Moralists and That Monkey Business
In any age, there are moralists, crusaders and reformers who take upon themselves the task of weeding out the evils of the world. They condemn evil and propagate goodness. This line of thought gives rise to all sorts of values, rules and laws in the society.
Actually, these do-gooders are like Procrustes, the robber who kidnapped strangers and forced them to fit perfectly into a bed by either cutting off or stretching their legs. Values and laws are like the Procrustean bed. With pre-determined notions of good and bad, right and wrong, many societies are nothing but police networks. If you don’t fit the system, you are locked up in jail.
It was Lao Tzu who pointed out centuries ago that an abundance of laws produce an abundance of thieves. The increase in crime then ensures that policemen and judges get their salaries and perks. Just as laws are responsible for crimes, economists are responsible for the poverty in the world. Then these very economists are needed to alleviate the very same poverty that they created in the first instance.
Similarly, psychiatrists are the main cause of mental disorder among people. Parents who are keen to correct their children only end up passing their own anxiety to them. The children, in turn, display the same anxiety to correct things around them. Writers of self-help books, with their emphasis on methods, have robbed people of their natural instincts. Fairly intelligent people have read themselves stupid without benefiting from self-help literature.
In their zeal to correct people, moralists and self-help teachers are like the monkey who, wanting to save the fish from drowning, offers to carry it up the tree. The fish is perfectly happy being in the water but the monkey forces his own values on it! A moralist is indignant and intolerant and wants goodness to prevail at all costs, mostly at the cost of goodness itself.
But goodness can’t be enforced. When we teach goodness through moral imperatives, we are being harsh. Then we are not teaching goodness but harshness. Goodness after all is a direct outcome of love and compassion. A compassionate person is never indignant. He has no intention to set the world right. He lives his life based on compassion and has a way of touching others and transforming them without even their being aware of it.
It would seem that moralists are as much a threat as criminals. But years of evolution have given us just the right ratio of each type of person we need. It is in the nature of the things that there are just enough moralists and just enough criminals at a given time. So too there are just enough healers and just enough sick, just enough doers and just enough lazy people, just enough creative people and just enough idiots, and so on.
So do-gooders do have their place in society. Which means it’s ok to have laws. But then it’s ok if the criminal breaks them, if the policeman arrests him, if the judge gives him sentence and if the suffering criminal curses the society for its irrational laws.
With that kind of overview we are not likely to get upset at the seeming excesses of either the moralist or the criminally-inclined. The overview can do us a lot more good actually. We will have less of resentment, less of anger. We will not find fault with everything habitually. Why, we might as well develop love and compassion too which the moralist wants to enforce at all costs!
An unknown Taoist said a long time ago: It is true that this society is going to the dogs but the only way to stop it from doing so is not to stop it from doing so! Things always sort themselves out in ways that we can’t even begin to fathom.
Finally, it is ok if some of you do-gooders are indignant at the tone of this piece. It is ok too if I am indignant at your sense of indignation. Cheers!
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Every person got 24 hrs to spend each day
a do-gooder. is busy doing good 24/7
an evil doer is busy doing bad 24/7
and people who do neither will just take a stand and do the monkey business 24/7
So I believe, we can inter change the words and call a do gooder or evil doer doing monkey business or a monkey business doing person doing good or doing bad, as long as it satisfies our feelings. But words really dont show the true reality,
an Excerpt from teh book “Daily Advice from the heart” by Dalai Lama
“As soon as we name an aspect of reality, we mentally eliminate all other aspects and we designate the chosen object by a word that applies only to that object and this enables us to recognize it. Then, according to how that object is used we establish distinctions :this is good , that is bad and so forth, when in fact it is impossible to attribute intrinsic properties to anything. The result is a vision of reality which is at best partial and at worst plainly wrong. However rich language may be, its power is therefore limited. Only non conceptual experience enables us to apprehend the true nature of things.”
Dear Sri Basu,
I agree with you that moralists are no less a pain in the neck than the absolutely open ruffians who have got themselves declared and proclaimed so. In fact, it would seem at times that these moralists (with their monkey business, as you have appropriately put it) become more dangerous because of being incessant and highly pestilent.
It is a great problem that India, more than many other countries faces, as has been beautifully described by Khushwant Singh when he says that Indians are a lot of double-standards and hypocrites.
Amitabh Thakur,
SP(Intll),
Faizabad
# 94155-34526
I appreciate your overall perspective Amitabh.
Dear Wasu,
In my opinion it would be unfair to categorise all of them like this because of some self-proclaimed people whom you might have come across.
The world is neither Good nor Bad but both. It lies on one’s wisdom to differentiate between them before accepting the good and discarding the bad.
I’m not touching upon the spiritual explanation of good and evil to keep it simple.
Your words are very profound Prasad. It’s the labelling of things as good and bad that creates all conflicts.
i do not subscibe to your view that society contains both criminals and moralist and each have a place.History is replete with instances of so called criminals who have hearts of gold and moralists who were little better than criminals.Each one of us has both tendencies which express themselves from time to time in our interaction with the world.
I think we need to develop a new epistemology to describe the peculiarities of our times.
I feel your classification and conclusions are rather simplistic.we need a better epistemology to describe these peculiarities of our time.
Ravishankar
Some moralist employers have a rigid rule about good and bad employees. A employee who joins their firm and stays with them for a minimum of three years is a good employee. An employee who hops-skips-jumps for his/her own convenience, needs, or growth is termed as a bad or rather wrong employee!!! And the employer starts thinking that he is the “new owner” of a new resource!!!
Talking about the search for epistemology, You need to just have a look at a large family (not necessarily a joint family)with a wide difference in income levels, inter-caste marriages, affairs,poverty, and more. Then you have a wide knowledge base to write stories for a lifetime.
Hmmm…the idea fairy visited me again. From time immemorial, men created the rules or morals. Women just followed the morals set by men.
The very same men were aggressive in breaking the rules. They encouraged women to participate in their immoral acts. But the irony is that the women were given tags, titles by the same men who encouraged them.
Such is the double-standards of these moralist men monkeys. But do the women care? They just start sending Pink Chaddis.
“It would seem that moralists are as much a threat as criminals.”
Really? When was the last time your car was stolen by a moralist?
And when the criminal rapes or murders someone you love, you’ll say “That’s OK” will you?