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

has come to mean the difference
between success and failure, recognition and ridicule, genius and garden-type.
Most of all, ‘intelligence’ is prized for its problem-identification-solving capacity.
The basic assumption is that our intelligence enables us to assemble and analyze
all relevant facts, to take into consideration all the pertinent factors, and allows
us to frame and make right choices for the right course of action. At this pivotal
point in human history, which itself is a chronicle of human bungling and faux
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pas, and attempts made to cover them up, where many are aghast at what man
has wrought on earth and where he is headed, it is this dimension that calls
for careful study and reflection. First we must recognize that the scope for our
‘choice-making’ is very narrow. On the really important issues we have no choice.
We have no choice over our earthly arrival: to whom we are born to or the place
and time of our birth. We have no choice over the birth of our progeny. We have
no choice over the time and place, even the way, of our earthly departure: death.
And yet all our life we try to ward it off; and sometimes to embrace. If death is
predetermined, then is our drive towards physical immortality tantamount to
divine defiance, a dare to nature?
Even within this meager ‘menu’ the actual ‘choices’ we make are highly
circumscribed and conditioned; they appear as ‘choices’, but we are, in reality,
the executors, the instruments. ‘Choices’ make us more than we make them,
and over time, we become what the real ‘choice-makers’ want us to be. Jean-Paul
Sartre simply said, “We are our choices”. We make a ‘choice’ among the choices
offered to us, and they themselves are loaded. What is not on the table doesn’t
really exist and the ‘table’ itself is so crowded with such pseudo ‘choices’ that the
difference between them is actually, ‘Twixt Tweedle-dum and Tweedle-dee’. Still,
every choice has a ripple effect, both on our character and, something we scarcely
are conscious of, on society.
The most worrisome aspect is that we have turned out to be, with all these
caveats, poor ‘choice-makers’ and ‘problem-solvers’. In fact, we tend to identify
intelligence with ‘problem-solving’ capabilities and that the better we are at
problem-solving the more intelligent we are. ‘Problem-solvers’ are usually highly
regarded and rewarded. Yet the fact is that all through our history, problem-solving
has been our weakest spot: skewed-prioritization, flawed decision-making, faulty
harmonizing of competing demands. It is this that has led to all the problems we
have faced, all the wars that we have waged, all the misery we have endured as a
species. If we want more harmonious humankind and a more stable world, the
‘problem’ about problem-solving has to be addressed. The real problem is that
often we cannot even agree on what the ‘problem’ is; let alone how to ‘resolve’ it.
Basically the ‘problem’ is that our brain, more precisely the left-brain, consists of
many specialized units designed by the process of evolution by natural selection for
fragmented tasks. While these modules occasionally work together cooperatively
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and seamlessly, they don’t always, resulting in impossibly conflicting beliefs,
vacillations between patience and impulsiveness, transgressions of our selfsupposed
moral imperatives, and pompous views of ourselves. We have always
been reasonably good at narrow advocacy and compartmental conception, and
weak on holistic ‘thinking’, integration, and harmonization. In modern times it
has gotten worse, because today’s problems are more complex and convoluted,
and require precisely those very skills we lack, or we do not possess in sufficient
measure. To the point that we are unable to agree on what needs to be done to
address any of our issues, what Shakespeare called ‘sea of troubles’—political,
social, economic, technological, environmental, psychological, and cultural.
For example, what we see around us is chaos, creeping shadows, darkness, and
horrors, but what we cannot make sense of is what the mute message is. We are
lost in the darkness, but whether it is the darkness before dawn or the darkness at
the midnight of the new moon, whether or not the ‘darkness’ is of the ‘maternal
womb of a new consciousness’, or of the chilling confines of a cold coffin, we can
only surmise.
That mankind is on the threshold of an epic transition, we all concur. The
trouble is that we are confused if what we see and experience in the world presages
the dawn of a Utopia or the dim darkness of a Dystopia. Views vary if, as many
fear, we are experiencing the death-throes of impending self-extinction or the
faint birth-pangs of a new ‘Axial Age’ of ‘spiritual unfoldment’, which could lead
to a profound consciousness-change or when ‘singularity’ comes calling. Human
brains are chipped, or linked to computers, and a kind of ‘man-machine’ merger
is occurring. These three different scenarios appear, all are plausible, but there is
no way to tell which one will be the ‘winner’. Here again, it depends on who, or
which attributes, prevail in the ‘war within’. During the long length of human
pre-history, our brain and our emotions were by and large, in tune, in a state of
subtle balance. That ‘balance’ was between what we call ‘positive’ or ‘negative’.
Our negative emotions such as anger, fear, anxiety, hate, and aggression were
used for survival and hunting, and for the defense of the group or community
against predators and rivals. They were entrenched and embedded within long
after their need was not so strong, and have become more powerful through
the inputs received from the outside world. The positive emotions such as love,
kindness, compassion, and solidarity to others were brought to bear as a means
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to synergy in the community. And they have become weaker as they were starved
of the nutrients from the external world. The principal reason for much of the
aggression, wretchedness, wickedness, and hatred, which seem to be on the rise
every day, is the growing ascendancy of the ‘negative’ forces in the ‘ war within’.
