Geologists call this period we are living through 'the Anthropocene', in part because we are leaving a mark in the geological record, and in part becasue we are inclined put ourselves at the centre of stories. The temporal scale of this epoch is a blink of the eye in the evolutionary story of life stretching back billions of years. Here we are in our moment where some things change and some remain the same.
'Conception' can mean biologically, through genes, or intellectually, through language, a moment of synthesis creating something that evolves down the generations. Some concepts, like that of ‘the atoms’, were developed to describe and understand the physical world as we experience it and are presumed to have existed long before humans arrived on the scene. Other conceptions only make sense in terms of humans relating. Nietzsche explored some of this second category in ‘Genealogy of Morality’, including the conception of 'good and evil'. This conceived duality makes no sense outside the human world. When mythology is not being confused with history the biblical genesis account addresses the conception with the eating the fruit of knowledge of good and evil and being cast out of nature. This is a culturally contingent conception with specific origins and developmental history. Several teachers in various permutations of its tradition have tried to shift the emphasis back to connectedness but then politically convenient conception of the evil other has remained at hand.
Nietzsche points to the moment in history that established this divisive conception with his central character in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra’. Zoroaster (alternate spelling) who, in Neitzsche's book, had returned to teach on integrity, preceded the origins of Judaism by at least 100 years. Nietzsche contrasts ‘good and evil’ with the European duality of ‘good and bad’, where ‘good’ has linguistic roots in being empower or noble and ‘bad’ in being small and weak. He goes on to describe the inversion of the meaning of ‘good’ to being the meek, who will inherit the earth as ‘the slaves’ revolt’, in which evil is a dangerous power to be overcome through allegiance with an all-powerful god. Without going into the role of his ‘will to power’ in his conception or how aptly he defines this cultural development, it is worth considering the historical context in which the conception of good and evil became so important. It is plausible to suggest that it arose from elevating natural experience of a species moving in social groups of ‘them & us’ to a supernaturally vindicated righteousness. Even if we accept Nietzsche’s origins that the conception arose as a means of revolution for the weak to overcome the powerful history shows it was very quickly flipped to become a tool of empire and central organising principle of authoritarianism (see previous in this series).
Through the development of cereal agriculture and the first city states of the fertile crescent there is significant archaeological evidence of increasing populations, declining general health, increased violence, and cultural upheaval followed by a movement from goddess-oriented fertility mythologies to the male war gods of the Arian & Semitic herders and warriors[1]. Sargon reigned c. 2334–2279 BCE and the story goes that, like Horus and Moses, he was found floating in a basket in the reeds. He grew up to be the first ruler of one of these city states to successfully set up garrisons and puppet rulers, colonising and enslaving neighbouring cities, rather than just raid and trash them. The beginning of empire in this threads of western culture marked a significant change in the scale of society and the nature of relationships and dialogue within it.
It was into this thread of waxing and waning Acadian, Babylonian, Assyrian and then Persian civilisations that Zoroaster, in the 6th centuary BCE, seeded the conception of Ahura Mazda and Agra Mayu - divine beings of light and darkness in battle for the world. Sound familiar? It became the official religion of the Persian Empire. The narrative of good and evil eventually replaced the more ecological dynamic polytheistic mythologies as the religion of empires from the Middle East and across the Mediterranean. The tribal male god of war became everything and nature and the feminine conceived as corrupting[2].The boys club took over. A mythology where any opponent can be classed as the absolute other, evil and in need of destruction or salvation through conquest is very convenient for an expanding empire. It can pretend to be bringing God and love when really it is just taking what it wants as the beginning of Ziggy Ramo's reworking of ‘From little things big thing grow’ so clearly articulates.
Hannah Arrent coined her famous phrase ‘the banality of evil’ in describing Adolf Ekman’s feeble account of himself as a non-thinking bureaucrat doing his job as he administered Nazi war crimes. He may have faked his mindlessness, but weakness was at his core either way. The cruelty of weak people, banding together as school bullies or regimes taking what they desire scars our history as they fabricate a morality and hide behind a veil of ‘God’s will’. The hypocrisy of the cruelty of medieval Christian kings boiling people in oil is central to Nietzsche’s scathing critique. It is empowering for us to realise that this impulse comes out of weakness not strength and it makes the comfort of high moral ground without taking control less seductive.
Understanding human cruelty, weakness, selfishness and other vices in their own terms is much more likely to put us in a position to influence and limit them than lumping them together as characteristics of evil to be destroyed or just suffer while we wait for the next life. In overcoming evil, the ends too often justify the means and, as with the cruelty of medieval Christian Kings, we become the monsters we claim to fight.
Every culture needs a conditioning system for coherence, lets make it with the fundamental human experiences of love and fear as the cardinal points of the moral compass. What we love is part of who we are, and we distance ourselves from what we fear. Kinship is a culturally defiend fabric of love. A world conceptualised by the dynamic interaction of elements frames the dance of ecology and society. Membranes of organisms are permeable and in constant dialogue with their environment and this is also true for our minds; the others exists, not as an absolute but in some relationship, boundaries are defined by distance and scale, not hard borders.
In the process of decolonising our minds the conception of good and evil is at the top of my list of things to go.
[1] this will be further explored in ‘where you from - on relating’ be published as the 6th and final in this series [2] Joseph Campbell – Myths to Live By
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