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

his highest blessing, and
aspiration. They also say, in varying degrees of emphasis and equivocation, that
the final aim—indeed the manifest destiny of human life—is to unite with god,
not in flesh and blood, but in spirit or as a soul, which we also say is exclusive
to the human. No other form of life, however virtuous and noble, can at death
dissolve into divinity. From that perspective, god is the logical ‘satisfaction of
human desire’. We are not striving for the imperative of consciousness-change;
we are aiming at erasing bodily imperfection and impermanence, which science
in essence equates with ‘being god’. In short, while admonishing God as a ‘failed
god’, we are turning ourselves into ‘fake gods’. The fact is that our quest for
bodily invincibility and existential eternity is directly against the laws of nature
and is bound to deeply destabilize the direction of human evolution.
Whatever are the underlying factors, everyone, even the worst of
offenders, bemoans the decline of moral values of modern society, that the world
is in a bad shape, that man has become more self-centric than ever, that evil
is both banal and brazen, that money rules the roost, and so on. The primary
reason why everyone, both the virtuous and the wicked, can, as objectively as
they could, say such things and still lead guiltless immoral or amoral lives is
because we all have different perceptions of what morality is, or could be, in
the modern world. We lead such conditioned lives—conditioned by society, by
Towards a New Vocabulary of Morality
451
law, by culture, by time, by religion—that the question comes up: How much
moral space does an individual really have in organizing and conducting his
or her life and in dealing with other people? Whatever we are witness to in
the world—the lawlessness, crime, callousness, cruelty, depravity—, is that all
because of or despite the conditioning? Are we like the animal in the zoo, more
violent in confinement than in the wilderness? Put differently, are we less human
because of what culture, State, and scriptures induce or enforce us to do? Are
we, in Rousseau’s celebrated phrase, a ‘noble savage’ or a ‘civilized brute’, which
means in either case we are not our true selves? But then, one could also argue
that being different from the original is not necessarily unwelcome; the question
is, what has that difference made us out to be? If we, for example, had remained
hunter-gatherers or agriculturists, would we—and the world—have been better
off? That again raises the question: what is ‘better-off’? Few will demur that the
physical quality of human life, in terms of what we need to do to stay alive and
to ward off disease and debility and hard labor, has incomparably improved.
The debate is about morality, the implicit assumption being that modern
materialistic human society is more violent and evil than that of any of our
predecessors. Some disagree with this presumption and say that even prehistoric
humans were not exactly peaceable creatures and clobbered each other. On the
contrary, according to people like Steven Pinker, ours is the most progressive
and peaceful of times. But the irony is that they also say that we face more
existential threats than ever before. How a society at peace can face threats to its
own survival is strange. As they say, facts are stranger than fiction. In any case, the
fact is that morality per se is not static, and is sensitive to the passage of time. And
the fact also is that the sheer act or art of living entails doing things so radically
different from our ancestors that moral values and norms must also stay in step
for an orderly society. But at the same time, we cannot get away from the reality
that we are human, and we must consider what that means in terms of morality.
Although we too are animals, higher and haughty, clearly all through evolution
the character of human society has been fundamentally different from that of
other creatures. For example, however much we might admire and be inspired,
we cannot function like an anthill or a beehive, simply because we are not ants
or bees. Since we claim that we are the highest form of life on earth, our conduct
should also be commensurate. There is also a general sense that the traditional
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
452
values and criteria we have long used to divide ‘good’ and ‘bad’ behavior need a
complete overhaul. The classical contours that defined good and bad are more
blurred than ever before. One of the major reasons is that almost everything
we do, wrongly do, or even do not do, can have a global, even generational,
impact. The old saying concerning ecological connectivity, that the flap of a
wing of a butterfly in the Amazon could trigger a tidal wave in the Andamans,
offers a snapshot even to human life. Nothing is personal, private, isolated or
insulated anymore; we no longer have the comfort of autonomy or anonymity.
It is the realization that the human way of life, emanating primarily from the
construct of the human form of life, is, in the very scheme of nature, ‘naturally’
and fundamentally different from that of other animals. While that has been the
underlying intent, the specifics have varied from culture to culture, community
to community, country to country, religion to religion, and from time to time.
What is crime in one corner is not necessarily a crime everywhere, and what is
sin is not always a sin—it can even becomes sacred in the eye of another. Blood
sports were not only legal but major forms of entertainment in ancient Rome.
Killing for pleasure has always been a favorite pastime in human culture. Many
societies have also legalized extreme forms of public torture and execution, as was
the case in Europe before the 18th century. History records many cultures that
condoned painful forms of body modification.
Nexus with Nature
A major dimension of our awakened sense of morality relates to our nexus with
nature. Nature itself is essentially amoral. Much of our misery and many of
our problems largely stem from our alienation and estrangement from nature.
The words we hear often are that we have ‘mastered’ or ‘conquered nature’.