A Stinging Word and a Withering Glance
The core issue though is this: is human aggression and violence, in its destructive
and demeaning sense, genetically hard-wired, or is human violence the somber
‘software’ of our struggle for survival in the ‘living world’ and the worldly wages
of our culture, civilization and modernity? Opinions vary, and we will probably
have no up or down answer. What we must recognize is that mankind will never
be free from all violence, and the fight to overcome violence is part of the war
within. Just as peace is not merely an absence of war, non-violence is not simply
refraining from violent acts. We instinctively associate violence with physical
actions, but in truth, non-physical violence, hurting without hitting, is far more
pervasive. The medium need not be the hand; it can be our mouth, even eyes.
A slap on the face may be less hurting than a stinging word. A looks-can-kill
glance can send shivers down the spine more than a whiplash. Taking advantage
of the other’s vulnerability is violence. Gandhi said ‘poverty is the worst form of
violence’. It can be an abuse, psychological, emotional or verbal, or a deliberate
snub, a scalding scolding. Gaslighting—mental abuse in which false information
is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory,
perception and sanity, is violence. In fact, “people ganging up on someone by
spreading rumors, humiliation, and verbal abuse are just as bad as thugs who
physically beat someone to cause injury or death… People are comfortable
using non-physical violence because their actions cannot be measured like
physical injuries”.54 The same action or speech or gesture can be ‘violent’ or even
‘affectionate’; it depends on the intention and attitude. A curt and dismissive
word can hurt, but simply listening with empathy can heal. There is a vast
difference, for example, between mercy killing and murder, between contract
killing and the executioner’s execution, between consensual sex and commercial
sex, even between seduction and rape. Even in the same relationship, the same
act can be violent or loving. Some even say that “Violence itself is not physical,
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though the delivery system very well may be. Violence is energy—invasive,
penetrating, abrupt, creepy, and unrelenting. It is the filth you cannot wash off
with a shower”.55 Even ‘passive resistance’ and every form of ‘protest’ is a form
of violence, in the sense it tries to force people to do something that otherwise
they will not. But violence is sometimes needed for the voice of moderation to
be heard. According to Hannah Arendt, “Violence… is a much more effective
weapon of reformers than of revolutionists”.56 The argument against violence is
that, although justified and even necessary under certain conditions, it is often
counterproductive, that it leads to more violence, and that, in Arendt’s words, the
‘means overwhelm the end’. Non-violence can be cowardly in certain situations
and ‘being truthful’ can do more harm than good at times. If we are ‘kind’ to
a psychopathic killer and do not tell the truth we might be responsible for the
murders of more people.
Every religion has recognized and warned us of this ‘war within’.
Zoroastrianism calls it a war between the god of light and god of darkness, and
it advocates the simple formula of ‘good thoughts, good words and good deeds’.
Its founder Zoroaster was, in the words of Tagore, the “first man who gave a
definitely moral character and direction to religion and at the same time preached
the doctrine of monotheism which offered an eternal foundation of reality to
goodness as an ideal of perfection”.57 And he ‘showed the path of freedom to
man, the freedom of moral choice’. Christianity describes the ‘war’ as a fight
between God and Satan. However one might view it or call it, deep inside all of
us there is struggle, tension, fight or war, which determines how we act or react,
how we behave. There is in everyone a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde; and perhaps
many ‘Jekylls’ and ‘Hydes’, particular to every situation and relationship. The
‘universe’ is within and the forces are internal but the stakes are universal. It is not
confined to the well-being and liberation of each of us; it directly and decisively
affects the whole of humanity and the fate of the earth. The fact of the matter is
that if we cannot control what happens inside we cannot control what happens
outside. A ‘suicide’ is also an outcome of a ‘war within’. When some people say
that something ‘broke inside’, what they mean is that they lost the battle, and
that, in turn, led to ‘ending it all’. The irony is that while we have no qualms
about species self-destruction, we have always been ambiguous about individual
self-destruction. Our stance has wildly wavered between ‘noble’, ‘heroic’ and
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‘honorable’, to ‘mortal sin’, ‘heinous crime’ or ‘cowardly’, between an ‘act of
genius’ to a ‘ form of insanity’. On the species-scale not many agonize, because
the individual mind cares as much or as little about the human as any other.
The ‘war is within’, so are the barriers. Rumi wrote, “Your task is not to seek for
love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have
built against it”. The chief barrier is our own mind. Joseph Campbell said, “The
ultimate dragon is within you”.
All ‘wars’, between individuals or tribes or nations, are ‘within’ our own
selves, and we have to win that ‘war’ for the future evolution of mankind. The
Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO declares that “since wars begin in
the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be
constructed”. Those ‘defenses’ have to be erected within. War, it has even been
said, is a “biological necessity of the first importance… not only a biological
law but a moral obligation… an indispensable factor in civilization”.58 Similarly,
“War is not a pathology that with proper hygiene and treatment can be wholly
prevented. War is a natural condition of the State, which was organized in order
to be an effective instrument of violence on behalf of society. Wars are like deaths,
which, while they can be postponed, will come when they will come and cannot
be finally avoided”.59 At the outset of the First World War, Thomas Mann wrote,
“Is not peace an element of civil corruption and war purification, a liberation, an
enormous hope?”
All ‘wars’ of all sorts, in the ultimate reckoning, are about ‘control’. It
is our irresistible urge for control that consumes our lives and causes so much
misery and mayhem in the world. Control gives the feeling of power, satiates the
desire to prevail, it allows us to humiliate and to feel superior.