The War Within - Between Good and Evil, Bheemeswara Challa [books for 7th graders txt] 📗

smartphone; often they have one, but if they
do call, they get to talk to a machine; it is because no one cares to give a shoulder
to cry upon. It is because of what happens within, not because of social media,
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that our most charitable view of a fellow-human is as a ‘necessary nuisance’ or
an ‘opportunistic option’; more often, an irritant-fly to be eliminated. If our
‘within’ is cleansed, the very same devices can become bridging or bonding social
capital, and we can turn that very ‘problem’ into a platform, a launching pad,
for human brotherhood, man’s eternal yearning. Our decision making, despite
our much-hyped ‘surgical’ analytical capability, has never been our real strength.
You may say that we are most afflicted with what experts call cognitive errors,
which are systemic and spontaneous; the choices we make, generation after
generation, are seldom innocuous, more often toxic. We can only mend the
process marginally, because it is the source that is sullied. For, a certain seed can
only yield a certain fruit. It is the brain that is the source and however magical,
plastic, and organically adaptive it might be, it cannot, so to speak, change its
spots. We know precious little about the processes at work before an animal
barks or growls, grunts or attacks; but what seems to set us apart is that while
other animals’ insides are largely a ‘collection center’, for humans it is also a
cauldron. ‘Other animals’ are largely predictable; humans singularly are not.
Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with
the surrounding environment but we humans deliberately do not. That is why
we are more erratic and dangerous than other animals; one never can tell how
humans will, individually or collectively, react to a given temptation or common
provocation. People make commitments—to a nation, faith, calling or loved
ones—and endure the sacrifices those commitments demand. Often this involves
fighting against natural evolutionary predispositions. One of our predispositions
that is at the root of much of our misery and suffering is divisiveness, our view
of everything as opposites, that the good of one is necessarily bad for the other.
In short, we view life as a zero-sum journey, which we can only survive at the
expense of another person. That must change if we are to stop killing each other
at every opening and opportunity. But that must come from ‘within’. We have
for long turned to scriptures for moral guidance but, whether objectively we can
agree or not, we cannot altogether ignore the fact that there is a growing sense
in some ‘intellectual’ sections, that ‘it is not possible for the religious doctrines
derived from holy books to be the catalyst for moral evolvement’.17 One might
perhaps qualify it and say that this is because of the way these books are filtered
by the modern mind and interpreted by the zealots of different religions. And
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the idea of science, or scientism, as some like to call it, the idea that any question
that can be answered at all, can best be answered by science, is fast becoming
another dogma. And despite its seductive claim that it can fix morality by fixing
our brains, it seems more probable that by the time science is done with our body
and brain, the verdict might well be: ‘operation successful; patient died’.
We need to rethink, or re-feel, what ‘being a person’, not only being
human, ought to be in today’s world. And about what we tend to view as a
‘problem’ and as a ‘solution’, and the criteria and the terms of their use and
application in the contemporary social and moral setting. The ‘problem’ is often
the problem, or what we think is. If we are clear and correct about the cause of
the ‘problem’, the solution springs forth; sometimes more than one. That is why
Einstein said that ‘the formulation of the problem is often more essential than
its solution, which may be merely a matter of mathematical or experimental
skill’. He also said that you cannot ‘solve’ a ‘problem’ with the same mindset
that caused it. And, too often, the true ‘problem’ is ‘we’, not ‘others’; within us,
not outside us. The problem of how to deal with ‘others’ has long baffled moral
philosophers. Should we place them on equal moral footing with ourselves?
And if so, what kind of constraints must we place on ourselves in dealing with
them? It is the mindset that matters most and predetermines a person’s responses
to and interpretations of situations. Our mindset is now the mind, and that
is the real problem. We are using the same ‘mindset’, or the mind, to answer
questions about itself, about the ‘problem’ of the mind and its place in the human
consciousness. It carries huge implications; even beyond how we address global
issues such as environmental crisis, climate change, good governance, or mass
poverty. It defines who we are, what happens in the ‘war within’. And conditions
how we live, view life situations, and our attitude and aptitude, and the contours
of our moral universe. Morality is now a hostage to the mind. One more thing
is becoming very clear. For long, scriptures and sages have emphasized the need
to control and master the mind as an essential aspect of spiritual seeking, or
sadhana. That is still desirable but barring a handful of truly evolved souls that is
beyond the reach of the rest. When a moral sense is not ingrained in a mindset,
history teaches us, it is a sure sign that civilizations are ripe for decline and fall.
Our attitude towards money, like sex, it too riddled with anomalies. Just as sex is
a medium of both intense love and burning hatred, money is something we both
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love and hate almost at the same time. We talk about the corrupting influence of
money, but all our life we seek that very power. We want lots and lots of money,
but we don’t want to be known as the ‘rich’. It would take a lot of imagination
to imagine what we would like to do with our life if money were to cease to be
the object and the objective. If money continues to occupy the same suffocating
space in human consciousness and if it is viewed in the same light as of now,
it will be well nigh impossible to move towards the goal of ‘humane’ human
transformation, or to turn the human into an essentially moral being.
