The immorality of the emotional worldview model

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

In modern society, most people are convinced that the ability to distinguish between these concepts does not belong to the category of reason, but is a function of the sensory-emotional sphere. "And this means," - a stereotypical conclusion is made - "no reasonable, rational reasoning, arguments, proofs, etc. are able to ensure moral behavior in principle, to keep a person from doing evil and commit immoral acts, to induce a choice in the benefit of actions that do not harm, but the benefit of others, to motivate him to serve society, etc. " Reason, from this point of view, is indifferent to the concepts of good and evil, and being guided by it, a person is not able to distinguish between good and bad, it must be unethical to act … In reality, however, everything is exactly the opposite. It is not difficult to show all this, and now we will consider all aspects of this fact.

1. To begin with, people who perceive the world emotionally are generally unable to distinguish between the concepts of good and evil. Any particular criteria of good and evil are relative, while emotionally thinking is not able to understand the relativity of these criteria, and their erroneous application is an integral and natural feature of an emotional society. In Soviet films, something like this is often played out. A bad person commits or contemplates some meanness. A good, honest person naturally enters into an argument with him, tries to interfere. But a bad person presents the situation in such a way that formally he turns out to be right, and a good person is wrong, and a good person pays for his attempt. An example is an episode from the movie "Midshipmen". There is a war between Russia and Prussia, the commander of the Russian army is bribed by the Germans. When the Germans suddenly attack the location of the Russian troops, the commander gives the order to retreat, dooming the army to defeat, and leaving the units that were hit to be beaten by the enemy. Honest Russian soldiers and officers are at first bewildered, and then they themselves go on the attack and gain victory, but at the same time the one who tried to openly argue with the general was arrested and sent to prison. In assessing the actions of a subordinate, the commander relies on formal criteria - he does not follow orders and is rude to the chief, this is bad and for this he must be punished. Although, in fact, as we understand, in this situation a good person, guided by noble motives, is punished, and the villain triumphs. And if in the cinema everything, more often than not, still ends well, then in life it happens just the opposite. This problem in an emotional society is fundamentally unavoidable.

For any emotionally thinking person, it is natural to directly assess certain things, actions, words, etc., according to the emotional impression they made on him, and, accordingly, a RIGID system of criteria is natural that would indicate that what is good and what is bad, what needs to be done and what is not, what to condemn and what to welcome. But no criteria containing an attachment to certain actions or methods will ever help to do good. No actions, no decisions can be good or bad by themselves, without taking into account the context, without taking into account the situation, conditions, specific people to whom they relate. That is why emotionally minded people are always mistaken in their categorical assessments about what is good and leads to good, and what should be condemned.

Although generally accepted assessments in the field of morality change over time, no change in the criteria does not solve the problem in any way, since both old and new criteria will still be perceived as dogmatically and inflexible, without reference to a specific situation and contribute to the growth of evil in society. The only thing that a society built on emotional criteria for evaluating things can do is to try to minimize harm by trying to develop criteria in such a way that they fit the average, most typical situation in which these criteria are applied.

Let's say, it is clear that if we move in the direction of softening the laws and reducing the control of the state over society, deciding that this (in itself) is bad, then we will thereby get free conditions for all kinds of antisocial manifestations, and an increase in crime, drug addiction, the intensification of the activities of all kinds of sects and swindlers, the crisis of the most important public institutions and chaos in the economy and government of the country will not keep you waiting. On the other hand, if we decide that democracy (in itself) is bad, then we will get the opposite effect in the form of the loss of public control over the government, political repression, the closure of objectionable media outlets, the unleashing of the hands of individual officials for arbitrariness, etc.

Societies of modern countries are constantly trying to drift in determining the criteria of what is "good" and what is "bad", in one direction or the other, but this does not in any way solve the problem of the inflexibility of the criteria themselves. Emotionally minded people always take a dogmatic one-sided position, unable to realize the relativity of the criteria of what is good and what is bad. In this position, they are often irreconcilable and stubborn like rams (but of course, because they are fighting for good), entering into endless meaningless arguments with other emotionally minded people who also take a fanatical opposite position. Moreover, cynics and egoists benefit the most from this situation, who, gaining confidence that there are no criteria for good and evil at all, that this is a myth, are guided by a single criterion - the criterion of personal benefit.

Instead of bringing their actions in accordance with certain criteria, these people, on the contrary, use the fact that there are certain moral criteria in order to select, compose, highlight them in a certain way, make them a cover for their selfish actions and goals. As a result, in the modern world, the winner is not the one who sincerely strives for good, guided by his one-sided criteria of good and making mistakes all the time, the winner is the one who has better learned the art of presenting his actions in a favorable light, completely regardless of their real essence. The norm of society is not the desire for good (real), the norm is constantly pretending that you are striving for good, that you observe the norms of decency, etc. arsenal for the everyday use of the average person, as evidenced by the abundance of literature on the topic of the so-called. "practical psychology", they will explain to you how to properly hypocrite and pretend to "become a boss" or "fall in love with anyone", etc. Thus, the emotional definition of goodness actually leads to moral relativism.

