading in leads me to believe that there is no hope.”
Again, you may or may not have read some of my postings @ICH. If you have, you’ll notice that a lot of them are anti-religion, and anti-Amerikkka. I hold Amerikkka responsible for a very great many wrongs on this rock. But that is not to say that things can not change.
I have never met an evil Amerikkkan. As a matter of I’m not sure I’ve EVER met an evil person. But I have certainly met plenty that are terrified of other cultures and other people; people with some very unpleasant … opinions; I have met plenty of ignorant people. And I have met many apathetic people.
This is where evil can blossom. In the commode that holds ignorance, apathy, bigotry and racism.
Reply
Good evening David.
Disclosure, I am the same rgl you may (or may not) have read @ICH. It is my belief that we begin life neutral. We are pre-disposed to neither good nor evil. A normal, healthy infant will learn these traits, certainly, beginning at birth, first from their parents, and then the society into which they are born.
If a child grows in an environment where the parents smoke, for example, there is above average chance that the child will eventually take up the habit. If a child grows with the idea that the State has a right to murder it’s citizens for violation of law, then there is a good chance that that child will grow into an adult who may be more favourably disposed to capital punishment.
We as humans can only learn what we are taught. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase ‘no child is born evil’? I believe that, and it’s obverse. IMHO, we are not fundamentally good or evil. We become that way.
And that bodes well I think, because I do agree with you, that if we are inherently evil, we will never achieve peace. But we aren’t. So we can.
Reply
For an interesting insight into the whole ‘Are We Good or Evil?’ thing, consider watching the Horizon (UK) documentary “Are You Good or Evil”; it is a decent introductory overview – a broad brush treatment of where to look for the genuinely depraved.
It turns out that about 70% of babies (kids under about a year old) seem to prefer “co-operative” behaviour – as determined by a fairly simple experiment involving puppets. That’s a VERY strong result, given that the children could not respond verbally to justify their decisions (these were kids who couldn’t talk yet); also, some kids might have disliked the ‘co-operative’ puppet for some other reason (it colour for instance).
So it seems that normal babies are ‘wired’ for niceness, reciprocity and so forth. We’re ‘born with original slack’ as they say in the Church of the SubGenius.
From there, they covered the genetic predisposition for psychopathy (the MAO-A gene) which, when coupled with early-childhood, seems to be strongly associated with psychopathy; in the absence of early childhood trauma, those with specific expressions of MAO-A will simply be “a bit of a dick”. Psychopathy is also screamingly obvious from brain scans.
That aside, it should be NO surprise to people that sociopaths are attracted to politics and senior levels of bureaucracy: that is where power over others is easiest to obtain, retain and wield without consequences. And it is politicians that start wars – always, everywhere, and without exception, it is those who live at the expense of others, who use war to fulfil resource ambitions.
Nations aren’t “Good guys”; nations – or more accurately, governments or States – are concentrations of power. And guess who is really REALLY attracted to concentrated power: the aforementioned parasitic sociopaths (who happen also to be able to appear smooth and have surface charm… think “Clinton, WJ” or “Obama, BH” or “Blair, AJ”).
It would not matter if you founded a government on a system that deliberately sought to prevent concentration and perversion of power: over time it would become infested with these sociopathic scumbags, who would then appoint ‘like minds’ to courts and the bureaucracy (the Scalias, Yoos, Bybees, Feiths, Wolfowitzes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds and Perles), and soon enough the system would be indistinguishable from France under the Bourbons… the entire system would exist to funnel wealth upwards, and there would be an uberclass that considered itself above the law. From there to domestic death squads… it’s a small jump (especially considering they already have death squads that operate externally).
The political class are not your friends: they are a parasitic sub-species who have no qualms about setting the world aflame if it means they will become slightly richer. Ignore that at your peril – and if you have a child who thinks a career in politics is a good idea, have him tested for MAO-A, because he’s probably a psychopath.
Fnord.
PS… why does Arm-wrestling Jesus have such an appallingly bad fake beard and look like a European? He should have an Arabic nose, be significantly darker, and have short hair (as was the fashion in Judaism at the time of the Roman occupation).
Reply
Rgl, we are born with dispositions. Not all of them are good. We are at war with our instincts. We can’t help ourselves. We will be the first species which destroyed itself.
GT, that Jesus does not accord with your expectation is neither here nor there. Loosen up. Let your imagination flow. Think outside the box!
You say, “So it seems that normal babies are ‘wired’ for niceness, reciprocity and so forth.” A cursory examination of human history shows this to be a myth.
Know thy self!
Reply
anotherbob Reply:
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:47 am
DG – Aren’t you the one who wants to geneticly modify people? Perhaps you weren’t serious?
As I understand adaptability in species there is a wide range of types ie genetic combinations within any population and it is this variety of individuals that allows the species to survive attacks from other life from bacteria and viruses, parasites, insects etc all the way up to attacks from members of its own species. Some individuals survive others don’t. When a species is successful in filling the earth as ours has been whether locally or gobally they strain and finally break the capacity of the biosphere they inhabit and die off in large numbers. You and athers have seen the storm coming for ages yet the general population is unaware and living as though the planet had unlimited capacity to sustain our growing desires for material “wealth”. That we have created the means of our own die back (die off – extinction?) is frustratingly insane yet it is Justice in that each “successful” species is programmed likewise so that the planet is not overrun by a single life form.
Reply
Genetics could curb some of our more base instincts, anotherbob, turn us into more fuzzy, cuddly beings who don’t want to rape and kill and possess everything in sight! Perhaps some wombat or koala genes could work miracles!
Reply
David,
I don’t think the concepts of “good” or “evil” are appropriate descriptions of human behavior as they have religious connotations, our problems are caused by the evolutionary baggage we’ve brought from Africa, where the extended family was all we could depend on. We appear to be ‘wired’ much they same way as our ancestors on the African Savannah.
Although, we indeed appear to have an innate tendency for cooperative behavior as “rgl” has commented, we’re still trapped by the idea of ‘in’ and ‘out’ groups. Religion, is of course, the most pernicious influence in the creation of the idea of the ‘Other’.
So, humans are neither good nor evil, just not (yet) adapted to life outside the Savannah.
Reply
“..the idea of the ‘Other’”
We all are supposed to live independently in an inter-dependent World. It seems the tribes that live as a small group, yet allow their members personal freedoms to be yourself, are the best. Very few of us can live all alone. Love the insights.
Reply
Grace,
David G,
You might be interested in this, it appears there are reasons to be optimistic, particularly in regard to the idea of the “Expanding Circle”.
http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker
Reply