Let’s imagine another world. In
our first, we imagined a world where innocents were protected, shielded by
spiritual firewalls from harm beyond their ken. That world has trouble with
variables as collateral damage might affect a community where the target was
one evil individual. You cannot lose a finger without hurting the whole. In
that way, bad things might happen to innocents by proxy: a mother losing a son,
a community losing an individual.
That
world struggled to maintain a sense of fairness while still allowing room for
free will. It’s a tragic element of humanity that free will precipitates ill
and not good will. But there are other options of worlds that might offer a
greater sense of fairness.
In
our new world, good is defined in a similar fashion as the last, as that which
increases life and encourages well-being, family, friendship, kindness, and
love. Instead of spiritual firewalls surrounding the righteous (of varying
degrees of good), we’re going to assault the core of evil. There are a couple
of methods for this: evildoers are unable to consider/contemplate/actuate
anything that might affect an innocent. If an evildoer tries to hurt, even by
collateral, an innocent, something (god, nature, physical etc) prevents the
evil from occurring.
Some
examples: a man tries to set fire to his own house overnight because of
depression. The fire either cannot start if there are innocents in the house,
or everyone notices immediately and his attempt is thwarted. Possibly his wife
wakes up and removes the children from the house. The trick here is: what if
the husband dies? That is collateral and hurts those innocent children a great
deal. What if the house does burn down? How are the children and wife protected
from that sort of evil? Is the burning of the house prevented in general?
This
actually causes a lot of problems within this world at large. Things such as
bombs, guns, and weaponry in general could scarcely exist because the
possibility for collateral is too great. Also, we run into a similar problem of
definitions: is only greater harm prevented and what or who defines greater
harm? If an innocent child is incredibly close to their great grandfather,
closer even than to their parents, and that relative dies of old age gently in
their sleep, that might still cause traumatic pain for a young child. Nothing
of great evil occurred, only the natural flow of life. Is the argument here
that the child should learn of death? Perhaps death isn’t a great evil, or only
in some cases. Maybe we claim that no evil here occurred at all, only sadness,
and sadness is necessary and good in some instances. But it is hard wishing
sadness of any sort on a child.
Let’s consider other
examples. A father is a poor worker, either from laziness or injury, and is
removed from his job. The entire family is affected and possibly short on food.
A teenager is tired of life and wishes
to end it, poised on the brink of a bridge over dark, turbulent waters – how will
his lover feel, his family? How are they affected? A bright new prodigy for
sports breaks his ankle and misses a draft; a mother who cannot support her
children births triplets instead of a single child; a little child crosses the
road when his mother isn’t looking; a father and mother don’t get along, and a
messy divorce tears up their children; a teenager gets pregnant due to choices
made, but what of the child? Whose life is sacrificed for whose life chances? Just
read the news. A million things occur every day that aren’t necessarily evil in
intent, but precurse negative outcomes. A simple sickness, a misstep, a series
of events that elicits shame, a feeling of negativity – countless pieces of
this puzzle that is mankind, and no man is an island.
There was an
experiment done by Japanese scientists regarding negativity. A bunch of individuals
were told to direct negative emotions at water or ice, and the scientists
compared the molecular structure of the water with positive feelings and
noticed distinct differences. Our emotions are not isolated within us. One of
the great causes for depression and sorrow is loneliness, but our existence
never affects only ourselves. But if lightning strikes a tight mob of people
holding hands, more than one person will feel the surge of electricity. We find
ourselves in a difficult place of limiting actions for everyone due to
collateral evil. I couldn’t jump off a
mountain, but not from fear, but due to the horror and trauma it might cause
those innocents near to me.
What about a
perfect world? Where none of these things mattered? We consider it a breach of
free will, but what if evil was impossible? It’s not a breach of free will that
I cannot fly, because my limbs don’t support that behavior. What if our human
bodies didn’t support evil?
There used to be
an argument against the existence of a god based on omnipotence: “can god
create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it?” The counterargument usually explains
that such a rock cannot be created since it is against the nature of rocks to
exist at such a capacity. In the same way, god cannot create a square circle
because geometrically that is nonsense. If
our bodies could not support any action of evil or malign behavior, the
behaviors would not be missed. Seeing birds fly, I might wistfully imagine
myself flying, but I don’t actually miss the behaviors because I, myself, have
never flown. If evil did not exist, would we miss the opportunity to behave in
such a manner?
We enter into a
strange theoretical landscape with a perfect world. Is there death? Is there
sickness? Is there natural disaster? It is interesting to imagine the status of
such a universe and all of the differences that must exist. If there is no
death, is there reproduction? There wouldn’t be a need for reproduction beyond
a certain point. And is there no bacteria or parasitic organisms? Fungus feast
off of detritus, bacteria endlessly splitting without death, animals living an
eternity – would the world find itself soon overcrowded with a burgeoning of
life? Where would the resources for all this life come from? I suppose from
inorganic matter and perhaps the fruit of trees, though when the earth lost its
savory richness, what then? A perfect world seems to thrive on a different
chemistry. It’s almost unfathomable from the vantage point of a world where
everything seems based on little deaths.
But is it
plausible? I don’t know. I suppose it seems almost elvish and surreal, where
each seeming day might be an aeon and each eternity a day. There wouldn’t be
any need for reproduction, really, and merely an endless feasting of Epicurean
proportions.
Yet
in the end, all of these worlds are hypothetical. We could have a perfect
world, though we might not know what that entails. The problem is, a lot of us
like to keep our imperfect world, but we want those innocents to be untouched.
It’s hard, because there is no such possible world. I did, actually, imagine
another world, similar to the first two. What if we imagined a world where only
the most extreme of innocents was protected while the rest were on their own?
In a sense, this world is like an rpg where someone who has just created their
character is invincible for several hours until they get their character under
control. Is this viable? I’ll leave this open for thought. I imagine at some
point it falters under the same stresses of our other worlds.
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