They tell us that we are born evil. Wanting to cheat, steal, lie, and kill. They have told us that we must fight these desires, and thus they have told us, if implicitly, that we do indeed desire to do these things. That we, in our natural state, see stealing, theft, murder, rape, and killing, as “good.” This is the poison of their message. The perversion of the truth.
The teaching that what “we naturally see as good” (lying, cheating stealing) is wrong, and that what “”we naturally see as undesirable” (honesty, fidelity, integrity) is good, is obviously perverted and evil. It is true that these latter are good, and the former are wrong, but did you catch the trick? They have told us that we naturally believe evil to be good and good to be evil. We do not. A happy person does not.
In believing what we naturally want is the amoral, the evil, and that what we naturally despise is the good, the right, we have come to a most unsustainable state of affairs, and indeed, state of being—that of self-destruction. They teach us that we cannot rely on our reason. Our reason tells us that if we peel the orange, we can eat it; it tells us that if we want to continue living, we should not walk in front of that car speeding down the highway.
We make mistakes, but our reason is our most reliable guide through the whole of our lives. In fact, it keeps us alive. Don’t touch the stove. You will get burned. Don’t jump from that building. You will die. If you steal Joe’s bicycle, your friendship will be compromised. How would I feel if Joe stole mine? They then teach us to reject this very thing—our reason—which enables our survival and indeed is the only thing which can ever lead us to morality, and to replace it with “beliefs” and “trust.”
“Don’t trust me, trust the Holy Spirt, and GAWD!” But Pastor Bobby….it is you who is talking now, advising me to do this. Do I trust your advice?
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.” But what if my understanding of this Bible verse is a bit mistaken? Isn’t it ME still doing the understanding of it? I get it. And in a way it makes sense. Trust in the “higher law” and not in decisions arrived upon in moments of my own destructive unhappiness and weakness. But…can you see the point? It is still ME doing all of the understanding of it..
“Trust the government! You are not a scientist, a president, a general! Stick to what you know!” But, aren’t those people just people like me? Are they gods beyond being questioned?
You are vile, they say, and as such you cannot rely on your own corrupt reasoning. But where do they get the power to come to that observation? Is it not through some reasoning of their own? Their whole is a house of cards demolished by one simple question: have you ever seen a happy person lie, cheat, steal, or kill? The war is not on sin. It is not on greed, or lust, or malice. It is not on avarice, or selfishness, or marijuana, or any of those other things. Not on booze. Not on cigarettes. Not on terror. The war is not for the sake of “the children.” The war is on you. On your life. And, ultimately, the war is on happiness. The powers that be know this. They have realized, if only dimly, that a happy person is one that they cannot control. A guilt-ridden individual, on the other hand, is very, very easy to manipulate.
The truth is, that when you are happy, self-confident, and free, there will be no desire to do anything which brings harm upon another, or upon yourself. Openness and honestly are the result of self-confidence and of self-esteem and pride. The answer to all of man’s struggles is found in happiness, our natural state. In virtue, our natural desires are found. These ultimately stem from the main tree and root system which is, in short, the love of life.
We are not born evil. We must, of course, learn in our time that hitting and screaming is not the best way to gain what we want, but children do not know better in the beginning. They are fighting, in the only way they know, for the ultimate value known as life—the value of survival. This hardly translates into being evil. It is simply ignorance of any other way to be and to fight. Look at a child in his natural state, with a full belly and surrounded by a loving family. This child is singing, dancing, playing, laughing—exploring. There is nothing evil here. This is the natural state of a human being whose supreme value is life.
They have made us believe that our desire is to be vile. To sleep with prostitutes, to abuse substances to the end of incapacitating ourselves. To kill. To lie, cheat, steal, rape, defraud and destroy. But are not these things all misguided attempts at escape from feelings of unworthiness and unhappiness, and a lack of self-confidence?
If you loved yourself and felt happy, would you cheat on your wife? Would you steal from your friend? Would you lie to get some promotion at work? Would you kill in aggressive violence? One may indeed want to do any or all of these things, but that person would not be a happy person, and there would be no real confidence there. The only reason you would do these things is because you hate yourself. And why do people hate themselves? Because they have been told time and time again, and have believed, that they are evil, that their body and its desires are vile (the same desires which urge procreation and the perpetuation of life) and that the world and, indeed life itself, are vile, bad and ugly, and intrinsically dangerous, unpredictable, scary. This is a perversion of the truth. Of reality.
The more you fight your desires, instead of understanding them, the more you will see yourself as “evil” because you will think “why else would I need to fight so hard against these things! I really, really want to do them, and they are bad, so I must be bad.” The reason you want to lie, cheat, and steal, if you truly understood, is because you have been made to believe that you are vile in the very first place. Take this belief away, and the evil feelings lose all of their power.
