I first wanted to title this section, “Why Is the Individual Critical,” but changed my mind. Some part of me resonated with an intuition that pursuing the path to understand fully the “why” of something is strewn with many wonders and mysteries. Pursuing the “how” of something is more concrete in its perceptive pursuits. This understanding is like trying to get a handle on the behavior of a designated individual. I can more easily perceive what the individual says and does rather than deeply perceiving why he or she does or says what is put forth. It is the difference between knowing the true motivation and knowing the behavior. Behavior is more easily perceived than the deep internal motivation of the behavior. This is not to say that coming to understand the motivations behind behavior is unimportant. Quite the contrary is true. It is simply easier to perceive behavior and verbiage (written or spoken). Motivation and true intent are perceived through the perception of behavior over time and is more an issue of discerning the truthfulness and genuineness of the individual through the consistency between what is said and what is done. Perceiving or understanding motivation and intent is less direct and involves more interpretations and speculations. Thus, I have decided to reflect on how the individual is important.
I disagree with Plato’s philosophy presented via Socrates. My recollection of my studies in college regarding Plato’s dialogues of Socrates facing off with his opponents is that good was perceived as all virtuous. The nature of goodness, the virtuous, was without any trace of evil. This is not how Hinduism or other religions of the East depict the nature of good and evil as personified by their deities. I choose Shiva as an example. Hinduism’s Shiva is the god of creation but also the god of destruction. If you consider good and evil as opposites as + and – are opposites, then creation and destruction are also opposites. According to my reading of Plato, good does not encompass any of its opposite. Since the Greek culture is considered the foundation upon which western civilization is built and Hinduism is considered an eastern religion as opposed to western religion, then Plato’s dialogues serve as a point of demarcation between western culture and eastern culture. If one wants to claim that Hinduism is more of a middle eastern entity, then let us move to the Chinese yin-yang (the union of the light and the dark). The point is that western culture and eastern culture are distinctively different regarding the nature of good and evil in that western culture has separated them whereas eastern culture has them united.
This is important because in Christianity, a western religion, the god and the devil are opposing entities at war with each other. They are opponents seeking to rule the other. We, as creatures of human flesh, must contend with Satan and his demons or God and his angels as they vie for control over our actions which serve to define our character. From a human’s point of view in the western culture, evil in the world is a disembodied powerful entity seeking our demise. Our name for this disembodied evil is Satan (among others).
This construct of a disembodied tormentor, deceiver or tempter is incorrect. Deceivers, tempters, tormentors, bullies and exploiters are human individuals working solo or in cooperation with others. This understanding is fundamental and critical to hold accountable the evil permeating our world. The old adage “The devil made me do it” must be forever and absolutely dismissed as voodoo medicine for the ills of a sick and suffering individual, community, society or culture. We must no longer look beyond ourselves, our neighbors and other humans for the behaviors that harm life and the motivations from which those behaviors arise.
Rest assured that I clearly understand the profound consequences of altering the nature of evil as western culture has so defined it for thousands of years. If we do not see a thing for what it is, nothing more, nothing less; then we make a serious mistake equal to the mistake a doctor makes when misdiagnosing an ailment and thus prescribing the wrong medication needed for a cure.
Evil does not reside outside the character of the individual. Evil acts are not perpetrated by some disembodied entity. Evil acts are committed by human creatures. The individual does the act that causes the harm. But what about temptation? Where does the temptation originate? The individual who is tempted to perform some action is temped from somewhere and from something.
Granted, the first issue to consider is the determination of the source of the temptation. The source may be from outside the individual who commits the act. As demonstrated by Iago in Shakespeare’s play Othello, the temptation comes from some other individual who whispers in the ears of others, setting them to do harmful deeds. This sinister whispering will lead to tragedy.
Temptation is not direct action but a solicitation or seduction for motivating others to act. In understanding that the individual possesses in his or her core both the positive and the negative then the temptation is the stimulation of the negative tendency in those who are tempted. However, if the part stimulated is the positive side of the individual then that individual is deceived by the tempter and the naïveté of the deceived character is manipulated by his or her supposed friend. At some point in this scenario a tragedy occurs. Usually in Shakespeare, this tragedy is the death of one or more characters.
