Today someone in my class wrote this in response to my statement that the world may sometimes be uncivilized and contain evil but we all have a choice as to how we personally choose to behave.Â
I only accept the nature of life, not necessarily the nature of wrong doings. What is thought of as immoral to one person can be seen as ethical to another, and vice versa. This is due to the difference in the way humans perceive things, which is part of the intricacy of mankind…. a great philosopher once said “During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man.” … that was Thomas Hobbes. I recommend you read a very important book called “Lord of the flies” by William Golding…. it may enlighten your ideas of right and wrong in civilization.
A person’s environment does not draw him towards good or evil, nor is he or she born with it inside. Humans have instincts that are not affairs of good and evil, but of survival. It is ones perception of their environment that sometimes causes them to act in such a manner that would be perceived as “evil” by others….Â
To which I quickly responded
I respectfully disagree. I am far more positive thinking than this. I have read Lord of the Flies and I don’t consider it an important book. It is a fiction book chockfull of allegories. If I landed in an uncivilized world, I would still desire to be civilized myself. I still believe it is a choice we all make.
Lord of the Flies is an important book? There’s so much talk about what Obama read’s or should be reading. I hope he’s not reading Lord of the Flies and considering it uber important. Feel free to disagree with me but it’s scary to me that anyone would call this book their personal Bible. I believe evil exists, but I do not have to choose to be a part of it. I don’t think Lord of the Flies is a bad book, I just don’t consider it Biblical.
Incidentally today I listened to the Innaguration in my car on AM radio, so low-tech it was ridiculas. However, I will remember where I was and more importantly I will remember how I felt. I choose to live in a world where I believe that goodness is far more powerful than evil, especially with strength in numbers. I will never see the world as negatively as my classmate does.Â
I think the best book to read if you want to understand that we are all truly free to choose, regardless of our environment, is Viktor Frankl’s 1946 book “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
Dr. Frankl was a trained psychiatrist and neurologist before he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp. In this and other of his writings, he records his observations of people’s behaviors (good and bad) in what certainly was one of the most extremely bad environments to which man has ever been subjected.
I agree with you that it is imprudent, at best, to base one’s life philosophy on a work of pure fiction. Golding was a great writer and made an important contribution to our literature canon with Lord of the Flies, but it needs to be read in context.
/my $.02