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

truth is a revolutionary
act”. It is so ingrained in our consciousness that even when we do not have to lie
and it offers no advantage, we lie almost reflexively. The problem also is that we
have some idea of ‘deceit’, but we have very little about ‘truth’. While scriptures
extoll truth, they also tell us not to make a fetish of truth in its narrow or literal
sense—sometimes truth can be deadly and destructive. We have never been able
to tread the middle ground where lying becomes moral and truth immoral; nor
are we able to harmonize ‘not lying’ and ‘not always speaking truth’. Most religions
are ‘conditionally critical’ of lying. While one cannot precisely define lying, one
could say that a lie is an untruth, a deviation from what is known to be real or
factual; a false statement deliberately offered as being true, misrepresenting a
situation or giving a totally wrong impression about something. But religions do
give us some honorable exits from telling what, in jurisprudence, is called ‘truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth’. In Judaism, to save a life, one may lie
and violate almost all of the commandments of the Torah. Judaism allows us to
lie to avoid hurting the feelings or upsetting another person or causing a breach
in a relationship. Many great men did not flinch when falsifying or telling a
white lie or downright untruth when that was necessary to save lives or to achieve
nobler goals.
All lies are not the same. The ‘truth’ of lying is this: always telling what
one sees, hears, knows, and thinks is the truth, that everything and everyone
else is untruthful, can be both dangerous and destructive. We must understand
that what our senses and faculties perceive is limited and severely circumscribed.
In the package that nature has empowered us with, we have peerless ability to
Towards a New Vocabulary of Morality
399
inquire and to ask, but not always to find the right answer. That is reserved for the
gods. Since our ego cannot accept that limitation, we lie compulsively. Perhaps
there never has lived a man who has never lied, or not misrepresented the truth,
regardless of whether it was unintentional, or told so that someone else’s feelings
would not be hurt. According to Virginia Woolf, the pursuit of truth without
consideration for other’s feelings is an ‘outrage of human decency’. The greater
outrage is that for the modern man, lying has become pathological, and integral
to social interfacing; a psychological need to cope with the drudgery and dangers
of contemporary life. The mantra is, if you do not lie, you are dead. We shade
the truth in these instances either to gain a financial advantage, or just to keep
out of trouble. In other words, we want to save our money, or avoid punishment,
and so we alter the truth. Saint Augustine wrote two books about lying, On Lying
(De Mendacio) and Against Lying (Contra Mendacio), and divided lies into eight
categories, listed in the order of diminishing severity: lies in religious teaching;
lies that harm others and help no one; lies that harm others and help someone;
lies told for the pleasure of lying; lies told to ‘please others in smooth discourse’;
lies that harm no one and that save someone’s life; lies that harm no one and that
save someone’s ‘purity’; lies that harm no one and that help someone.29 Clearly,
the second category is the most malicious and malevolent. It is pure negative
energy and harmful to the universe. But perhaps even more destructive, and not
listed by St. Augustine, is lying to one’s own self. It is this lying that allows us to
live in ‘peace with ourselves’; to get through the grind of life without committing
suicide, or becoming a nervous wreck. A prerequisite for spiritual growth is to
be true to one’s own self, which involves both accepting what we care about, as
well as growing over what we are. Then again, all lying is not always immoral or
all truth moral. The intent is very important. A false assertion without the will to
deceive might not be immoral, and a purely factual statement that causes harm
might not be moral.
‘Moral Crisis’ to ‘Morality in Crisis’
Instead of introspecting on those lines and exploring ways of retooling our
mindset, and cleansing our consciousness, we ask questions that can be answered
both in the affirmative and negative, to embrace questions such as: Is the present
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
400
plight of man an offshoot of the inner divinity in eclipse or the death throes of a
dying species? Is man ‘born to be good’ or a hard-wired Good Samaritan, or, in
the words of Paul Rusesabagina, the Rwandan humanitarian hero, “a shark, just
sleeping, lying on the bottom of a sea, which can emerge any time and break a
lot of boats”?30 Moral philosophers and perceptive people have long ruminated
on issues such as the evolution of human morality, origins of virtue, and the link
between sexuality, morality, and mortality. Scholars and social scientists have
long debated who the authentic human is—egocentric or altruistic, acquisitive or
generous, parasitic or philanthropic—and, of late, the scope has been broadened
to include such questions as whether the present behavioral crisis in modern
society could be described as a ‘chosen blindness’ or ‘moral escapism’. We have
long wondered about the origins and biology of morality and about the raisond’être
of mortality, just as much as we have wondered about who we really are
on the canvas of the cosmos, and about the roles of genes and culture in shaping
human personality. And most of us agree with what Einstein said: “The most
important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner
balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions
can give beauty and dignity to life”.31 Although we reflexively assume that ‘good’
is good, and ‘bad’ is bad, there have always been introspective individuals, not all
‘bad’, who pondered about why being good is ‘good’. Sarada Devi, the spiritual
consort of Sage Ramakrishna asked that if grief itself is a ‘gift of God’, then why
can’t we be bad and give that ‘gift’ to others? At a more fundamental level, the
question is: Which is more ‘moral’ in terms of nature and natural selection? If we
want to be moral and magnanimous, should we go beyond nature, as Thomas
Huxley, for example, argued, or should we navigate a return to nature and try
to emulate the ants, bees, and wasps? And what, in effect, constitutes a ‘moral
life’? Who does it benefit? How do we judge if an action is moral or not? Is
goodness the same as morality and if so, good for what and whom? These are
timeless questions and many moral philosophers have extensively written about
it. Generally, in lay language, we use the word ‘good’ as the opposite of ‘bad’,
and ‘moral’ as the opposite of evil—and the test is our behavior. In actuality, we
view all life as either being or doing ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Although, in the very nature
of human life, nothing is good in and by itself, and almost everything we do is a
blend of both. Moreover, when we say something is ‘good’, it actually translates
Towards a New Vocabulary of Morality
401
as good ‘for ourselves’. The primary, if not exclusive, focus has to be on personal
piety, probity, integrity and on virtues like truthfulness, self-restraint, simplicity,
loyalty, faithfulness, honesty, helpfulness, and adherence to codes of conduct and
religious commandments.
