Raem
04-07-2006, 17:32
The greatest failure of humanity is excess. We try to ward away excess with words like vice and sin without understanding that it makes no difference what form the excess takes. Puritanical deprivation is just as destructive as sinful indulgence.
We divide the world into black and white, good and evil, vice and virtue without understanding that neither is inherently better than the other. We constantly struggle with conflicting urges and aspirations without comprehending the forces within ourselves that cause them.
Behavior which is seen as virtuous or Godly is uniformly behavior which benefits the society. A society is a living thing as much as any organism, and adopts the values and ethics it needs most to survive. Each society must suppress the concerns of its individual citizens in order to attend its own needs. Killing is wrong because, more than harming an individual, it harms the society. Promiscuity is a sin because it places strain on the resources available to the society as a whole by spreading disease and increasing the population.
On the other hand, behaviors which most satisfy the survival urges of the individual are universally decried as sinful and unclean. A person feels always compelled to consider his own best interest before the interests of others, a trait we regard as selfishness when instead we should understand it as the simple root of the tendencies displayed by the society as a whole.
It is in this conflict between the virtuous, society-focused behaviors and the sinful, primal urges that the failure of excess is most strongly expressed. It forms the root of the three dominant religions of the world, hiding behind imagery of God and devils to give greater justification for the excesses of the perceived "good". Virtue is giving up one's own interests in the name of something greater, an ideal like religion or justice. Sin is the denial of that ideal in favor of individual instincts.
Would it not be healhtier, for the individual and societies involved, if we came to understand the conflict and its roots? It is this inner and subtle conflict which drives the strife between people and peoples. The subversion of a person's survival instincts in favor of the greater good is the direct cause of brutalities such as suicide bombers and nationalism. Thus is can be seen that excess lies waiting even in the concepts which define virtue.
We are doomed to repeat history not because we are ignorant of its events, but because we are ignorant of ourselves.
We divide the world into black and white, good and evil, vice and virtue without understanding that neither is inherently better than the other. We constantly struggle with conflicting urges and aspirations without comprehending the forces within ourselves that cause them.
Behavior which is seen as virtuous or Godly is uniformly behavior which benefits the society. A society is a living thing as much as any organism, and adopts the values and ethics it needs most to survive. Each society must suppress the concerns of its individual citizens in order to attend its own needs. Killing is wrong because, more than harming an individual, it harms the society. Promiscuity is a sin because it places strain on the resources available to the society as a whole by spreading disease and increasing the population.
On the other hand, behaviors which most satisfy the survival urges of the individual are universally decried as sinful and unclean. A person feels always compelled to consider his own best interest before the interests of others, a trait we regard as selfishness when instead we should understand it as the simple root of the tendencies displayed by the society as a whole.
It is in this conflict between the virtuous, society-focused behaviors and the sinful, primal urges that the failure of excess is most strongly expressed. It forms the root of the three dominant religions of the world, hiding behind imagery of God and devils to give greater justification for the excesses of the perceived "good". Virtue is giving up one's own interests in the name of something greater, an ideal like religion or justice. Sin is the denial of that ideal in favor of individual instincts.
Would it not be healhtier, for the individual and societies involved, if we came to understand the conflict and its roots? It is this inner and subtle conflict which drives the strife between people and peoples. The subversion of a person's survival instincts in favor of the greater good is the direct cause of brutalities such as suicide bombers and nationalism. Thus is can be seen that excess lies waiting even in the concepts which define virtue.
We are doomed to repeat history not because we are ignorant of its events, but because we are ignorant of ourselves.