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Originally Posted by PainInMySawdust
Good and Evil are polarized moral concepts, they are made up by humans. I think that empathy should be used when deciding on actions. By empathizing how your action will affect others you can make an informed choice. If you cannot feel empathy, then you need to rely on the moral codes that have evolved over time...
I would concentrate on trying to forget good and evil.. every action is based on a complex structure of contexts.. therefore very few actions can be judged the same... by using simple childish black and white concepts like good and evil I think we are robbing ourselves of what it is to be a fully (as full as possible given the limits) developed human.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by chaotic13
Earlier this week I posted a thread about this in the Psychotherapy Forum. My thoughts have kind of spun off from a specific issue that has been really troubling me, but I can’t seem to approach it directly with my T … into something much deeper. So I thought I would bring the deeper discussion here for people who reflect on this stuff a lot and have opinions.
Like many people, I seem to get stuck in a perpetual self-loathing cycle that has some really wondrous parts and some very harmful parts. At the moment I seem to be coming out of the very harmful part. And I wanted to explore the spiritual side of it and the duality that seems to exist not just within me but within humans.
The words I’ve written to describe myself over the past few weeks have been… a beast, a spawn of Satan, a cancer cell in the body of God. However, as I’ve expressed these things at the very same time, I was also expressing a genuine concern about Being these things, a desire to be something other than evil, a sense that I have an important positive contributions to make, a belief that deep inside I am connected to an incredibly powerful positive energy that is telling me that I am no evil, I am one of the infinite ways that GOD manifests itself in the universe. I avoid using a gender specific pronoun here not to make GOD an object. My vision of GOD at the moment is of something that is formless and not limited to some patriarchal/matriarchal concept.
Anyway, today I can’t help but wonder…How can I be truly evil, if I am feeling ashamed and guilty for being evil? If I were truly evil or just an animal, without cognition or an inherently righteous (GOOD) soul, I wouldn’t care if I were evil? But I do care? At least sometimes I care. J Does the fact that I care mean I am inherently GOOD? If so, why when I feel deep instinctual things I’m considered to be EVIL or entertaining unrighteous thoughts? I am EVIL again?
What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe that mankind’s true nature is inherently evil? If you don’t believe that we are inherently evil, why do you think we are often taught that some of our deep human needs or at least our instinctual drive to meet these needs is evil? Of course one deep need I’m referring to is sexual or physical connection, but there are others (at least I think there are). I guess I am just wondering is there REALLY a GOOD and EVIL or is this just a concept that mankind has developed?
(I get that maybe my negative self image was something given to me by others in childhood--this post isn't intended to be about abuse and its effects.) It about the concept of GOOD and EVIL and if this is a concept limited to man.
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I remember once that my emotion for a particular feeling was misconstrued as to “being under a conviction from God” , to which now I know can simply be called “guilt” for something that I had unconsciously blocked from my mind long ago.
We are born into this world unknowing, blank slates to which others that are close sometimes may write on and clutter with bits of there own lives, egos often superimposing our innocence with their nonsense/knowledge of how we are supposed to behave…adjust. By our dependence of those figures, our early lives may take on complexities that mirror or mimic what was shown to us….be it called immoral or just by many of humanities standards.
I really feel that a great part, if not the whole of our freedoms, lie in the conscious knowing that we are mostly not what we have been structured to believe we are and that by allowing ourselves to become that blank slate again, perhaps then we may begin to understand that we just “are” and that we are born neither “good” nor “bad” but gifts from “God”, free to consciously choose what is right and just for us in this world...this life.
Yes, ”empathy”, or allowing ourselves to feel and think more for others and the world in which we reside would be a positive step for living this consciousness anew.
Go in peace and love. Hurt no-one. Live life again.