There is another significant aspect associated with the inability to understand the relativity of good and evil. This aspect is the growth of passivity, indifference and indifference of people to what is happening in the world around them. As the traditional rigid system of moral criteria is destroyed and eroded, people increasingly relinquish responsibility for judging and evaluating someone's actions as good or bad, in order to intervene in something and do something. A person commits something suspicious or even a crime, well, let him do it. It is not our business to judge him and decide whether he is guilty of something or not and whether it is worth punishing him. Let the court judge, let the state take action, etc. Will the criminal shoot someone? Well, let's hope that the neighbors, and not us, will shoot. Both factors, both the growth of moral relativism and the passivity of citizens, are evidence of a severe crisis and lead Western society straight to self-destruction.

Bottom line: Emotionally minded people are not able to distinguish between good and evil, because they do not understand the relativity of moral criteria and assessments. This inevitably leads to moral relativism and indifference and becomes the cause of the self-destruction of society.

2. However, manipulating the criteria of good is only half the trouble. A much greater danger in modern society is the possibility of free manipulation of the criteria of evil. What is the ratio of good and evil? When Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. considered this issue, he categorically came to the conclusion and argued that there is no separate source of evil, and that what we perceive as evil is just a lack of good. In a system of moral criteria based on an emotional worldview, this conclusion is of great importance.

Indeed, if a person does something bad, in our opinion, the perception of this person and his actions differs radically depending on whether we accept evil as an independent category, or as a lack of good just, following Thomas Aquinas. If evil is a lack of good, a person who does evil is just not good enough, he has insufficiently developed qualities that should be inherent in a good person, maybe he has not seen enough good in life, etc. If so, then an acceptable way the fight against evil is the implantation of good, teaching people good, invoking those motives and qualities that could motivate people to do good deeds, etc.

If evil is an independent category and you need to imagine evil actions and deeds as actions that have their own evil cause, a source of evil, then there can be only one choice - you need to destroy this source of evil in order to stop evil. And it is this second approach that has won in the modern world, especially having taken root in Western society, which tends to objectify everything and everyone, including its assessment of something as good or evil. This approach allows the following logic to be applied (and it has been successfully applied, allowing, from the time of the Crusades to this day, "in the name of good" to commit monstrous crimes):

1. Someone has committed a separate offense (you can always find such an offense or defect). Therefore, this person is a wicked person. This person cannot be a kind person, he is objective. by nature and essence, an evil person and will always have a tendency to commit evil.

2. We must infringe on this person in order to prevent him from doing evil (who knows what else is on his mind).

3. Once again, let us infringe on this person, because he is an evil person.

4. Let us infringe on this person once again - we remember that he is an evil person…. etc.

The idea of the existence of evil and, in general, some negative manifestations as primary in nature, has already, unfortunately, deeply rooted in society and the above-described logic associated with sticking on someone the label of a villain, a person led by bad intentions, an outcast, etc. widely, often without much thought, it is used both in everyday relations between people and in world politics (a vivid example of it is the position of the United States, with its highlighting the "axis of evil" and lists of "rogue countries", or, for example, the Estonian authorities, sticking the label "invaders" on all Russians living in this country).

A person who is labeled a villain by the "champions of good", as a rule, cannot change this attitude in any way, no matter what he does and no matter what concessions he makes. All his subsequent actions and words, without exception, are interpreted one-sidedly, in order to confirm the existence of evil intentions, the presence of malice in him.

The practice of sticking labels contributes to the total triumph of evil in a society that exists on the basis of an emotional worldview model. Emotionally minded, under the influence of these labels, hung by someone, inevitably become involved in confrontation, senseless conflicts and the commission of evil. Even if they themselves initially did not feel any dislike for the objects of labeling, then, being unable to objectively perceive the essence of phenomena, paying attention only to emotional assessments of one or another, they diametrically change their minds under the influence of perversely presented and one-sided interpreted facts presented in the set with biased assessments.

Sticking labels, supported by the media and official propaganda, turns more than 90% of society, which is amenable to emotional assessments and is not able and not accustomed to perceive things in their objective essence, into accomplices of criminal politics, and ordinary people begin to grab and burn witches and heretics at the stake to denounce rage and indignation at recent colleagues and neighbors who suddenly turned out to be enemies of the people, to consider it completely justified that millions of innocent people, including small children, are deprived of everything and turned into slaves, driven into concentration camps, being shot in droves and are destroyed in gas chambers. This was all normal, from the point of view of millions of emotionally minded people in Europe, just a few decades ago (although now - remember the bombing of Belgrade, unanimously supported by most of the EU countries - they are not far away).

