The War Within - Between Good and Evil by Bheemeswara Challa (e book reader online .txt) 📕

of
men tend to use power to dominate and impose their will over others, especially
those who lack power themselves. We want to control everything and everybody,
no matter if it is another individual or a nation or nature. Predispositions,
preferences, predilections—it is these that make up much of our behavior and
therefore cannot be given a free reign. Nor can any man be a real man or rise up
to his potential if he is hemmed in, hovered over, controlled and conditioned
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
330
externally. The quest for balance, for harmony, to tame the savageness of man
and to make life on human earth softer and gentler, has been elusively timeless.
In the age of unbridled greedism, intemperate individualism, and galloping
globalization, that futile quest has turned into a ticking time bomb that threatens
to undo whatever man has achieved thus far. We have not been able to discover
or design the tools that help us to determine what we should do—or even should
want—in a manner that is morally compatible, a behavior that contributes to the
common good without compromising individual integrity and dignity. We have
not found a way to express our free will (which many say is an illusion in itself )
without affecting the freedom of others. Indeed, to be alive in any form of life,
not only human, is to affect another life in some way or the other just doing what
it takes to keep the body breathing. Only the dead are harmless to anyone. But is
death itself a cause for mourning, or celebration, or both? Is every parting a little
death, and death a longer parting? Even scriptures are ambivalent on this matter.
The ambivalence comes from ignorance about the true nature of either birth or
death. Essentially, our reaction to birth or death is personal; how it affects our
life, the loss, or gain that might ensue; it has little to do with what is good for
the dead or the living. Prophet Muhammad said that no one must wish for death
for any worldly affliction but if one must wish for it they must pray, “O, Lord;
keep me alive so long as life may be good for me; and cause me to die when it is
better for me so to do”.
The mind created money to manipulate, if not to enslave, man. To
ensure that man will never become a true moral creature. The original functions
of money were both revolutionary in character and evolutionary in its utility.
Revolutionary, as man discovered that, through money, his excess energy of one
day can be used for another day or can be preserved over a length of time. It
became an evolutionary instrument in bringing men to act together and create
a social collective of economic energy. Money is a symbol of human energy. It
organizes that energy and its movement across the society in time and space. It
is created by the individual’s trust in the other individual and in the collective.
But the mind has the power to make money ‘good’ if used for a good purpose,
and ‘bad’ if used wrongly. The fact is that our obsession with money has loosened
the strings that connect one human being to another. It incubates and induces
an intoxicating sense of independence, an arrogant euphoria of autonomy and
Money—Maya, Mara, and Moksha
331
makes us believe that if we have it in amplitude we become ‘complete’ and life
will be under control. From the earliest times, money in some form or another
has been central to organized living. Over millenniums, money has reflected the
changes in habitat of human society; but it also helped bring about these changes.
Increasingly, money shapes the foreign and economic policies of all governments.
There is little that man is not willing to compromise with—from virginity to
marital fidelity, friendship to patriotism, personal honor to professional probity—
for money. The dilemma is that with money we are subverted, and without it the
world will descend into chaotic disorder. The fact is that in spite of its antiquity
and ubiquity, its rightful place and proper management has eluded the ingenuity
of the human mind. It has become synonymous with pleasure, pride, and
power. Throughout history, the people who have had most power have almost
always been rich. It has developed into a principal means of human-to-human
interfacing, the glue that holds human society together. The economist Alfred
Marshall maintained that the history of money is synonymous with the history
of civilization. The smooth functioning of the money economy enables society
to raise its standard of living by increasing production and equitable distribution
through the medium of exchange. Money is central to the processes of production,
consumption, distribution, and purchasing power. It makes people believe that
they are free as long as they have the supposed freedom to consume and the money
to pay for it. It is through money that we satiate our greed, avarice, and ambition.
Will Rogers sums it up well: Too many people spend money they haven’t earned,
to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.
The extent to which money has come to dominate human life is such
that the way we think and relate with money is now a tool and touchstone to
find out who we really are at our core. What we do with money, and how we live
with money’s pervasive presence, tells a lot about our values and essence. Money
is all there is—medium and measure; means and end; symbol and substance
of life. We love it (when we have it) and we hate it (when we don’t). Somerset
Maugham quipped that money is like a sixth sense and you cannot make use of
the other five without it. Money is often perceived as a lifeless object separated
from people, in reality it is man-made, imbued with the collective spirit of the
living and the dead. It is also an ‘instrument of collective memory’. Money has its
own character, in the sense of having particular attributes, especially moral and
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
332
ethical, which differentiate a person, a group or a thing from another. Over time,
and more sharply in modern times, it has radically changed the personality of
man; but in so doing it changed its own character. In the humdrum of everyday
life we often find ourselves asking the question: how can we juxtapose money
and morality in the same sentence and not come face to face with an ethical
contradiction? As Osho put it, ‘either you will be consumed by your desires
or you have to consume your desires’. While it is true that a wholly contented
man is a dead man, and that it is discontent that fuels creativity, it is also true
that it is avarice that turns man into a menace. Socrates said that one who is
not content with what he has is not likely to be content with what he would
like to have.
