Author: Shawn

Are you a good person? I’ve asked this before in a previous post, where if you were to ask the average person on the street whether they believed they were good or not, the safe odds are usually that they believe that they are. As I’ve said before, most people don’t go through life trying to be inherently bad.

But what about evil? The word is thrown around a lot, usually by people who have had some wrong inflicted on them by someone else, but can a person genuinely and truly be evil? The Oxford Dictionary defines evil as “profoundly immoral and wicked”, with other sources citing the term “evil” with colourful adjectives such as “wicked”, “disastrous”, “harmful” and “injurious”. My favourite is the term “imputed bad conduct”. The point is that all of it is meant to refer to people.

First and foremost, I wouldn’t be the researcher and eternal student of life that I am if I didn’t take a moment to try and put a defined explanation on evil from someone else’s perspective than my own. According to an article posted by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Evil in the broad sense has been divided into two categories: natural evil and moral evil. Natural evils are bad states of affairs which do not result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents. Hurricanes and toothaches are examples of natural evils. By contrast, moral evils do result from the intentions or negligence of moral agents. Murder and lying are examples of moral evils.”

I like this explanation, because it shows that bad things can often happen without the necessarily bad intentions of people, or of people BEING bad. The article was actually quite an interesting read and goes into deeper detail. Here it is, if you want to give it a read: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concept-evil/

If you were to search your thoughts for a moment, I’m sure that we could all conjure up the name of a person or persons that we consider to be evil. Dictators, murderers, terrorists, that lady who lets her poodle crap on my lawn every morning… Plenty of examples would fit the bill. But is it possible that BEING evil isn’t actually a thing?

I’ve spent most of my life studying and believing that the universe as a whole contains a balance. Newton’s Third Law is a good example of this, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Although this is primarily meant to refer to motion and physics, I believe it very much applies to every thing in general. Because Newton’s Third Law sounds suspiciously a lot like some aspects of karma.

The universe always tries to find a balance; light and dark, hot and cold, black and white, matter and anti-matter… Depending on your school of thought, there are plenty of other examples you can find. But I provide these examples because for the most part, one is an absence of the other. For example, darkness isn’t a thing. It’s simply the absence of light. Cold isn’t a thing, it’s simply the absence of heat and so on and so forth.

So with that line of thinking in mind, is it possible that evil is not a thing but simply the absence of good? This would have some pretty deep implications as the concept applies to people, as it would mean that a person simply lacks the goodness necessary to fit the standard as opposed to necessarily being evil themselves.

I don’t think that this moral definition will ever be changed, as it is the nature of people to consider anyone who does something intentionally bad to be categorized as evil. But sometimes we need to consider the perspective. I can almost promise you that for the most part, both sides of a violent conflict likely believes themselves to be right and the other side is evil. As Winston Churchill said, “History is written by the victors.” ☯

Once and a while, I start to dwell on things and ask questions of myself as they apply to life. One of these questions is the title of today’s post: Is free will an illusion? I think that most people would agree that for the most part, people in the western world live as free people with all the choices and entitlements associated with our lifestyles.

But how much of it is real? And how much of it is simply a comforting dream that we allow ourselves to have in order to cope with the prison of our own reality? Not to sound totally morose, but sometimes one needs to question things. This appears to be the mood I’m in today.

As usual, I’ll start by defining what it is I’m referring to. Free will is defined as “the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate; the ability to act at one’s own discretion.” This is according to the Oxford Dictionary, which also provide the action of doing something voluntarily.

So, how much of our free will is real and how much is the illusion. I like thinking that I walk through life doing whatever the hell I want, but I may be incorrect in some respects. Allow me to explain…

For the most part, we get to decide and choose what we will do with our lives. As long as we work hard and study (or so we’re told) we can choose an avenue of post-secondary study and embark on a career that will make us happy and fulfilled. If one is lucky enough to become successful in that endeavour, then we usually slip into the expected and often wanted aspects of societal norm; a home, a spouse, children and vacations…

But what if you happen to lack the financial means to make that post-secondary study happen? You can be as good at schooling as you want to be but if you can’t afford college or university, some of your chosen professions will be off limits to you. Or the other side of the equation would be if you don’t have the best grades in school, some post-secondary opportunities will be off limits, regardless of your financial means.

