Posted by
Mark McConnell on Thursday, September 06, 2007 2:24:38 PM
The world decides what is good or evil by measuring whether the action produces fear. Is there a threat of uninvited harm in an action? Then, it is wrong. With second-hand smoke and global warming, just as with pedophilia, the world maintains moral discipline by fear. This is why those who speak of homosexuality as being immoral are answered with the charge of being "homophobic". This bespeaks a moral philosophy based on taboos and fears. The fact that our society responds to this charge, and changes its morality accordingly, indicates that we have become a society that confuses morality with fear. We are deciding good and evil from our gut.
The people of the world decide what is good or evil for themselves, by the measure of lust. Is any action gratifying? Does it satisfy a hunger, and leave you feeling happier? With pornography as with homosexuality, you will be advised that, appetites should not be denied, because to do so is to deny who you are. The world will allow you to do these things, if by doing them you do not make the world afraid.
None of this is really about "choice" or "freedom", which are ideas brought in from outside of the equation, to glorify lust and to chasten fear. Choice is not the principal factor in selecting the things for which we lust. We fear things, sometimes against our will, so that fear also is not principally a matter of choice. In a fear-based morality, there is a never-ending struggle between lust which defines personal good, and fear which defines what cannot be permitted.
Lust and fear are fleshly analogies that correspond, but only in their own fleshly terms, to the spiritual realities of good and evil. As with all analogies, the correspondence is reliable only as long as the dis-analogy is understood. But if there is no understanding of the spiritual reality, thinking of good and evil in terms of lust and fear is an invitation to deception and manipulation.
The tyrant can appeal to fear, and the demagogue can appeal to lust, and the people can be herded like animals this way because there is no love of good or hatred of evil among the people. When the knowledge of "evil" disappears, except for the loathing that grows up from within ourselves in the form of fear; and when the knowledge of "good" is gone, except for what we know of it in terms of our lusts; then, we have become a people moved by appetites who will surrender to terror.