You are neither “good” or “evil,” but your rationality and reason are basically dependable and, though you will make mistakes, the only reason for morality is your own happiness (your desire/self-interest is the very reason you do anything “good” or “bad”). You gave money to a homeless man? You wanted to help him, whether for your own good feeling, or out of the desire to adhere to some “moral rule.” You did it for you. You slept with a woman or man other than your committed partner? You wanted to. You viewed the act, in some way or another, as good—as desirable.
The problem is not in you, per se, but in the glasses you are wearing. And the problem is the avoidance of responsibility for these actions via some morbid belief system claiming it was only “your flesh” that did it, and not you. In a way this may be viewed as true, in another, it is totally false. In a way, when we act in unhappiness, we act below our goals, and thus, it is not our “highest self.” In another way, it is still completely ourselves doing the acting.
If you will, imagine a man wearing a pair of dirty glasses. They are not clear. From this man or woman’s view everything, including his or herself in the mirror, looks distorted. Everything seems dirty. Obviously, everything is not dirty, it is simply the glasses. To this person, even good (clean) appears evil (dirty). A person with clear glasses, however, sees good, as good, and evil, as evil. There is no distortion. All things simply appear as they are.
To believe that one is inherently, irrevocably evil, is to declare oneself unfit to live. Even the act of feeding oneself and of breathing air become shameful pastimes of selfishness in this view. Why would you contribute to the survival of an ugly, vile being with no worth? You must be insane. From here, the fears begin to snowball quite remarkably. Even if one professes to believe in a savior who “washes away sins” one must still accept the premise that one was originally, and is still (outside of this savior) inherently vile and evil. It is not that this view is merely unpalatable, it is that this view is irrational, destructive and impractical, if one wishes to live.
Let me explain. If one believes that one is, or was, evil (no matter if a savior somehow “washed” the person) one will then set out, if subconsciously, to destroy oneself. It can be no other way. They may say you are “born again” and totally “regenerated” and renewed, but you know all too well that it is the same person doing the living, thinking, and breathing as before, just with the addition of a new belief system. You still believe you are evil, in other words, because “the faith” has given you no clear cut explanation of if, when, and how you were made “good.” They say “it is finished” but that you must continue to strive. They say “you are saved” but that you may lose this salvation. They say “I am clean and righteous” and “I am a vile sinner” in the same breath. Thus, you are double-minded. Ironically, the Bible warns against this very double-mindedness, but the meaning has been twisted. The book also contains the ideas which, if adopted, will only engender self-hatred.
If Jesus, according to the Christian tradition, is god, then Jesus certainly could not have sacrificed himself for something that was of no value, as god is immutably just and fair, and unbalanced scales are an abomination (see the Bible). It would contradict his nature to sacrifice the holy for the profane. This would be insanity. Is god insane? If we were indeed valuable to god (“For God so loved the world…”) then we weren’t worthless in the first place, and god was getting something out of the deal. This is perfectly fine, but still does not change the fact that you are viewed as, and indeed feel, dirty, even after the exchange.
Is it not akin to somebody buying you a house after you’ve cleaned up from your drug addiction, in order to help you get back on your feet, and then demanding every day that you thank them profusely, and confess to what a loser you are and were and still continue to be? Now you are akin to a dirty and vile, but “lucky,” individual, whose real worth will always be questionable. It is simply unsustainable. You cannot both continue to live successfully, and hate yourself at the same time. The belief that human beings are naturally evil is a philosophy of death. Of anti-life. It must be rejected as such. As a falsehood too vile to be borne.
This “salvation plan” either renders the savior insane and you worthless, or the savior graceful and you, still most awful. Ironically, the person of Jesus himself, as quoted in the Bible, said almost nothing in I can think of in this way of thinking. He claimed that the kingdom of heaven was within us, and that it belonged to people who are like little children. Children, we realize, are not religious. Religion. Government. Society. These three cults will attempt to manipulate you through your own feelings of unworthiness and guilt. It is of the utmost importance that we see through these things, take responsibility for our own lives, and begin to live them. The purpose of morality is to help us to live life and enjoy it. The body is not the enemy. Love is not the enemy. Sexuality is not the enemy. Knowledge is not the enemy. Consciousness is not a curse. Happiness is the answer.
Happiness, is us, in our natural state. Happiness is openness and being willing to “happ-en” upon whatever comes our way, and to embrace, deal with, accept or reject, all that happ-ens with openness, honesty, and an unyielding commitment to the value of life. Practicing this perseverance produces confidence and self-esteem, which is alien to self-destruction and to a low self-esteem, which are the root causes of that which the preachers and social programmers call “bad” and “evil,” yet continue to heap without mercy or restraint upon the heads of their foolishly believing and ultimately lost, adherents. Have you ever seen a happy person hurt somebody else? To hell with morality. With their morality, that is. I will be happy.
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist residing in Niigata, Japan.