If the source of the temptation initiates from within the individual, then the negative side of that individual becomes activated and continues to self stimulate the individual’s negative side. In Iago’s case, his hatred of Othello is stimulated by Cassio’s promotion over himself. Hatred is the negative side of the positive-negative core of all individuals.
The particulars, the different array of details and affected players, are not the significant issue. The core issue is that acts of evil or acts of goodness are not rendered by disembodied entities. They are the product of ‘inter-‘ and ‘intra-‘ human actions (see Howard Gardner’s interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences). If this is your understanding of reality, then evil in the world is contained or restrained by the strength of the positive side (or good side) of the individual. If the tendency to deceive, to tempt, to torment, to bully or to exploit, etcetera is countered by the positive or good side of the individual, then evil in the world is reduced to the degree that each individual has developed self-discipline.
How is the individual critical? Answer: The individual is the critical first line of defense for containing the harm done in the world.
No longer do humans have to deal with a disembodied superhuman nemesis of peace and good will on Earth. It is within our power to defeat this foe, but to do so we must first understand the nature of our enemy. The individual can gain intimate knowledge of this enemy because if we see ourselves for what we truly are, then we will see the enemy that resides within each of us, but we must see ourselves for what we are: nothing more; nothing less.
Western Christianity states that each and everyone of us is born with original sin. While Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Gandhi ascribe to the practice of ahimsa (doing the least harm to other life), no individual can escape himsa (violence done to other creatures) in the strictest sense of doing no harm. I learned about ahimsa when reading about the life of Mahatma Gandhi. My recollection of his description of ahimsa was that the individual works diligently to reduce any and all harm to the very least amount possible. In my reading I remember being informed that there are some Eastern holy men who try to eat only a few, very few, grains of rice each day to reduce any harm done to any other life. This encountering of ahimsa informed and transformed me to see with clarity the nature of original sin which escaped me for all of my training and practice of the Roman Catholic religion. Not being primary producers, we must consume other organic material (other life) in order to sustain our own life. There is no choice in the matter. It is our nature to do so. It is how we were created. Each and every one of us was born with this condition. Whether it was consciously chosen or not, portraying the act of original sin to be the eating of an apple was a stroke of genius.
Is this ‘evil’? No. But gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins. To see and understand the effects of this condition to mandatorily consume other life for what it is (nothing more and nothing less) requires some education. A child is not born with knowledge nor with understanding. A child is born, becomes hungry and seeks to eat. It is that simple to the child.
I no longer have much use personally for the word ‘evil’ when trying to understand the harm and ‘wrong doing’ that permeates the world of humans. I understand correct actions and incorrect actions; creative actions and destructive actions and many other paired opposites that have much more clarity than the generic ‘good’ or ‘evil’. In some cultures or societies that which is ‘evil’ is embraced as ‘good’ and vice versa. So, good and evil have too much subjectivity in the interpretation of their nature.
There are two words which have more meaning that more clearly states the nature of harm and the lack of peace in the affairs of human kind — naïveté and ignorance. Naïveté is ‘a lacking of … (experience, wisdom or judgment etc.)’ while ignorance, to my understanding, is formed from the verb ‘to ignore’. Thus ignorance is not a synonym for naïveté because ignorance is the ‘turning of one’s back to what is known.’ Ignorance is the ignoring of what is known. Distinguishing the realities of naïveté and ignorance in this fashion allows for a clearer understanding of how naïveté can be more easily resolved than ignorance.
If the individual’s action is the result of naïveté, then the resolution is to educate the individual in such a way that the individual acquires the appropriate knowledge to act better. The presumption is that once the individual is appropriately knowledgable then he or she will act better. However, if said individual does not act better after being informed and being now knowledgable, then the resolution to this situation is a bit more involved. The newly informed individual is no longer naïve but is now acting ignorantly. This act of ignorance is more willful than acting naïvely. Ignorance implies a choice whereas naïveté is not a matter of choice. Naïveté is a condition of being.
