SELF-IMPROVEMENT, WORLD CHANGE, AND HUMAN NATURE

Diagnosis should precede prescription and intervention. Therefore, we first have to understand the nature and problems of humanity before we can intercede effectively.

Joseph Stalin was convinced that humanity’s problems did not lie within but without. Consequently, his prescription was to change the environment—the State and its economy:

•                  Whatever is the mode of production of a society, such in the main is the society itself, its ideas, and theories, its political views and institutions. Or, to put it more crudely, whatever is man’s manner of life, such is his manner of thought.

For Stalin, a change in the “manner of life,” namely, a change in the economic and political institutions, would greatly improve the human condition.

Other utopian schemes rely upon the removal of the repressive or capitalistic elements. The Occupy Wall Street movement seemed to suggest that if we could simply remove the capitalist oppressors—the top one percent—we could have a better world. Such thinking is predicated on the idea that if the bad guys are removed, the good guys will naturally thrive and create a benign society.

Why? Because the great majority of people are naturally compassionate and other-centered, but they have been oppressed by those who are selfish. By this line of thinking, all the masses need to do is grow in awareness and self-trust.

According to New Age guru, Shakti Gawain, we have failed to learn how to trust in ourselves:

•                  “When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for external authority, validation, and the approval of others, we give our personal power away…Every time you don’t trust yourself and don’t follow your inner truth, you decrease your aliveness and your body will reflect this with a loss of vitality, numbness, pain, and eventually physical disease.”

How then do we learn how to trust in ourselves? We need to be empowered. How? According to some, by learning how to relate to one another! Yesterday, I attended a workshop given by THEDIALOGUEPROJECT.ORG for high school youth. We were all directed to write the names of three people in the group whom we admired, and what we admired about them. Then, we broke up into pairs and one had to recite the admirable qualities we noticed to the other as the other listened attentively. Then, the other person related back to the first what they understood the presenter to be saying. Finally, we had to process what we felt about the experience of being understood.

This proved to be an easy way to generate human connectedness. I had attended one of their talks before. While I do think that there is a place for these kinds of exercises, they wrongly convey the idea that if we simply learn how to affirm others, those others will in turn reciprocate and the world will be a better place. If we could simply learn the skills of affirmation, we would empower both ourselves and others. Consequently, we would no longer need police or soldiers.

This, of course, is predicated on a positive diagnosis of the human condition, a condition that presupposes that we all naturally want to affiliate, creating a win-win situation for all.

Similarly, many college students believe that love will conquer all, even hate. We just have to learn how to love. These students are convinced that if we had known better how to love, then Hitler, Stalin, and Mao would never have embarked on their genocidal rampages.

How do we love? Well, one way is through affirming conversations. I recently talked with a group of young communists at Columbia University in a conversation I hoped would be affirmative. I began by asking them about their hopes. They answered, “Revolution.” Light-heartedly—at least at first—I probed: “Well certainly, you are not advocating violent revolution?” They were; but they assured me that their revolt would kill a mere 1% of the population.

Again, I probed: “In light of the failed communist experiments of the twentieth century, what hope do you have that yours will be successful?”

They explained that they now had an enlightened Thinker/Leader who would not repeat the mistakes of former Marxist revolutions. Meanwhile, I was wondering if, rightly applied, love could persuade their enlightened Leader to lay aside his sickle in favor of tulips.

Meanwhile, my young, idealistic communist comrades assured me that love for humanity required them to strike a quick, relatively painless and antiseptic blow against the controlling elites.

I wondered about what was motivating them. Whatever it was—anger, jealousy, or self-righteous idealism—it seemed to be more decisive than all the love that I could muster through my affirmative attentiveness and understanding of their concerns.

These students are human beings with the same feelings and needs that I have, but yet, they are also our future murderers—instruments of genocide. Can friendship and conversation turn them around? Would these techniques have turned around Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, or would they have co-opted them for their own sinister designs?  In view of the fact that there has never been a society that has been able to relax  sanctions against anti-social behaviors, I had my doubts about their effectiveness.

I’m certainly not against using the carrot before the club. Some will respond favorably to the carrot, but it seems to be undeniable that the club also has its place.

Perhaps this should lead us to a reassessment of humanity and our prescriptions for a better world. Perhaps we have faults at the core of our being that all of the loving affirmations in the world cannot adequately address. Occupy Wall Street and the communists are convinced that they can create a better world by removing the evil elites.

However, the elites are the people who are rich in affirmations. They are successful and have had their needs met, at least more completely than the rest of us. Aren’t they the ones who should be models of self-actualization and humanity? However, affirmations can also harden us in our pride and self-trust.

