How one and one can equal nine?

How one and one can equal nine?

Many people in the world believe that they understand the great divide between the good and the evil. At first glance the issue seems to be one which emerges with a painfully simple answer. The divide between good and the evil seems very deep, long and one which can with ease be distinguished. But I beg to differ.

I wish to base the whole issue on a quote from Thomas Hobbes. It says “But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good; and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil and contemptible are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves”. Too often we dismiss such a claim to be too profound and we tend to stick to our own falsified perception of a non-existent divide between the two entities.

I wish not to dwell long upon words of menial concern otherwise used to begin with a lengthy and wordy description of the problem. The issue touches the heart of everyone, and thus deems any form of substantiation redundant. Perspectives of rational individuals according themselves might always be correct and justified. Every action performed by a thoughtful (meaning every sane person) human would encompass a purpose. When an action does solve a purpose, we say that it is justified and it is correct. The problem arises when we see a confliction of principals in action or thought of another relative to ourselves; the other might reason it with a purpose and we might fall back on our basic definitions of good. Henceforth, the person, quite simply, who does something without our liking is deemed evil. This hypothesis which I draw seems almost immediately false and one which can be disproved. However, thinking about it at length might bring us to a different conclusion.

A reasonable, rational, normal person would commit an action which is legally disallowed, but he might have the perfect reasons to carry that out. According to the society he might be evil, for often many deem those in prison guilty of crime to be men of evil. However, not have those thought about how fortunate he actually is to have averted the ill-luck of the now deemed “evil”. The destiny of one can decide upon his action. We decide our world, but destiny would decide how and what we are to decide. (Scientific evidence of this claim can be found in another short article of mine titled “Destiny”) Almost immediately this brings us to the next stage of our discussion. We are posed with opportunities and choices, many being good and the rest being evil. Are the ones that we choose always good? If so what is the purpose of long sermons in churches and other forms of religions preventing men from doing bad?

This is a question which has by far baffled me, and serves to be the reason why I delayed such an article. The purpose of this article is not to justify the actions of the evil-doers; it is just to change the perception of those who wish their paradigm to change. So, it would be extravagant for me to wish to eradicate the whole divide between good and evil. Why so is it not possible? The answer is simple. The reason why we deem something as positive is because it concerns the welfare of the people. It is an action which would preserve everyone being happy and is preferred by the majority. Hence, an action which goes against such a desired state would be seen as a negative externality which is to be punished. This applies to us only when we are part of the community. When we accept a position far above, taking a bird’s eye view, we would then see two different sets of actions which would be completely indifferent to us as we would not be able to qualify the negative and the positive. The good for us may not be seen as good for the person with the third perspective. The evil for us may be seen as good to another, who is not concerned in our community. This is then the nature of good and evil. It cannot be obliterated but it can be seen with a different eye, given that you are not concerned in the activity by the least.

So now, that brings me to the final argument. When we see positives and negatives from the perspective of the community or the society, we would agree with the law and try our best to abide by it. How then do we explain the negative actions of the few, who are punished and are deemed as evil by the society? This is because they think and live in a microcosmic environment, such that their plight or problem seems to overthrow the principles of society. The need for something seems to qualify the rules of the state to be of menial concern.

Finally then, let me conclude by giving the justifications so as to why religions of the world preach a set of actions and see them as good? By now it would be increasingly easy to answer this question after the elaboration of the divide above. Religions are involved in such a rationale because they wish to ensure the welfare of the people. Very simply, the happiness of the whole community is seen as the good and anything which might seem to disrupt that would be bad. That is the simplistic basics of any religion and that is how they might have been constructed.

The society that we live in would make the majority. We define a moral action from an immoral one from what society sees it to be. An accepted action needs to be firstly seen as correct by all the people around us. When we pose an argument and say that this is the way I see the world; everyone needs to read it and finally give in to what you say, before your perception is qualified as brilliant. The masses hold the key to morality. So if you want to kill someone and legally get away with it, you might want to begin with brainwashing everyone around you, saying that the kill would be for the welfare of the people. In fact, that is how most of the revolutions are staged. It needs to be wanted by the masses and needs to be considered as a moral action, for the welfare of the people. This reasons the rise of communism after the oppression by Tsar Nicholas in the early twentieth century.

Once again, Darwin has been proved right; for once in the argument I mentioned that the majority of the people would decide whether it is right or wrong to perform an action. Indeed, that might be the reason why we killed communism in the twentieth century, for it had to fight against the prevailing democracy in most of the world. And as Plato has once mentioned in his ideal state of Plato’s republic “any form of change is a deviation from perfection”. This does not have to be true, for I have explained above, but that is the world that we live in, that is perspective that we have accepted. Therefore, we need to accept this fact, for it is forced unto us. It is indeed the survival of the fittest, and the survival of the democratic, for it is now the survival of the majority. If ten people say one and one makes nine and an individual says one and one makes two, can we not guess who is right; The former of course.