To choose to deceive, to tempt, to torment, to bully or to exploit, etcetera knowing that peace and harmony will be disrupted and that harm may very well ensue, is to choose to ignore the elements that facilitate peace and harmony. What would motivate such a choice? Motivations as opposed to overt actions are more complicated with numerous and various elements that may have culminated in the choice to ignore the maintenance of peace and harmony. The issue critical to this reflection is that both naïveté and ignorance are solved through the process of education and that the education needed to resolve naïveté is less difficult than that needed to resolve ignorance.
What I have learned thus far in my life is that evil is not the activity of some disembodied entity but the actions of an individual human or the actions of humans in concert with one another. Each individual’s character is the union of both the positive (good) and the negative (evil). Since there is no disembodied evil (a disembodied negative entity), and since this negative is under the control of the individual, then Satan (or whatever name it bears) can be contained or controlled. The negative residing in one’s character is no more powerful than the positive which likewise resides in that very same character. This can be easily understood as the similarity between -5 and +5. The unit of magnitude (strength) is the same. It is the direction that defines the distinguishing quality.
The condition of original sin professed by Christian religions of the Western culture is the condition with which all human life is born. Each and every person born must consume organic life to sustain its own existence. Each and every one of us must eat life to live. We have no choice in the matter. Each and every one of us must exploit to some extent in order to live. We have no choice in the matter. Each and every one of us must exploit to some extent in order to live. That said, we must, however, choose how to contend with this dark side of our true nature. The individual’s character is a demonstration of how he or she contends with their dark side.
Nurturing, however, is not mandatory for our life. We do not have to nurture in order to live. Nurturing is pure choice. Nurturing is required by adults only to assure that human babies live and thrive. It is important to understand that if the offspring is not nurtured until it is able to fend for itself, then the preservation of the species is highly at risk. No doubt there exists some mechanism within the nature of the species that enhances the desire, within at least one of the parenting adults, to nurture and care for the offspring for some length of time until the newborn can attain the ability to care for itself. Thus there is most likely a mechanism that enhances the desire to choose to nurture as opposed to abandon one’s offspring. It is equally important to understand that the life of the adult parent is not dependent upon its nurturing or not nurturing the offspring. If the parent does not exploit other life so that the parent and the offspring can consume the organic matter needed, then both the parent and the offspring will die from starvation. Exploiting is mandatory whereas nurturing is a choice and the degree of nurturing is a choice from zero to as much as is humanly possible.
I, like every other human creature, have a character composed of the same pairs of opposites that define all human creatures. I am not special. I am not any better nor worse than anyone else. Everything that has been said about the nature of humans and about harm and destruction and choice and the need to be educated and the nature of nurturing etcetera is true about me. I am (like every other individual) the consequences of the past and I am (whether I want to be or not) the foundation of the future, especially concerning my children and all of the children with whom I interacted during my professional career as an educator.
How I am part of the foundation of the future is determined by how I contend with myself as the consequences of my past. I have indicated that I am an adult survivor of child sexual abuse perpetrated by a Roman Catholic priest. I was targeted, groomed, and exploited by this “holy” man who was at least twice my age when I was 15 years old. He is one of the consequences of my past. His actions harmed me to a significant level. Hatred manifested as rage and a very strong desire for physical revenge. The particulars of the multiple ramifications of this unfortunate consequence of my past remain with me to this day in spite of my earlier desire to have all of that part of my self metaphorically amputated. When I finally engaged professional help, I learned that one cannot cut off a part of one’s psyche and throw it away. There are many ways to try to wall it off and bury it deep, deep, deep down inside your being (as I did), but it will fester, grow putrid, bubble and fume and will begin to seep out through every crack in your imperfect barricade.
