Let’s first get the elephant-sized hackneyed quote out of the way, “…there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so”. If Shakespeare had written, “there is nothing”, that would have been pretty profound! Or, even “there is”; that would have made many a mind ponder endlessly. In my present state of mind I think half of the Shakespearean quote makes sense - “there is nothing good”; as to other half, there is plenty of bad! None of the characters in Shakespeare’s plays was up to any good. Good doesn’t make for an interesting story!
Once, many years ago when I was first trying my hand at writing a play, a seasoned playwright advised me that something dramatic must happen in order to make a story. Excluding stories of natural disasters, for something spectacular and significant to happen, there has to be someone who wants something badly - like a villain wanting to rule the world. (Is there something sinister behind all desires?) In the stories most of us remember, villains are always amazingly successful at recruiting people to their side and those affected by their villainy appear all but helpless. Have you never wondered how bad people get so far before someone even begins to think that something terrible is going on? In James Bond movies, for example, the villain is all set with weapons of mass destruction before 007 or M get a whiff of it. The point is that bits of bad go untraced and then rapidly snowball into a monster. Heroes on the side of good are far fewer in real life than the stories would have us believe. Moreover, a hero becomes a hero only when he can defeat the villain by matching his violence (bad!) or deceit (bad!). Somehow then, bad is okay!
Let‘s also examine the dramatically bad occurrences. Dramatic always means that there is drama due to clash of emotions. And overflowing of emotions inherently implies that reason and rationality have taken a back seat. So in a sense, whether bad is of the slow-creeping type or dramatic, bad sprouts when there is absence of reason.
A shining example of slow-creeping bad is climate change. When I was just a kid, I heard about someone committing suicide from leaving their car running in a closed garage and gradually dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. I knew straight away that vehicular exhaust from hydrocarbon fossil fuels was a very bad idea. I have been concerned about this slow disaster creeping up on humanity ever since. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that. But I could do practically nothing about it! Modern life is based on oil and vested interests keep it going and we remain helpless spectators. Pulling the plug on oil is impossible as the world as we know it would collapse into chaos if that were to happen. So once bad gets going, it is often too late to reverse it.
Interestingly, even sudden episodes of bad have slow-creeping histories. Let’s consider the recent example of a young woman in Hyderabad, India, whose life abruptly ended after she was brutally gang-raped and murdered (burnt alive, rendering bad gruesome!) by four men. Yes, it happened suddenly as an event, but those who study such phenomena would suggest that neglect at many levels of society accumulates over time to result into individual bad events. In India, violence against women is caused, among others, by the lower social status of women, preference for a male child, poor upbringing of boys, poor education of children, and poor law enforcement. These are all slow-festering ills in society.
Sadly, the success of humans is built upon bad – exploitation! We exploit the earth and its beings, including our fellow humans, for benefit. It’s also called economics. Some would argue that in a way exploitation begins immediately at birth. A baby exploits the mother for its own survival. (In the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins suggests that if the father’s genes contribute primarily to the formation of a baby’s tongue, that baby tends to suck more aggressively on the mother’s breast. Genes somehow know what is not “me”.) In school, most of us compete in class to get ahead of other kids. Then we compete for jobs, leaving behind the less advantaged. Competition (which creates social classes) is Darwinian – we have no choice. It is a matter of survival. All win-lose situations are rooted in bad and there are very few winners. The modern adage is you win some, you lose a lot! Just look around, if there were kings today, a mere 200 or so individuals would be ruling billions of people! Even from the point of view of wealth distribution in the world the situation is pretty bad; almost two thirds (64%) of the world’s population hold a measly 2% of global wealth. So what does this mean? Individually, we all have skeletons in our cupboards from our past! Because we are part of the current economic system, we have contributed willy-nilly to the global bad. Bad is pervasive and growing. There aren’t two parallel scales of good and bad, but only one scale representing degrees of bad. The arrow of time moves in the direction of entropy - bad!
Before closing, let’s look at what good might be. Most of us would think it is pretty good that we are alive, now. The problem is that bad is there in every step we take – we can die completely unannounced at any moment. We are constantly fighting a losing battle against our slow decay. Sadly, bad always wins! Yes, there are little victories for good here and there, but some of the biggest “goods” have turned out to be huge bads! Just think of how “good” religions have damaged societies by spreading ignorance and leading people to war. The only way good can win is by reversing the laws of the universe, in the way Woody Allen whished:
“In my next life I want to live my life backwards… you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day….You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school…you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!”