Bottom line: Emotionally minded people tend to do evil more than do good. They justify their methods by sticking the labels of "villains" and demonizing their opponents.

3. However, from the desire of emotionally minded to avoid any evil, nothing good comes of it either. There is another fundamental problem in the perception of goodness, which leads to the fact that people who think emotionally, in fact, do not wish good, not only to others or enemies, but even to themselves. This problem lies in the progressive replacement of the desire for emotional harmony, the concept of which lay in the origins of Christianity and the emotional worldview model, to selectively pulling out by each emotionally thinking individual emotionally pleasant moments, pieces of reality, while ignoring everything else, and in this ignorance, in the right to do so. ignorance modern people, especially those who live in the West, are absolutely sure.

Modern civilization is being overwhelmed by a wave of selfishness, hypocrisy, a purely consumerist attitude towards the world, and towards people as well, destroying the last remnants of the constructive, useful sides of the emotional worldview. At the heart of the origins of Christian doctrine, on which modern Western civilization is built, lay the concept of love for one's neighbor, striving for God, some high moral ideals, and keeping from sin. So, Augustine, who lived in the era of the decline of the Roman Empire, wrote about the "city of the earth" and the "city of heaven", opposing them to each other, if the "city of heaven" is the product of love for God, then the "city of the earth" is the product of self-love, to worldly goods, to domination and power over other people. Self-love, according to Augustine, is the essence of evil. Modern worldview ideas, in many respects, are directly opposite to these initial ones. A modern man begins to demand love and goodness primarily in relation to himself, and determines what this good is according to his own private, subjective criteria.

The initial principles of Christianity, the essence of which was that a person compared himself with an ideal, asked himself "am I good?", "Do I follow the precepts of love?" in which he was, were replaced by completely opposite ones, they began to merge with the late Roman trend of Epicureanism, the slogan of which was "man is the measure of all things." Now a person evaluates not himself, his actions in the context of the environment, but the world and the environment itself in the context of his subjective needs, desires, attitudes, etc. He begins to establish for himself what things exist for him and which do not, what he will be accept, and which to ignore and fenced off from them. The concept of "good", approved by the society of behavior, has come to be associated with the need to do something pleasant for a person, what he himself wants.

Western unfortunate psychologists tune people to just such a model of behavior, proving, declaring it normal and scientific that a person should tell others as much as possible only what they like, in no case try to hurt their self-esteem, as a great discovery they present that, that each person is not limited in their ability to distribute to others left and right (and receive, in turn) those things that will be pleasing to their ego, and that this is a key element of success in communicating with them. At the same time, people who bring to the world the ideas of universal happiness, obtained on the basis of the constant indulgence of the individual to his own and other people's desires and egoistic troubles, such as everyone's desire to see themselves as important, respected, to receive recognition, etc., often believe that they follow the very thing neither the best motives nor the most moral aspirations. “Shouldn't we bring the maximum of good and the minimum of evil to the world?” They will say. "Wouldn't it be right if all people will experience only positive emotions, and not harbor hatred and other negative feelings for anything?" "We should all tune in to the positive", "Everything will be fine" - they repeat all the same sickening incantations on radio, television and in oral speech. However, such an artificial planting of "good" can not lead to anything good. Constant feeding of people with "positives" leads to only one single result - they become selfish.

Just like a child brought up with such a hypertrophied understanding of "good", when his parents indulge all his weaknesses, whims, do not scold or punish anything, grows up as a spoiled, capricious, unbalanced being, without a definite goal in life and with an inability to decide the simplest life problems, and people living in a society that constantly tries to play on their passions, emotions, please their latent and explicit desires, pour out tons of "positive", get used to the fact that their slightest whim is of great importance, and he, whoever does not show hypertrophied and insincere "good" towards them is simply an unimaginable villain and boor. Moreover, a person who has grown up as an egoist turns out to be incapable of appreciating true goodness and true feelings, preferring to them the usual rituals and falsehood.

Such a person cannot be helped to solve problems that he denies and to correct mistakes that he does not admit. An egoist who painted a bad picture will be indignant at the one who dares to assess it adequately, trying, with the best of intentions, to reveal the mistakes made by the egoist. An egoist who has a disgusting preparation in a subject will be furious with a teacher who will offer him to prepare better and retake the exam, etc. Thus, instead of real goodness, we see in modern society only false goodness, aimed not at actually helping people and improving the positive aspects of their personality, but at artificially stimulating emotionally comfortable states and gratifying their selfish habits.

Bottom line: In modern society, freed from the rigid dictate of the church, good has begun to be interpreted not with the help of universal criteria, but on the basis of private, subjective criteria of individuals who began to understand something good or good as pleasant for themselves personally and satisfying their selfish aspirations.