Being Better Than We Were Yesterday
One of the main impediments to human ‘betterment’ is our practical inability
to answer the question, better than what? or better than who? That kind of
‘betterment’ takes us into the slippery terrain of competitive comparison, which
is self-defeating. Transformative technologies are expected to enable us to edit,
delete, add, and replace, activate or suppress specific genes inside the human
body, with which it might be possible to change the genetic basis of particular
traits. Scientists are also using gene editing in human embryos. New gene-editing
technologies, some scientists warn, could be turned into a biological weapon
by transforming a common virus into an unstoppable drug-resistant killer. This
raises once again the fundamental question: can human creativity be trusted with
such awesome power? Can we just go wherever our creativity takes, where no
man has gone before, not into outer space but into the more vital space of ‘being
human’? Techniques like brain-training, boot camp for the brain, are expected
to allow us to crash through the ‘cognitive glass ceiling, a number tattooed on
the soul’,18 and significantly modify and enhance human ‘fluid intelligence’,19
signaling a startling change from the earlier perception that they are a ‘given’. But,
transformative as the implications are, the more fundamental questions remain.
We may become more intelligent, but does it change the way we understand,
the way we ingest and digest information, the way we conduct ourselves in the
interpersonal world? In short, more of the same kind or genre of ‘intelligence’,
being bright, scholarly and intellectually agile, with high cognitive capacity, does
any of that contribute, if not lead to human transformation or a nobler mindset?
The fact that the ‘more intelligent’ persons with high IQs of 150 or more behave
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no better than the remainder belies the premise. Great or ‘beautiful’ minds are
double-sided coins; their very ‘extraordinariness’ becomes a burden on others;
their very high intelligence impacts on their integrity. Most of them have what
we usually call a ‘shady side’, being a nasty spouse, infidelity, pettiness in private,
etc. Granting that there is no perfect human and that these are generic judgments
without understanding the contexts, the point is that creativity and character,
intelligence and integrity are not always compatible companions. The question
frequently crops up: how and what do we measure ourselves with, and what is
the direction of betterment? Because if we don’t know that, as Einstein said,
we may be expecting a fish to climb a tree, and finding that it could not do so,
conclude that it failed. Perhaps the best answer is, ‘the only person we should be
better than is the person we were yesterday’. And, “there is nothing noble about
being superior to some other person. True nobility lies in being superior to your
former self ”.20 That is the only way to be better, the only way to monitor and
measure our moral and spiritual progress. It is incremental and it requires constant
effort for continuous improvement. And for that the qualities we associate with
‘being intelligent’ are not good enough; sometimes they are impediments. Many
religious and spiritual leaders and saints were not, purely in terms of intelligence,
different from their devout lay followers. For example, Siddhartha did not have any
formal education to be transformed into a Buddha. What is becoming increasingly
apparent is that for us to become better ‘problem-solvers’ and ‘decision-makers’, we
need consciousness-change, and for that we need to go beyond the confines and
character of what we currently consider as ‘intelligence’. Even if we concede that
at some point in the future we don’t have to be stuck with the brain we now have,
and that we could attain ‘cognitive control’, ‘manipulate our working memory’ by
using ‘smart pills’ and ‘thinking caps’, and even substantially boost or build our
brain power, which scientists claim might be possible biologically, in some sort of
‘boot camps for our brain’,21 that is unlikely to mitigate the malaise or solve and
problems we are now grappling with.
As for the ‘physical body’, which is what we have to cope with all our
life and whose care preoccupies our mind, it is being predicted that “the future
is likely to bring us astonishingly advanced, and increasingly unusual ways to
enhance our bodies”, giving us the capacity for ‘body-modification’, ‘elective
bionics’ and ‘designer babies’22. The vision and aim is to make the human being
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‘perfect’ by making him impregnable, invincible, invisible at will and with x-ray
vision, super-intelligent, strong like Superman and eventually immortal. The
unstated expectation, the hidden hope, is that such a ‘perfect’ human, liberated
from mundane worries about disease, disability, and death, will be minus
malice, more moral, more responsible, and will then have a reason not to be
self-destructive. The bedrock of such belief is that the brain is the sole source
of ‘intelligence’, and what we call mind and consciousness are its other names.
And by inference, ‘consciousness-change’ is nothing more than, and equivalent
to, ‘boosting-brain-power’, and fixing it where necessary. This is a fatal fallacy, as
other frontiers of scientific research testify—the heart has its own intelligence,
memory and nervous energy, and the mind is more than the brain.
The worrisome thing is not only where such scientific effort will ultimately
take shape, but also what such an effort, in and by itself, might entail and yield.
And does it amount to changing the basic character of being human, equivalent
to turning a cat into a dog, and if so, can we get away with it? Can humans
do whatever they want to? Does it amount to changing the cosmic balance,
the balance between multiple forms of life on earth, with different capabilities
and vulnerabilities, each playing, even if unnoticed, a specific, irreplaceable,
and positive and negative role in the grand scheme of nature? Are we crossing
nature’s invisible but real ‘Lakshmana rekha’?23 Or, like in the real Ramayana, no
such line is drawn or exists for our ‘chosen’ species? Furthermore, man has never
respected any line or limits and that, in fact, is the essence of ‘being human’.
And then, it is often said, we should live in harmony with nature, implying
that we should stay within our ‘natural’ limits or laws of nature. But then, all
medicine, in one sense, amounts to defying the