But is this truly free will? I use schooling as an example, but there are many others. For example, if you decided you wanted to drop everything and spend your life travelling the world as a nomad, could you? Or would there be societal, governmental and familial obligations that would prevent you and potentially ruin you if you tried?

Let’s say that you get everything you wanted: complete your chosen studies, obtain the job of your dreams and everything falls into place. Is everything one in your life now dictated by your free will or is some of it still imposed by outside factors? Things such as work schedules and paying taxes are required of people and are usually outside the purview of our free will.

The importance behind free will isn’t so much in getting to do what you want, so much as it relates to the ability to make a choice. Choice is the true aspect of free will that every person has. In truth, even doing nothing is still making a choice. And even in the face of constraints or restrictions, making a choice will always be the true free will. Food for thought… ☯

There are hundreds, if not thousands of different cultures and religious beliefs around the world. Each and every one of these have their own set of traditions and habits that they follow, based on their scriptures and/or cultural and societal habits. But in a lot of cases, some of these traditions can conflict with those of other cultures and religions.

Although this should be fine, and everyone should simply adopt a modus operandi of live and let live, it continues to surprise and fascinate me how some people appear offended or even insulted, when someone does something different than what they do. Although this would make sense if you did something heinous like blowing your nose with a holy scripture or something, I’m talking about the little things…

Flashback to an incident that happened last year when I visited my parents in New Brunswick. My mother happens to be French Catholic and as such, I have the habit of attending a church service with her whenever I visit. I am appreciative of all people’s faith, so it’s always a pleasure to be able to share in the experience with my mother.

One of the Catholic church’s traditions during a typical service is to turn and wish peace and well-being upon your neighbours in a practice referred to as “Passing the Peace.” This is usually done by shaking peoples’ hands while saying “Peace be with you.” From my understanding, it’s a practice that’s observed by a number of Christian sects and churches.

This is an interesting topic, considering the advent of social distancing and most people trying to avoid physical contact with others. For the most part, and considering the nature of my job, I don’t avoid shaking hands as a rule but I do tend to restrict physical contact with total strangers to an extent. My mother is very much the same, and has long discontinued the practice of shaking hands and simply says “Peace be with you” and moving on.

For most people, there’s nothing wrong with this. But some people always seem to see the negative in a situation. During this particular service, my mother and I were seated behind some people who took some… liberties with their time within the church. The woman took her shoes off and appeared to be picking at her feet throughout most of the service.

I’m not here to judge. I wasn’t THERE to judge. Especially in a church whose holy Bible reads, “Judge not lest ye be judged.” But perhaps shaking your hands after you’ve been picking the light knows what from the crevices in your feet is NOT in my best interest. So when the time came for Passing the Peace, I respectfully bowed to the woman while saying “Peace be with you.” The look of utter shock and judgement on that woman’s face caught me completely by surprise.

Now to my mother’s credit, she makes a point of telling people that she doesn’t shake hands. Pretty clear cut. But in my case, I don’t know if it was my refusal to stick out my hand, the woman’s embarrassment because she HAD stuck out her hand or the bow, but I had somehow rubbed her the wrong way. To the point where she felt it necessary to approach me after the service to say that it was customary to follow the church’s customs when visiting.

Here’s the joke: I grew up in the Catholic church. Up until my teens, when I started making my own way, I followed my mother to church every week. So I knew her point of view was skewed and incorrect. Could I have corrected her? Sure. Could I have explained my religious views? Probably. Was it easier to leave her in her ignorance and walk away? It was, and you bet your keister I did!

Unless your traditions and beliefs bring harm to yourself and other people, we should all be able to share a respect for each other’s faith. They may all be different, but they should all be meant to evoke acceptance and understanding. Otherwise, what is faith for? The appropriate response from this woman would have been to ask questions and perhaps learn about our respective differences in faith. Given the way the world has evolved, haven’t we reached a point where said acceptance and understanding rule the day? Food for thought… ☯