If our illness lies at the core of our being, perhaps we need to be reborn from above, as the Prophet Ezekiel wrote:

•                  I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. And I will deliver you from all your uncleannesses (Ezekiel 36:25-29).

If this is correct, then all of our attempts at self-rectification, revolution, and social re-designing are, at best, superficial and temporary. Instead, the inside must first be changed before the outside can be meaningfully addressed.

Understanding Humanity and Utopia: The Great Divide

The way we conceive humanity and our problems determines the nature of our solutions. Gandhi disdained technology and thought that the return to the simple life would solve many of our problems:

• Gandhi’s idea that technology was evil and that a simple, natural life was morally superior came from British idealists like John Ruskin. Sensitive people like him had become critical of England’s Industrial Revolution because of the exploitation, oppression, and other evils associated with its “dark satanic mills.” Mahatma Gandhi brought this opposition to technology to India. (Vishal Mangalwadi, The Book that Made your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization,111)

Shakti Gawain, author of Creative Visualizations, taught that our problems arose from alienation from the inner self. Therefore, her answer consisted of learning to trust the “truth” we find within:

• “When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for external authority, validation, and the approval of others, we give our personal power away…Every time you don’t trust yourself and don’t follow your inner truth, you decreased your aliveness and your body will reflect this with a loss of vitality, numbness, pain, and eventually physical disease.” 

Meanwhile, Joseph Stalin was convinced that attaining paradise was a matter of changing the environment – the State and its economy:

• Whatever is the mode of production of a society, such in the main is the society itself, its ideas, and theories, its political views and institutions. Or, to put it more crudely, whatever is man’s manner of life, such is his manner of thought.

Similarly, The Humanist Manifesto II asserts that “Using technology wisely” can produce the “abundant and meaningful life”:

• “Using technology wisely, we can control our environment, conquer poverty, markedly reduce disease, extend our life-span, significantly modify our behavior, alter the course of human evolution and cultural development, unlock vast new powers, and provide humankind with unparalleled opportunity for achieving an abundant and meaningful life.” 

Many other utopian schemes rely upon the removal of the repressive or capitalistic elements. The Occupy Wall Street movement seemed to suggest that if we could simply remove the capitalist oppressors - the top one percent – we could have a better world. Other movements placed their hopes on the elimination of those deemed evil or less evolved.

Interestingly, all of these “solutions” have one thing in common – a belief in the essential goodness of humanity, or at least of their particular group, and the superficiality of our problems. Those who believe that humanity has been corrupted by society, also believe that humanity can be easily reformed by a radical change of society.

When we believe that our problems are superficial, we will generate constant flow of utopian dreams. Such dreams are usually revolutionary. They are not content to merely improve the present system but to remove it.

When confronted with the horrors of National Socialism, Communism, and ISIS – and various other utopian movements, each promising to create a better world – the “believer” will insist that these are mere aberrations, easily corrected by the right people and re-education programs. Such hope is inevitably based upon a benign assessment of humanity.

However, what if the genocides, rapes, and abductions are the result of deeper problems that social changes will not touch? What if we are not controlled by rational argumentation or the means of production but by baser instincts?

And here is related consideration. What if there is a human nature that requires a certain kind of care? Then we have to ask the question: “Is this nature best served by sexual liberation? Communism? Finding one’s own truth? Psychotropic drugs?”

This is the Mason-Dixon Line – the great polarizing divide. It depends on our understanding of humanity. How fluid and remedial is our nature? The progressive answers, “very fluid and remedial.” The conservative answers very differently, and these answers determine how readily we will pursue radical change.

The Bible testifies of the pervasive sinfulness of humanity.  According to Jesus, we are normally addicted to darkness, the denial of the truth (John 3:19-20). The veracity of His assessment is evident at every turn. One Sabbath, Jesus healed a man with a “shriveled hand.” Instead of praising God at this miraculous deed:

• The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. (Luke 6:11)

This same hatred of the Light of God is ubiquitously evident. After Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead after four days in the grave:

• Some of [those who saw the miracle] went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin. “What are we accomplishing?” they asked. “Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him. (John 11:46-48) 

They were unwilling to consider the implications of this great miracle. Instead, they plotted together to kill Jesus and eliminate His unbearable Light.

