War. Murder, rape, theft, abuse and bullying, dishonesty. I move towards 30, and realize that so many suffer from these harmful choices by real people, often people they know, and the perpetrators don’t seem to be bad on the surface at least.
And while the direct harm of these doesn’t hit people 24/7, the effect these have on our society is measurable, felt, and sticky. Everyone who suffers from these gets affected in a deep way, and propagates something to the rest of us.
Some just spread the sadness and pain they experience, sharing the burden with the rest of us. And/or they fight against the things that hurt them, with varying effects and efficacy. Many get corrupted by the damage and continue the line of malice in subtle, or not so subtle ways. And I think that regardless of what anyone does, the last one, corruption, always happens a bit.
Now, we see the issue, and we see its effects; so it’s on to the causes. I feel, and think, that ignorance is the root of malice. But ignorance can’t be waved away with a magic wand, because it implies there is some truth that can be learned that will make us act better towards those around us.
And that truth can be difficult in so many ways. A person with a pathological personality disorder, even the most horrible actors in global history and history of crime, there is probably something inside them that could have been treated differently by them and others, leading to less bad outcomes.
I do not pose this as an optimistic view, because it’s just the fact that there is always something that could have been done so that the harm would have been prevented. But that’s post-hoc reasoning, and isn’t constructive. I do have a hope to offer a more positive view though; because the root causes are fundamentally ignorance, naivety, lack of foresight, lack of knowledge, and so on.
We don’t often feel ignorant, naive, clueless. But we always, or usually, are, at a fundamental level. Since we live in a society built around our thoughts and assumptions, it becomes easier to start thinking that the way we think is actually logical, correct, or sensible.
When we lived in the steppes, the only truth was the one that got you to survive the next winter. Now, everything can be true if you want it to be, you can believe whatever you want, and so many of us think things like: politicians are all evil, money is bad! Society’s so wrong. These are absolute claims that can only be, at best, simplifications, and to me now, they seem more like chatter our brains make and share with others.
I’m reading a book on being more present, and noticing the voice in your head is so often just noise, don’t you know? And we are like cogs in the machine of society, we are cells of the organism, but the noises we make that are like that, they probably are of a different quality than the noises we make when we make real work, real art, real changes. They aren’t productive.
What’s the voice in the head of society? Looking at the world around us, it’s not possible to say it’s all good. Wars around the world, corruption, abuses of power… Governments, the instruments that are meant to protect the individual, are harming them all too often. In Iran, as of writing this, they’re killing them.
The optimistic claim I am trying to make is this: We can work on it. We can make tomorrow less harmful by being less ignorant today. Or less ignorant by being more open today. Maybe make people more open by causing less pain.
It’s the fight between good and evil, the beautiful and the ugly. And it’s never done. But maybe you’re also offered a perspective here, not only can things get better through our effort, but knowing that our efforts are fundamental in this way can help us do them better.
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