What If No One Told Us What To Do?
Sunday, June 29th, 2008
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The other day I was out to dinner with some very smart friends. While two were engaged in their own conversation, the third turned to me and asked, “How do you think quantum physics shapes human morality?” Whoa. What? My face went blank and I didn’t speak for a few moments until I laughed and told my friend that I was sorry, I didn’t mean to space out on him, but my mind started going about 100 miles an hour to come up with some kind of appropriate response. Surprisingly enough, I actually had one because of the fact that I had just read an amazing book that had a huge impact on how I look at the world: Ishmael. And I’m glad I read it because it made me feel smart for a hot second.
I don’t really associate morality with quantum physics (think What the Bleep Do We Know? and The Secret). I think the easiest way to figure out morality is to look at immorality. What makes people immoral is our government and our society. By standardizing a code of law and saying that This Is Right and This Is Wrong, life becomes far too black and white. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that people are basically moral in nature and don’t mean to do harm. However, it becomes confusing when someone says “lying is wrong,” though, in truth, lying isn’t necessarily wrong in itself. It’s how it is used. For example (and I’m totally stealing this from the book, but it’s a great example), go back to Nazi Germany. You are hiding a Jewish family in your attic. Nazis show up at your door and ask if you know the whereabouts of said family. If your answer is yes, you have just sentenced an innocent family to death.
Each situation that a person is faced with is different in context and character, and there is no single response that can be used every time. A person should be able to call upon their own knowledge and understanding of the world in order to make the right call. Laws and commandments and regulations and rules create confusion and undermine our innate ability to think for ourselves. They also, as far as I’m concerned, are what create greed (”I want the rules to work for me.”) which, in turn, creates resentment, anger, and hate, and these eventually turn into violence. And when are violence and cruelty ever moral? The system works against itself. By trying to keep people in line, the opposite has been achieved.
There’s a lot more to be said about this, but I’m pretty sure I just took a superbly radical stance on something that no one ever agrees on anyway: the government. If you disagree with me, and I’m sure the majority of you do, then do yourself a favor and go pick up a copy of that book by Daniel Quinn. After you read that, then we’ll talk.