Jesus even prophesied that the enemies of the Light would not only eliminate Him but also those associated with Him, all the while convincing themselves that they were performing a virtuous act:

• They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, the time is coming when anyone who kills you will think they are offering a service to God. (John 16:2) 

According to the Bible, human perversity is so deep-seated that it requires radical surgery. We must be changed from above. In light of this understanding, utopianism is sheer fantasy, like building a mansion on a cesspool.

We are that cesspool. This is a truth that I had denied, disguised, and suppressed for years. It was just too unsettling! However, through the assurance of my Savior’s love and forgiveness, He granted me the courage to face the disorienting Light, and the closer I came to it, the more I was enabled to see the ugliness within.

Fire can either consume us or free us from our bonds. Rather than psychologically crippling me, the Light freed me. I no longer have to hide and put on a facade. I can non-defensively bask in the truth, knowing that my worth is unassailably buried in His love and care.

This does not represent a rejection of social change, but instead a recognition of our human limitations.

Seeking Freedom

What is freedom? We tend to define freedom as the removal of any restrictions in order to pursue our inclinations, our inner self - that necessary ingredient for authenticity and self-fulfillment. New Ager, Shakti Gawain, author of Creative Visualizations, would agree:

·             "When we consistently suppress and distrust our intuitive knowingness, looking instead for external authority, validation, and the approval of others, we give our personal power away…Every time you don’t trust yourself and don’t follow your inner truth, you decreased your aliveness and your body will reflect this with a loss of vitality, numbness, pain, and eventually physical disease."

Truly, dependency upon others and their opinions hands us a life of bondage. Freedom  must be made of a different material. Gawain suggests that this is the self, the source of trust, life and vitality.

Is the self the source of freedom or of bondage? Let me offer a very strange sounding answer. Freedom is living in harmony with reality. It’s like kayaking down a swift river and not against it. It is conforming to the ebbs and flow of the river. It is recognizing the dangers and skillfully avoiding them, as we go with the flow.

When we resist the flow, we foolishly ignore the laws of the river. It’s like ignoring the threat of gravity, as we walk too close to the edge of a precipice.

As strange as it sounds, freedom is conformity to certain laws that can harm us if we violate them. Ironically, we maximize our freedom by staying within our proper confines, like the goldfish in his bowl. If he jumps out to seek more freedom, she will find she has less, as he squirms helplessly on the ground.

We need limits - certain rules or laws. Without them, it is like playing chess where “anything goes.” This might sound like perfect freedom – you can move the pieces wherever and whenever you want – but such a game will very quickly become boring. Instead, it is the rules or limitations that give meaning to the game.

We cannot do without limits. Without the limitations of gravity, we cannot dance. However, according to Gawain, freedom is a matter casting aside all of the rules and laws. Her only reality is our “inner truth” and desires. While these also constitute reality, they aren’t the only reality.

Reality is greater than the self. We weren’t made for a solipsistic existence. We were made for relationship, however messy this might sometimes become. We were made for give and take, to learn the reality of the other and to enter into it.

This requires understanding. Any relationship requires understanding certain human laws. Even keeping a goldfish requires us to understand the needs of the  goldfish.

What represents the greatest threat to freedom? Internal bondage! As a college student, I found Gawain’s ideas appealing. I quickly adopted nihilism (a form of moral relativism – the denial of any “external authority”) as my guiding light. I initially felt the thrill of liberation. I was no longer bound by the ideas and opinions of others. I was free to find my own path and pleasures.

However, I found that bondage wasn’t so much a matter of external pressures and expectations, but rather, internal ones. After I had thrown off my external shackles, I was left with the ball and chain of my own inner requirements!

The self, which was supposed to liberate me, proved to be a vicious jail-keeper. My own standards – Gawain’s “inner truth” - were more demanding and unforgiving that even society’s standards. I was a prisoner to these requirements, and they tightly bound me with guilt and shame when I failed them. What had promised liberation had enslaved me further.

The filmmaker, Martin Scorsese similarly confessed:

• Some people say it's just a Catholic guilt, that's all. But it's still guilt. I don't mean guilt from being late for Mass or for having sexual thoughts. No, I'm talking about guilt that comes from just being alive.

Guilt is a ubiquitous freedom slayer. It charges that there is something terribly the matter with us. Consequently, we find ourselves coerced to obsessively defend ourselves against its charge. We bath ourselves in denials, rationalizations, and even accomplishments, hoping that these will wash away the indictment, but they never do, no matter how good we act. Instead of freedom, we are embroiled in obsessive inner struggles.

Meanwhile, the Bible lays out a very different path to freedom, not through the “inner self” but through another - a Man who died to make us free:

• If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. (1 John 1:8-9)