‘They are dominated by
fear, everyone pretends that there is reason behind their actions, will,
kindness, but in reality there is only terror. If you think about it, every
action everyone takes is dominated by fear’.
Imagine these were the words a little evil devil twas whispering over your shoulder, telling you that essentially it is in human nature to be a coward. So, do human beings act out of an instinct of ‘not being hurt’ rather than a transcendent instinct? How about the so called heroes in history who have risked even their own lives in order to protect an ideal and have shown blatant courage?
Fear is a feeling which has huge amounts of control over people, think of religion and how much it uses fear in order to control the masses. Think of how terror has kept systems running in an absurd manner. For example, only fear can allow thousands of people to succumb to the power of one single individual, instead of fighting his power, like in the case of dictatorships. Are our morals based in fear or in striving after ‘goodness’?
The German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche had a lot to say when it came to good and evil. He made a distinction between good and bad and good and evil, and he also asked us to go beyond this; humans beyond good and evil. He claimed that the good/evil distinction was made in ancient times when the first division between the high classes and the lower classes was prevalent; the ‘noble’ upper class and the ‘wicked’ lower class. The rich acted as if being poor was a bad value and you had to live under fear of the self righteous upper class. This was a very effective way to maintain power. Then the good/bad distinction appeared hand in hand with ethical religion, which was more on the side of the lower classes, who suffered and were promised eternal salvation in exchange of their subjugated existences in the face of Earth, making the upper classes the bad ones. This role reversal made the lower classes the good and the upper classes the bad, but if you acted according to the religion’s rules, you could be in the good side again.
When we understand this and consider it, we can take a step out and say I am not evil, I am not a sinner, I cannot be told what is right or wrong anymore. To Nietzsche, and to me to be honest, an understanding of how morals are created liberate us and give us the tools that free us from fear and therefore allows us to imagine, to plan, to create, to be without the ghost of being constantly wrong. So we can be our own angel upon the proverbial shoulder whispering: ‘They are acting out of courage too, look at them. It is so cold this morning and they are out, mothers working hard for their sons and daughters, lovers declaring their feelings, how brave are they, actions can come out of dreams and fear of failure can be forgotten because hope can be stronger, we can go beyond this paralysing spell, we can transcend.’
Eliza Verethilo