Man will be less than man if he succumbs to nature; but if he tramples upon
it he risks inviting its mighty fury. We have come to identify our sense of pride
and progress, supremacy and superiority on earth as being synonymous with
defiance, even degradation, of nature. In the words of the anthropologist Loren
Eiseley, “It is with the coming of man that a vast hole seems to open in nature,
a vast black whirlpool spinning faster and faster, consuming flesh, stones, soil,
minerals, sucking down the lightning, wrenching power from the atom, until the
Towards a New Vocabulary of Morality
453
ancient sounds of nature are drowned in the cacophony of something which is
no longer nature, something instead which is loose and knocking at the world’s
heart, something demonic and no longer planned—escaped, it may be—spewed
out of nature, contending in a final giant’s game against its master”.68 The
governing principle of Mother Nature is interconnectivity, interdependence,
harmony, and coexistence of all kinds of life on earth, and sharing of its space,
predator and prey alike… what biologists call biodiversity. While plurality and
diversity is the hallmark of nature, our signature is to undermine and erode
this very biodiversity. To some extent, a measure of exploitation of nature and
its bounty is unavoidable for even the primitive way of human life. More than
what man actually does, it is the way of his doing that is the problem. Ancient
societies and native communities also harnessed nature and its biodiversity to eke
out a livelihood. But, even while killing their prey, they were respectful. Instead
of showing sensitivity, the ‘civilized’ man is condescending, if not contemptuous.
Instead of reverence, he is arrogant. And unless we set this right, nothing else will
yield the desired result.
Humans arose from nature, and lived in the natural environments to
which evolution had adapted them. But, as human community and culture
developed into the complex, intensely technological milieu of the modern day,
humans have become increasingly separated from nature in their daily lives.
Whatever might be our civilizational accomplishments, we must acknowledge
that, after the nearly-two-million-year march since the advent of our species on
earth, we are no longer the ‘living being’ intended by nature, or would have been
in the natural course of evolution. We are on a collision course with nature. Even
if that itself is the intent of nature or God, the fact remains that human life has
so fundamentally altered over time that it has disturbed the balance of nature
and its capability to adjust to such disturbances. ‘Environmental crisis’ is not
only cataclysmic climate change, rising sea levels, pollution, resource depletion,
unseasonal weather, and growing vulnerability to droughts, forest fires, flash
floods, et al. At its core, the crisis revolves around our conception of nature ‘as a
service economy, dedicated to providing tolerable weather, edible food, drinking
water, and breathable air to humans’. And one might add, ‘to make available
inexhaustible resources of minerals and metals, and to ungrudgingly accept and
absorb all that humans choose to discard or excrete’. Even if one does not believe,
The War Within—Between Good and Evil
454
as the Gaia hypothesis argues, that the earth is a single ‘living’ organism, we
know that without the earth we cannot stand on our two feet. And just as we
want to take care of the building we live in, similarly, the earth too needs to be
taken care of.
Scientists have been talking about ‘self-aware artificial intelligence (AI)’,
telling us that robots and humans could fuse, that we could, somewhere in
the not-too-distant future, ‘download’ our consciousness into a machine and
be independent of our body, and that the future doesn’t need us, the man of
the moment. But the point is, what kind of robot or AI will merge into what
kind of human? We can now obtain a gifted ‘artificially-intelligent’ personal
assistant that mimics natural human conversation, and autonomously makes
restaurant bookings—Duplex, an extension of Google Assistant™. Or take the case
of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s ‘psychopath AI creation’, Norman,
which ‘sees’ blood and gore in abstract images. What happens if AI ‘Norman’
merges into a real-life Norman? While all this tinkering is going on, information
technologies are radically altering the dynamics of human discourse, the way
humans have traditionally stored, organized, synthesized, and transmitted
information, which influences the choices we make on every issue, from the
sacred to the sordid. These technologies have also impacted the moral values
involved in issues like privacy, trust, fidelity. Environmental degradation is
intimately germane to the pandemic of consumerism, which, in turn, is symbolic
of moral barbarism, materialism, and hedonistic superficiality. It is not only
how we use technology that has moral implications; the very design capabilities
of information technologies influence the lives of their users, and the moral
mindset of the designers of these technologies can shape the course society takes.
Several scholars are talking about ‘machine ethics’, and ‘moral machines’, and the
‘human use of human beings’. Maybe the world will witness moral machines and
immoral men! That is because it is easier to design and manipulate a machine
than to influence human consciousness. In David Hume’s ‘is–ought’ analogy,
man might represent the ‘is’ and machine the ‘ought’—or, perhaps, ought not.
In any case, neither man nor machine would, by impacting on each other, be the
same. Life has become so heavy and man so ‘soft’ that we entertain anything only
if it ‘entertains’, which means titillation, satiation of some dark desire; even news
about horrific events has to be gory and gripping to hear or read about ‘seriously’.
Towards a New Vocabulary of Morality
455
All this, in concert, leads to a state of moral malaise. The environmental crisis,
the political and economic exploitation, the erosion of social sensitivity, are but
manifestations of the malaise. These challenges are herculean, and solutions to
them will require deep moral reflection and a whole-hearted commitment to
social justice. Whether or not the machine will become more intelligent than
man, whether or not man and machine will fuse into each other, whether or
not robots will relieve us from much of the drudgery of daily labor and free
us to pursue higher goals, there can be little doubt that human ‘capabilities’,
human predispositions, and what they will be instinctively inclined to do, will
dramatically change, giving rise to a new human context of life. We need new
bearings, new compasses, new benchmarks, and new criteria to judge ‘good’ and
‘bad’, a fresh foundation for ethical conduct, a base to judge ourselves.
The individual is the very foundation, and no structure can be sound
if the terra firma begins to sink. Also, human beings have never before been as
isolated and intertwined