Thursday 27 April 2023

Good and evil personified... With whom shall You affiliate? Whose vision of life do You affirm?

In this era and place; we are called upon to move-away-from an understanding of life and reality based upon the abstractions to which we (especially intellectuals) have become habituated; and towards a much simpler and more animistic personification. 

(This; positively because it is the divinely-decided direction of development of Men's minds; and negatively because the system of abstractions has been thoroughly confused, subverted, corrupted and - increasingly - inverted - such that those who hold by them are readily 'turned' away from God.)

In other words, instead of regarding ultimate reality as consisting of abstract concepts such as forces, fields, particles, processes, laws, principles etc. - we should be thinking of Beings and their relationships


This applies to 'morality', to Good and evil. While I have often tried to explain Good as that which is in harmony with God and divine creation - and evil as that which opposes this; what Good boils-down-to is a particular group of Beings who have made a commitment to work together in familial relationships. Evil is a shifting coalition of Beings who oppose them. 

Therefore; while Good is abstractly summarizable as primary and positive - with evil as secondary and negative; in practice we meet-up with Good and evil as two sides in a spiritual war: the side affiliated to God the creator, and the side against God. 

(To what extent there are Beings on neither side, I will leave out of this discussion.)


These two sides are two groups consisting-of people and other Beings; and two particular personages of God the creator; and 'The Devil' - who is leader (to the extent that there is a leader) of the anti-God coalition.  

And while, as I said above, there is an asymmetry in the fact that creation is primary and anti-creation is secondary - there is also an asymmetry in the fact that before creation was 'chaos'. And so the anti-God side can (albeit incoherently, since they themselves are created) regard themselves as being in favour of the primordial state - something that is 'deeper' and more fundamental than God-made-creation. 

What this means in practice is that 'morality' presents itself as choosing between two sides, between two rival and incompatible modes of explanation and bases for motivation

We can either affiliate with the God party, or become one of those who oppose God (and who may work expediently together - in temporary alliances - in varying degrees). 


To put it simply: in deciding on morality, we are invited (or required) to choose between two persons, two Beings, of different nature and purposes. 

Even in trying to opt-out from this choice (to make a choice for our own nature and purpose) we find that at any given time and place we are necessarily working for one side, or the other - albeit perhaps not consistently or coherently. 

Thus, the ultimate moral choice boils down to a preference between God and The Devil


How well we make this choice of persons (which is also a choice of serving Good versus evil) will depend on the choice itself, and the morality by-which that choice is evaluated; but from the God-side I would say that the choice can be made with varying depths of consideration

That is; with varying depths of personal responsibility - or else, attempted avoidance of responsibility.  

For instance, in evaluating the nature of God, we may actively and consciously seek, and perhaps achieve, direct knowledge of God's nature...

Or else we might get our ideas of God second-hand, unconsciously, from whatever of culture happens to have-impinged-upon us - and perhaps motivated by a desire to 'fit-in' and 'do-well' in society-as-it-is-Now. 


And we might determine our preference of God versus Devil likewise; by social and socially-acceptable evaluations. Or else we might try to go as intuitively-deep as we can; such as to confront our inferred nature of God from the most fundamental aspects of our-self that we can attain. 


But the question fundamentally presents itself as: this Being, or that one

God's extended family; or The Devil's anti-God coalition?...

To which group do I most want to belong; which life do I most desire? 


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