Despite ups and downs from time to time, they have stood the test of
time as measures of moral life. We must also bear in mind that our sense of
morality, like human evolution itself, developed in a very local, confined ‘world’,
and the intended beneficiary was the individual and that very limited world. But
the world today is global and this ‘contextual-change’ has dealt a mortal blow to
morality. We need to bring forward the central question: Being moral is to do
what, and how does it help or hinder the common good? Now, it is hard to find
something to do that has no global impact. When the moral context changes,
the morality content too must change, in order to be relevant. We need to find
new ways to judge what is moral and what is not, in the changed dynamics.
That ought to thrust the whole of morality into the melting pot, and draw from
it a fresh framework for an ethical living. We don’t need to discard the extant
guidelines; we need to shift the focus and priorities to serve the emerging need.
What is good between two individuals or in the privacy of personal relationships,
does not always contribute to the good of society. In fact, a major moral issue
now is how not to let our personal obligations towards our loved ones, and
towards our professional call of duty, dilute or distract us from leading a moral
life. This issue has now become more critical given the widening gap between
what is required to lead a good life, to be a good family member and have a good
career, and what is required to resolve serious social and global problems. We
cannot treat everyone in our life alike and perfect impartiality is not humanly
possible. At the same time, we have to exercise self-restraint to ensure that we are
not overly influenced by such ‘natural’ feelings and avoid to the maximum extent
hurting other people. The thrust must be to support and serve social needs, so
that an individual life becomes an input to address social problems, instead of
being inimical. For long, what has been called utilitarianism—to choose a course
of action that results in the greatest utility to the greatest number of people—has
been viewed as a good moral yardstick. That has to be radically revisited since
most people would like to lead a life of comfort, and what that entails has turned
out to be hazardous to global health. Actually, while many of us think and often
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
402
pride ourselves as leading passively moral lives, the fact is that the world is full of
largely avoidable or significantly reducible suffering caused by our behavior, and
the perilous state of the environment caused by the kind of lives we lead.
The ascendancy of what is often described as scientific rationality of a
perception that the environment is but a pool of inexhaustible natural resources,
and our wholesale identification of good life with goodness of life, and of progress
with material progress, has altered both the context and contours of morality.
Indeed, our reckless onslaught on natural resources has become so predatory and
plunderous that we cannot any longer keep it within the margins of a moral life.
In future, being moral must include the three ‘R’s in the use of resources: restraint,
reuse, recycle. Restraint includes self-restraint. The ethic of self-restraint must be
chanted and imbibed in every classroom and home and workplace. That will
go a long way in dissolving every crisis the world currently faces, including the
climate crisis. And without it nothing else will suffice. Technology can help, but
it cannot be a substitute or surrogate. What are needed are directional changes in
its use. What are called toilet-to-tap technologies have to be developed that could
turn waste into water. We must also buy or purchase what we truly need, not
because we have the money to buy the latest model we see in a commercial or
in our neighbor’s home. We must cultivate the culture of ‘use it up; wear it out;
make do without’. More than ever before, we must practice the adage ‘frugality
is morality’, and morality is moderation and conservation. We must remember
that, as the catch phrase goes, “There is no Plan(et) B; and global warming is not
cool”. Most of all, we must remember that what we are doing to the environment
is what we are doing to ourselves, even more to our kids and grand-kids. And
what good is leaving them money, property, and estate if they are going to inherit
a death-enhancing environment? Money is now at the heart of modernity. It has
become so piercing and subversive, and occupies so much of our thought and
time that its shadow shades much of morality. We must somehow find a way to
rescue morality from money, and the way to do it is not to undermine it but try
to transform it into a benign instrument.
Another lodestar can be what philosopher Schopenhauer suggested, that
only actions that stem from compassion have moral worth. An important point
of reference is to judge what people do, not what they are, because everyone
is a ‘moral mix’. And no one can be pronounced wholly ‘moral’ or