There have always been broad twin obsessions about money. Those who
are enslaved by it, and compulsively want to acquire and accumulate more and
more. Others who are equally enslaved in their ascetic abhorrence of money.
In both cases money is not a service to acquire the means for a material life;
the individual comes to be at the service of money. Preoccupation with money
becomes an end in itself rather than the means of achieving other goals in life.
The entire complex of money today is biased against ethical values because it was
developed to serve the interests of people who wanted greater power and wealth
for themselves. But, as many sages have told us, power that does no good to others
is pointless, and wealth unused might as well not exist. Money can both virtually
and actually buy, if not bring, happiness and long life; perhaps an insurance
for immortality. The Boswell quote of Samuel Johnson captures the spirit: all
other things being equal, he who is rich in a civilized society must be happier
than he who is poor. Jesus condemned money-changers and St. Augustine taught
that money must be controlled by what is right and wrong. Dante in his classic
poem The Inferno describes money-lenders wailing in the lowest forms of hell.
Islam forbids lending money with interest. But for the deprived, the want of
money turns the earth into hell. Without money we cannot have purchasing
power and without it we cannot have what we need, the goods and services,
to be alive. That is why Bernard Shaw said “the lack of money is the root of all
evil”. It is not so much the lack of money which is the problem; the problem
is that without money we are denied things and services that are essential to, so
to speak, keeping the wolf at bay. Both love and lack of money are detrimental
Money—Maya, Mara, and Moksha
333
to the human spirit, and money, if properly channeled, can also be an input to
make human society more egalitarian and give a hand to those who are denied
dignity and the basic needs of humanity. Culturally, money has always been
viewed negatively as a corrupting influence; it still is, and indeed more than ever
before. But its very indispensability and overwhelming presence also offers a
unique opportunity to transform it into a potentially positive agent of change. It
can not only make man resort to unspeakable evil; it also offers more openings
to man to become a Good Samaritan, to make a difference to more lives than
ever before. No free man can afford the luxury of the Spartan disdain of money.
Money is too pervasive, too irreplaceable, and too intrusive in our lives to be
scoffed at; we must turn it around and make it a positive tool to materially alter
the lives of marginalized people.
Money, Poverty, and Morality
While pundits can debate what ‘poverty’ is—and below what income levels
one could be called ‘poor’—what we should focus on is helping anyone or all
those who are in economic need of help. Obsession with money might be evil,
warping the human personality more than anything else in life. But human
life is virtually impossible without it, and its paucity can cripple life more than
anything else. With money we can feed the hungry, provide medicines for the
sick, and shelter for the homeless. This reality opens a door to do good through
the evil of money. Money is now what the Upanishads said about the mind;
it is the source of our bondage but it also, if properly channeled, could be the
route to our redemption. By giving money to those who need it, we can make a
greater difference to their lives than by giving anything else. The question that
arises is this: Is it morally okay to play Robin Hood, to rob the rich and give to
the poor? Does it make a moral difference how we earn the money if we spread
it properly in society? The Mahabharata gives an answer. Vidura, the erudite and
wise minister, tells his king: “O King Dhritarashtra, one should never think of
earning material wealth through wrong means like falsehood, bribery, corruption
or stealing, not to speak of practicing such evils. Wrongly earned money pollutes
its possessor to such an extent that all the activities done with such sinful wealth
result in harmful troubles. Even praiseworthy acts like charity and worship, and
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
334
sacrifices done with such sinful income, produce undesirable results. No amount
of purification can set right the defects of ill-begotten wealth”. The Bible55 says,
“Ill-gotten gains do not profit/But righteousness delivers from death; He who
profits illicitly troubles his own house/But he who sows righteousness gets a true
reward; Bread obtained by falsehood is sweet to a man/But afterward his mouth
will be filled with gravel; The getting of treasures by a lying tongue is a fleeting
vapor, the pursuit of death”. But if we are confronted with a choice between
ill-gotten wealth well spent, and well-earned wealth ill spent, how should we
choose? Does the critical importance of money in today’s world sanitize how it
is earned if that money saves or gives dignity to other lives? In any event, how
money is allocated and utilized in the future, both individually and collectively,
will become a major moral matter. And the glaring fact is that our priorities
are pretty distorted. We are spending trillions of dollars on big-ticket items like
immortality, artificial intelligence and the Internet Of Things (IOT), and too
little on global health and sanitation. The other question is: what is ill-gotten
wealth? Does it concern only how we make money, or does it include how we
inherit it or how the one who gives us money for services rendered earns it? Is an
employee morally responsible for how his employer