Can we change the direction of the time arrow?
Once, many years ago when I was first trying my hand at writing a play, a seasoned playwright advised me that something dramatic must happen in order to make a story. Excluding stories of natural disasters, for something spectacular and significant to happen, there has to be someone who wants something badly - like a villain wanting to rule the world. (Is there something sinister behind all desires?) In the stories most of us remember, villains are always amazingly successful at recruiting people to their side and those affected by their villainy appear all but helpless. Have you never wondered how bad people get so far before someone even begins to think that something terrible is going on? In James Bond movies, for example, the villain is all set with weapons of mass destruction before 007 or M get a whiff of it. The point is that bits of bad go untraced and then rapidly snowball into a monster. Heroes on the side of good are far fewer in real life than the stories would have us believe. Moreover, a hero becomes a hero only when he can defeat the villain by matching his violence (bad!) or deceit (bad!). Somehow then, bad is okay!
Let‘s also examine the dramatically bad occurrences. Dramatic always means that there is drama due to clash of emotions. And overflowing of emotions inherently implies that reason and rationality have taken a back seat. So in a sense, whether bad is of the slow-creeping type or dramatic, bad sprouts when there is absence of reason.
A shining example of slow-creeping bad is climate change. When I was just a kid, I heard about someone committing suicide from leaving their car running in a closed garage and gradually dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. I knew straight away that vehicular exhaust from hydrocarbon fossil fuels was a very bad idea. I have been concerned about this slow disaster creeping up on humanity ever since. One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to realise that. But I could do practically nothing about it! Modern life is based on oil and vested interests keep it going and we remain helpless spectators. Pulling the plug on oil is impossible as the world as we know it would collapse into chaos if that were to happen. So once bad gets going, it is often too late to reverse it.
Interestingly, even sudden episodes of bad have slow-creeping histories. Let’s consider the recent example of a young woman in Hyderabad, India, whose life abruptly ended after she was brutally gang-raped and murdered (burnt alive, rendering bad gruesome!) by four men. Yes, it happened suddenly as an event, but those who study such phenomena would suggest that neglect at many levels of society accumulates over time to result into individual bad events. In India, violence against women is caused, among others, by the lower social status of women, preference for a male child, poor upbringing of boys, poor education of children, and poor law enforcement. These are all slow-festering ills in society.
Sadly, the success of humans is built upon bad – exploitation! We exploit the earth and its beings, including our fellow humans, for benefit. It’s also called economics. Some would argue that in a way exploitation begins immediately at birth. A baby exploits the mother for its own survival. (In the book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins suggests that if the father’s genes contribute primarily to the formation of a baby’s tongue, that baby tends to suck more aggressively on the mother’s breast. Genes somehow know what is not “me”.) In school, most of us compete in class to get ahead of other kids. Then we compete for jobs, leaving behind the less advantaged. Competition (which creates social classes) is Darwinian – we have no choice. It is a matter of survival. All win-lose situations are rooted in bad and there are very few winners. The modern adage is you win some, you lose a lot! Just look around, if there were kings today, a mere 200 or so individuals would be ruling billions of people! Even from the point of view of wealth distribution in the world the situation is pretty bad; almost two thirds (64%) of the world’s population hold a measly 2% of global wealth. So what does this mean? Individually, we all have skeletons in our cupboards from our past! Because we are part of the current economic system, we have contributed willy-nilly to the global bad. Bad is pervasive and growing. There aren’t two parallel scales of good and bad, but only one scale representing degrees of bad. The arrow of time moves in the direction of entropy - bad!
Before closing, let’s look at what good might be. Most of us would think it is pretty good that we are alive, now. The problem is that bad is there in every step we take – we can die completely unannounced at any moment. We are constantly fighting a losing battle against our slow decay. Sadly, bad always wins! Yes, there are little victories for good here and there, but some of the biggest “goods” have turned out to be huge bads! Just think of how “good” religions have damaged societies by spreading ignorance and leading people to war. The only way good can win is by reversing the laws of the universe, in the way Woody Allen whished:
“In my next life I want to live my life backwards… you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day….You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school…you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!”
Can we change the direction of the time arrow?
