More Reflections on The Great Divide (i.e. between a focus on the ends and purposes of things and goodness as an expression of love)

                                        from the movie version of The Road by Cormac McCarthy
                                                               (but just read the book)

The Good as unconditional (or absolute, sui generis) cannot appear as long as ‘being good’ is a means to some reward – to go to Heaven, to allow the soul to exist in the spiritual realm of pure Ideas, etc. There is a conceptual connection between doing something just because it is good or ‘being claimed in response’ by some aspect of reality – doing good for your children, trying to become wiser, not taking money to throw a basketball game – and not having any reward external to that.

    If as children we are taught to ‘be good’ for the sake of the toys Santa brings to ‘good children,’ then we are not really being taught to love the Good but the toys. And the ‘good’ behavior is at bottom only a means to the end of getting the toys. If we could get them by lying and cheating, then we would lie and cheat, if getting the toys was what really mattered.

  If we are taught that we have to believe certain things, participate in practices like going to church, praying, and giving to the poor, and live in a certain way (loving your neighbor as yourself, forgiving and praying for enemies, etc.) in order to be rewarded with Heaven and to avoid the imaginable horror of eternal punishment in Hell, then again this way of living is at bottom only a means to the end of getting to Heaven and avoiding the worst possible fate in Hell. If Heaven and Hell are real, and if fulfilling these requirements are the only way into Heaven, the only way to keep away from Hell, then the prudent man will fulfill these requirements. They are the means to the only ends that matter. If people do not fulfill these requirements, it is because they do not believe in the reality of Heaven and Hell. It’s like a factual question: if you believe Hell is real, live this way; if you don’t believe Hell is real, you are free to live some other way. What is real determines how to live.

 

   What if the universe is like this. There is no Heaven, Hell, or God. Reality is ruthless competition and consumption. Stronger beings seek to dominate and absorb weaker ones: a predatory, zero-sum view of existence. Beings are fundamentally isolated, with disconnection and self-interest reigning supreme. To law is to gain power and control, where worth is measured by the extent of one's dominance, and any semblance of community is merely a facade for underlying self-interest. Materialism and reductionism a true descriptions of this reality.  There are no deeper spiritual dimensions. All existence is reduced to physical processes and material interactions. It follows that the person who accepted this description as factual would be cynical and nihilistic, mocking human ideals and virtues as naive or foolish, and suggesting that the universe lacks ultimate meaning or purpose beyond the pursuit of self-gain. Love would be the weakness or delusion of an unhealthy self. Acts of kindness or selflessness are viewed with suspicion, believed to mask ulterior motives. The universe is seen as a place of chaos and disorder, with constant struggle and instability rather than harmony or peace.

    Imagine through some freak accident of nature we can understand all this and even take up an attitude toward it: we can accept it, hate it, relish it, or reject it. We can wish we had never been born into such a soulless system. We can choose to conform our minds and hearts to this reality and live as did Stalin or Mao, say. But we can reject reality, deny it. To love humanity, to take the Good Samaritan as a model, to feel compassion would be contrary to reality. It would be to reject the world as it is and imagine it as it should be. But there would be no external reward, no Heaven to go to. No communism to build. We would be crushed by reality. In this picture we can see the roots of the idea of The Good, of the Good as unconditional, absolute. To love it is a means to no end outside the love of it. Such a love would be pure so to speak. Here the soul does not love for the sake of the toys or 99 virgins – or for anything. That is love on a different plane. In this dark universe, it would be like a leak from another world. (Very Gnostic, this world version.)

   A few years ago I read Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Perhaps the darkest, most unsettling thing I have ever read. An apocalypse has occurred. Humanity has little or no chance of survival. A father and son embark on a perilous journey to reach the coast in search of safety and a better life without knowing whether things are any less horrible there. the father and son encounter cannibalism, as some survivors resort to extreme measures to stay alive in a world where the earth is no longer capable of sustaining life. The novel portrays a bleak and desolate landscape, where ash covers the ground, and the remnants of civilization are reduced to rubble. Despite the overwhelming despair and devastation, the father's unwavering love and hope for his child testifies to the Good and the enduring power of love and virtue in the face of the end of all things. No rewards in this nightmare.

