A couple of days ago, I had a very intense discussion about the concept of Good and Evil... I said that I believed in basic human nature and its basic goodness, he said, without his fear of God (and punishment) he did not see why he would not kill whomever he wanted. Basically, he advanced Heliodore's comment regarding "La loi du plus fort" or "The rule of the strong".
I don't agree. But that's an entire other entry. The point of this blog is compassion, which without basic goodness cannot be. I do strongly believe that we can (and do) do things without expectation of reward (be it on Earth or in the Heavens). My belief (and perhaps I am naive) is that we behave sometimes out of pure desire to help someone in need of our help. We do volunteer work because we want to feed the homeless or remove the plastic bottles from the beach, not because we believe in God and that our "good" actions will get us in the door.
We see misery and hunger and we want to alleviate it because of a need, a basic human nature need, to nurture, to help, to offer one's hand. I do this because I can, because I want to, and at some level, because it is my duty as a human to help another one if I can (or help out an animal in distress)...
So, is the theory of compassion in a godless word possible or not? Share you thoughts and your potential cynicism... I'm all ears.
4 comments:
Well, this is no easy issue or question, in fact as I write this my mind is still switching between both sides of this debate.
I think that everyone has both good and evil deep inside of him, and that cirmcumstances, education, choice and a bunch of other things bring out one side or the other.
Anyway, sometimes I think that it's because we're taught that doing good is the right thing for so long through our upbringing, religion and education, that we actually do good even if we're not expecting a reward for it. It's just because we grew up to think it's important to help, care, ...etc.
Then I think that maybe if we just strip a person down to his basic nature, his mostly animalistic side, without those years of grooming and teaching, would he still react in the same way?
I mean, ok we do see some signs of compassion between animals, but mostly it's about doing what is necessary to survive, without caring about others.
Plus if compassion was part of a person's basic nature, he would feel it even if he was evil, which is not the case. So maybe it's just one of the layers added on us through our lives.
Again no easy answer. Personally, I think it's a ying yang thing. Some people are geared towards compasion, be it God or not. Some are geared towards evil and thinking ego centric be it God or not. There are atheists that do great works of good. There are believers that do unspeakable acts of evil.
If you take 10 persons, you will have 10 acceptable point of vue !
This is what make humanity so rich.
I do agree with subzero... mankind's most basic nature is closer to an evil dark side than to a bright one...
We don't come to the world compassionate but we learn to care. It needs lots of awarness to realize that we should be good to other people/nature/animals and that peace and compassion is better than selfishness, greeed and violence...
Some people do relate it to religion while others simply believe in the concept of compassion, but unfortunately not all human beings come up with the same conclusion when it comes to this matter. Otherwise we would be living in an Eldorado !!!!
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