Raged and horrible violent revenge is the opposite of love and caring support. The negative side of myself was definitely stimulated and activated. Rage for me was such an intense feeling to hurt someone so badly that at times I would lose sight of any target. I just wanted to lash out blindly, furiously and uncontrollably. Being in such a condition without a target upon which to vent increased my frustration that added to the emotional stress that ate away the metaphoric landscape of my soul to form an ocean of black, bubbling anger ready to spew forth at the first appropriate opportunity. If there is no target to pummel, then one must create or construct a target. Lucky for me I did not take that path, but rage and vengeance need to cause suffering somewhere. I remember the late afternoon when I contemplated suicide. Obviously, I decided against it. Readers must understand, however, that if rage and anger are not released outwardly, they turn inward and cause harm to the self. Rage and anger do not go away by themselves.
Unchecked and unhealed I would have just continued the exploitive, bullying, negative actions that had targeted me by that wolf in sheep’s clothing. The positive side of my self developed enough and became strong enough to form a more positive than negative individual even though I harbored very poor self esteem and displayed significantly defiant attitudes toward authority figures. Overall I coped well on my own until I had to seek professional help 45 years after my traumatic event when the scandal of Boston’s Archdiocese broke in the Globe and I read that the RCC was professing such overwhelming surprise at the allegations as if they were absolutely unaware of the reported abuse. I knew that this feigning was a lie because I had informed church officials of my predator priest 45 years or so before it hit the Boston papers.
With the help from other positive individuals, self determination and self discipline, I contended with my highly stimulated negative side and chose to empathize with others who had a similar life experience, to stand, not for personal revenge, but beside others struggling to contend with being targeted by exploitative or bullying behavior. I stood when appropriate upon my own battle line with bullying individuals occupying positions of power who believed in course counts over competency. I stood my ground with bullying graduate professors who split learning and education into small sections of thoughts organized as separate entities which could not and would not be influenced by other areas of thought like individuals who separate the food on their dinner plates and become enraged when some peas migrate into the potatoes and the gravy runs all over the plate contaminating every thing. I finally stood my ground before the Roman Catholic Church and professed what was perfectly clear: 1) that officials colluded with and protected predator priests over the welfare of children; 2) that it is apparent that the Church was more concerned about its reputation than the lives of the young boys being exploited by the very men that they officially anointed as “holy men” and 3) that the Church has, pretty much to this day, acted like a billion dollar company working diligently and strenuously to keep its trade mark free from any unsightly blemish. The Church to this day refuses to open all of its records to independent criminal and legal professionals to conduct an independent research of the Church’s actions regarding sexual abuses by church officials and/or staff. No doubt some readers may detect some anger lacing my reflections regarding the Roman Catholic Church. If none is detected then I am grateful. If my anger is detectable, I am unapologetic. My anger is justified, appropriate and deserved.
But to be a healthy, nurturing, beneficial foundation, I must not seek to pass on the negative consequences of the past. This is done by minimizing the activity of my negative side and enhancing the activity of my positive side. Additionally, I must recognize that I have a negative side and that it is my responsibility to contend with that side of my self. Each of us, even those of us whose actions are perceived mostly as extremely positive, has a negative side and a positive side that forms the whole of the human character.
Lastly, I have a need to emphasize that I am a child born and raised within the Western culture but who has been formally educated within an extremely strong liberal arts education as an undergraduate earning a B. A. in English (studies) who did not seek to specialize until seeking his Master of Education degree. Consequently I have a familiarity of the Eastern culture and its religions, but I am an amalgamation of both Western and Eastern philosophies. As such, it is critical for the reader to understand that, while I ascribe to Eastern concepts such as the yin/yang or the reincarnation of life forces, I do so from a perspective born from a Western culture. I do not at all ascribe to the notion that femininity and masculinity are opposites. They are conditions of being that are complementary. Combining Western and Eastern philosophies is not an additive process. It is more akin to combining Sodium (Na) and Chlorine (Cl) to render table salt (NaCl) which is neither sodium nor chlorine but some thing different and unique unto itself. For me, the Yin/Yang is about opposites like the merging of Light/Dark elements. Hence Light is positive while Dark is negative, but every tool or action can be positive or negative which is determined by how it is used.