And in this they were quite
right. For to scheme how to bite back the biter and to return evil for evil is
the act not of a human being but of a wild beast, which is incapable of
reasoning that the majority of wrongs are done to men through ignorance and
misunderstanding, from which man will cease as soon as he has been taught.
But to accept injury not in a spirit
of savage resentment and to show ourselves not implacable toward those who
wrong us, but rather to be a source of good hope to them is characteristic of a
benevolent and civilized way of life.
It is certainly a part of our human nature to feel,
but we too easily make the mistake of assuming that the passions should be the
measure of our actions. We allow our judgments to be ruled by our passions,
instead of insisting that our passions be ruled by our judgments.
I may receive something that I take to be good, and
so I feel pleasure. I may receive something that I take to be bad, and so I
feel pain. I may expect that something will be good, and so I feel desire. I
may expect that something will be bad, and I so feel fear.
Yet I am also endowed with reason, by which I am
not merely moved about by an impression, but by which I can freely choose
according to my understanding of what things truly are. What any passion means
to me, how I will make something of it, and whether I encourage it or
discourage it follows from my estimation.
In the simplest of terms, how I will feel proceeds directly from how I will judge about what is good or bad in my world of
experience. Though it is hardly a popular thing to say in the current fashion,
our passions become disordered when they are informed by false judgments.
I may feel joy when I see virtue, and that comes
from my correct thinking that virtue is to my benefit. I may feel rage when I
am insulted, and that comes from my mistaken thinking that being defamed does
me harm.
An emotion is only as good for us as the awareness
that stands behind it. It may seem too powerful, so terribly overwhelming, but a
key to finding peace of mind is recognizing that my own decisions are what have
made it so. If I work on changing the habits of my mind, however slow and
arduous the progress may be, I will also be changing the habits of my feelings.
Anger seems an especially potent force, in my own
experience equaled only in its fierceness by the consumption of sexual lust. I
suppose this is because they are both a form of excessive desire, a fiery longing
to cause harm to someone in the first case, a fiery longing to possess someone in
the second.
I can dress up my anger in fancy clothes, and make
all sorts of excuses for it, just as I can so easily do with any kind of lust,
for blood, or flesh, or gold. In the end, however, it is nothing but passion
divorced from reason.
There is a good reason we say that the enraged man
or the lustful man have turned themselves into something more like an animal. They have thrown away a mastery of their own understanding, the power that makes them
distinctly human.
Has another acted poorly? This stems from the harm
he has done to his own soul, and it need not do any harm to my soul. Why has he
done this? Because he does not understand right from wrong. Is there anything I
can do to make this better? I could help him to understand.
How will inflicting pain improve him? It will
certainly not improve me. What benefit comes from seeing him suffer? I will
only have turned into the very thing that so offended me to begin with.
“But we have such different views of right and
wrong!”
Indeed, but the battle is already half won when
such measures are actually being considered. Our reactions are now informed by
the head, not by the gut.
All of this stems from understanding that only
virtue is good for us, and only vice is bad for us, and all other things are
indifferent.
From this perspective, civilization is not about big
granite banks, or cocktail parties, or summer holidays in Maine. Being
civilized means being fully human, and that comes from a respect for others,
which in turn comes from understanding others. My resentment and rage are not
just bad manners, they are the symptoms of a twisted soul.
Written in 10/1999
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