Ignition for Education

Are goodness and evil sound moral categories? The Creation Paradigm posits creation as definitive of goodness, of “the good.” But what about evil. Can it be pinpointed as, according to the Creation Paradigm, goodness can be? Does it exist per se? Is the Creation Paradigm dualistic?

I’ve gone some way to answering these questions already. I’ve argued that the answer to Meno’s paradox is the infant’s realization that the world is other to herself. This realization represents a cardinal crisis. It makes the infant afraid. It also challenges her to learn. She must learn to navigate this world, and it is perfectly natural that she should seek control of it also. Natural, even necessary. And a grave moral danger.

She begins to build her little empire of things that she can control. The habit continues in adulthood. Who doesn’t want to feel that they are in control of their career, finances, the state of their home, their health—of the outcomes of their life? But none of us has any right to count another human being as one of our subjects. Because power over others stifles their independent thought and action; it is antithetical to self-creation—the highest form of creation, which is the ultimate good of the Creation Paradigm.

To clarify, true achievement, by the light of the Creation Paradigm, is to create: not just to create tangible things or even intangible things like ideas, but to be a creator of oneself and of others. Indeed, the ultimate role of the teacher is to enable the student to self-create.

I’ve also argued that worthwhile leadership exists only in the service of acts of creation. It also exists to enable the self-creation of those who are led. It should never exist for its own sake, and no one should aspire to it for its own sake. Such an aspiration represents nothing more a desire to control others—that is to say, authoritarianism.

So, we find a moral bifurcation of leadership. The creative leader wishes to lead a team in an act of creation. To best achieve this, she must act as a creator of her team and must take the attitude of a creator towards its members. The authoritarian leader wants simply to be the leader, to exercise control for its own sake. And control, even if it is used to make some things, is never a creative force. It always stifles the self-creation of the individual.

On one side of the bifurcation, therefore, we have creation and freedom. On the other, we have authoritarianism.

Does this bifurcation extend to a moral dualism? No. Goodness is unitary; it is creation. But, while authoritarianism gets in the way of goodness, it does not provide a unitary concept of “evil.” There are other things that get in the way of creation.

One is conformism. Conformism is a form of power: the power of the collective over the individual. It, too, stifles the self-creation of the individual. And it is closely related to authoritarianism.

Another two are laziness and ignorance. They also stifle, in their simple forms and their more complicated forms—an unwillingness to think, to imagine, to be original; a desire to be popular or to enjoy status instead.

One more is selfishness. Selfishness stifles creativity. We can see that this is true because the greatest things—art, knowledge, ideas, the creation of others—are not generally acts of self-service.

So, at least five impulses stand in opposition to creation: authoritarianism, conformism, laziness, ignorance, and selfishness. Often, they are grounded in fear, but not always, so fear cannot serve as a unitary source of evil.

Evil is not unitary. Good is unitary; it is creation. It exists per se. But evil does not.