Save Our Species – S.O.S.

In Good and Evil, Choice and Responsibility I speculated that if an entity is not conscious, nothing that it does can be determined to be good or evil. There must be conscious and therefor active choice involved for an action to be labeled either good or evil. Once an entity attains conscious, everything it does is a choice for which responsibility must be taken. What we describe as evil only exists when conscious beings do not actively choose to manifest good.

Could it be that what we fear most is the burden that the responsibility of choice places upon us? The thought we might be alone in a cold, dark, infinite and lonely universe is the most terrifying thought imaginable. Could it be that we need God to blame? How many times do we hear ourselves asking how could God let something happen? Aren’t we a little like children frightened about leaving home and having to take care of ourselves for the first time – pushed from the garden of eden by our father?

There are proportionally very few evil individuals who wish to act against the natural order of things. The problem is not the number of people being evil, it is that the number of people who are not being good.

Why then do a large majority of human beings who consider themselves good not act in accordance with their beliefs about themselves as being good? Why do we tolerate evil and allow it to exist and flourish amongst us? Why do we not act to manifest good in our world?

Out of fear most of us attempt to escape our responsibility by choosing to do nothing. We look the other way and tell ourselves that if we are not committing evil, we are by default being good. However, if conscious choice is a prerequisite to good and evil, there can be no such thing as passive good. In order for an act to be good, we must take full responsibility for our ability to choose and consciously act to manifest good.

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything — Albert Einstein

We convince ourselves that since the difference we can make as individuals seems so small that our actions must make no difference at all. Our conclusion from this is that since we can’t change what’s happening in the world by ourselves, it can’t be our responsibility.  So instead of acting to manifest good, we sit at home watching the world through our TVs condemning what we see happening but accepting no responsibility for it.

After the second world war, many German soldiers tried to use the fact that they were following orders as a legal defense for participating in or not opposing atrocities committed by the Nazis between 1939 and 1945. The International Law Court at Nuremberg refused this defense and made a ruling documented in the Nuremberg  Principles that declares that individuals have a legal obligation to follow their moral code.

The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him. — Nuremberg Principles, Principle IV

All human creations exist solely through a constant effort of will. No matter how large the creation or how long it has endured, once the will to create is gone, it takes very little time for the creation to return back to the entropy from which we created it. Modern scientists estimate it would take less than 1000 years for all traces of humanity to be erased from the planet if our species were to become extinct. Good too is a human creation manifest through an effort of will.

I could never understand the concept of Original Sin as taught by the church. It seemed absurd that an innocent child who had never even drawn breath could be tainted with sin. It didn’t help that no representative of the church that I questioned on the subject could tell me anything more on the  subject than the doctrine taught in theology class.

Writing this series of articles about Good & Evil triggered a realisation.  Could it be that the concept of Original SIn is an attempt to convey that there can be no such thing as passive good? Once we became conscious, we are required to remain vigilant and act consciously to manifest good, for if we fail to, we are condoning evil which must surely be a sin?

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