 

. . .

 

In the teachings of Jesus, the Good (as unconditional) is directly tied to its source in love (including compassion). The love of one’s fellow man transcends all worldly contingencies like ethnic group, language, character, sex, age, wealth, or status. The Good Samaritan sees a fellow human being in need and helps, period. The Father embraces the prodigal son because he returned to him, period. Jesus forgave and protected the adulteress from the mob that wanted to stone her, period. You pray and help those in need not so others will see you or for any other reason than love: ‘let not the left hand know what the right is doing.’ Or is love the only reason? Here is the full passage:

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Matthew 6:3-4).

This seems confusing. Help the needy because they are your fellow creatures and you are bound to them in love. Don’t do it to impress other human beings. Don’t even do it to get brownie points with God. And if you can do that, you get rewarded by the Father. It’s for the toys after all in the end, but to be worthy of the toys you can’t do it for the toys. Jesus, who seems to preach the Good as revealed by love, constantly talks about God rewarding and punishing, especially punishing. Hell is very real for Jesus: he describes it as an unquenchable fire (Mark 9:43), where the worm does not die (Mark 9:48), where people will gnash their teeth in anguish and regret (Matt. 13:42), and from which there is no return, even to warn loved ones (Luke 16:19–31). He calls hell a place of “outer darkness” (Matt. 25:30), comparing it to “Gehenna” (Matt. 10:28), which was a trash dump outside the walls of Jerusalem where rubbish was burned and maggots abounded.

   So I am supposed to do good and be good out of love yet keep this regime of eternal rewards and punishments out of my heart and mind? Indeed, if I really believe Jesus, I should be terrified lest my soul end up there. Is this what Jesus means when he says: “here is none good but one, that is, God (Mark 10:18).” Does this mean that, like children, we can only be good for the sake of the toys? Because the world has been so corrupted by sin that goodness is simply because the reach of mere mortals? Contrary to our nature as formed by generations of living ‘in the darkness of the world’ (as I recall a pastor term it in a sermon).

   Or is the Good – God – like a Platonic Idea? We can only approximate it. Like the circles we draw as opposed to the Idea of the circle that judges them. As all the circles we draw are less than perfect, so our attempts at goodness fall short of perfection (i.e. God). So like children we need external rewards and punishments to motivate us (extreme ones).

    In any case, when reward and punishment enter into to things, there can be no talk of goodness.

[The difficulty Christians face when they try to act against our fallen nature out of pure love alone is mirrored in Kantian moral philosophy. The challenge for Kant is to act from pure duty unpolluted by natural inclinations like the desire to be praised or to feel good about oneself.]

. . .

Either you are prudent and act in such a way to reach a certain end – Heaven, wealth, social status, a comforting self-image, actualizing your higher potential, etc. - and avoid bad ends (like Hell or despair).  Here you are acting in your own interest. You are doing what is best for you, like eating healthy foods. Your actions are like steps taking you up to your goal. The goal is defined by how you conceive of reality (e.g. what foods are really healthy, what are not; what ways of living get me to Heaven, what ways do not, etc.). Or goodness is unconditional, like the highest forms of love. Goals, rewards, and punishments play no role. However I imagine reality, I will help my children if they need help and I can help them. Period. In any kind of a universe. Indifferent to any rewards or punishments. It is strange, but the essence of goodness comes out clearer in a world like that portrayed by Cormac McCarthy in The Road than it does in the teachings of Plato or Jesus, both of whom muddy the waters by teaching a higher spiritual reality that is the destiny of the good soul. This is strange because even in the worst-case scenario – even in the utter darkness of the world as imagined by Gnostics or Christians like the author of the Book of John – the Good is part of this world because love is part of this world. We can always be claimed by it.