No need to repeat the news here, America has seen another "senseless" act of mass murder. A friend of mine, a school teacher, complained to me that what will follow is the usual spate of blame laying, finger pointing at the parents and the teachers who should, somehow, have known that the troubled child would explode.
If we take the assumption of "original sin" as it is written, then we are all born deficient. The natural condition is then that every child comes into this world evil. It is through the connections that we make and the knowledge that we gather that we can then make ourselves good. If babies weren't born inherently evil, then there would be no need for baptism, study and then enlightenment.
When we meet up with people who are older and then do bad things, it is because they have failed to develop either intellectually or emotionally. What works better for us as a society, then, is to cease idealizing infants as perfect when we can see that neither their physical or psychological selves are in any other state than that of deformity.
What will help them, and us, more than anything else is to foster as many connections as can be had. And as we develop into adult beings, we must continue both the number and depth of the connections and be with one another in as many varied ways as we can invent to define our relationships.
Under another thread I posted Plato's demand "Know Thyself" and solicited comment. Perhaps what is truly the "Masonic Imperative" is instead to :Know One Another."
To expand a little on the inter-connectivity of humans, the human lower light bodies (etheric, emotional and mental) constantly exchange substance with the environment and with other entities with similar light bodies, including other humans.
As the exchanged substance is usually qualified by the previous user and use, it is difficult for humans to have independent emotions or thoughts.
Thus the individual human is far less individualistic than he or she may wish and criminal acts are often embedded in the national or familial emotional-mental ecology.
A simple example of this is that most murder victims are well known to the murderer.
There are various ways to escape conditioning by other entities. These include:
- practicing a strict moral code, usually shared with a group of others, hence still within a particular conditioning - associating with people who have higher ethics, emotions and thoughts, again still within a range of conditioning - increasing the level of consciousness (rising on the planes of creation) veiled under the symbol of Jacob's Ladder.
This last is intrinsic to genuine initiation. And of course it is the true initiate who progressively is Master of the lower worlds (as they exist within his/her light body) and free from lower influences (as far as permitted by group and systemic karma).
u cant conclude babies r evil based on this.. far as i can see, the only things babies r guilty of r ignorance and (egocentric) self preservation.. thats why u need study..
evil is taught by the (sub)culture ur raised in and the conflict with other (sub)cultures.. if ppl would accept the same moral values, only those not sticking to them (the rise of a different culture) could be called evil..
how do u determine whats good or evil objectively? (without being prejudiced by cultural values)
If we take the assumption of "original sin" as it is written, then we are all born deficient
Speak for yourself
Any parent, family, nurse, doctor etc will tell you that babies come with their own individual personality. Even twins exhibit different personalities. This might indicate that the baby, or its soul or whatever, brings with it the essence of its former experiences. Thus, the genius of Chopin, the perseverence of Mother Theresa, the innate cruelty that sometimes manifests in minors who decide kill others.
I agree with all that Paul says above, especially about the weakest being easily controlled by 'peer pressure' - seen or unseen. Crowd mentality is easily observable. Theatrical people speak of the energy they get from the audience. Even religions talk about being 'tempted by the devil' - which acknowledges the influence of the unseen. (Talking about which, who are we arguing with when we debate an issue with ourselves? - ie do it, don't do it)
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day.
No - I do not believe babies are born evil, but I do believe we all arrive with baggage.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting…trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home -Wordsworth
There are various ways to escape conditioning by other entities. These include:
- practicing a strict moral code, usually shared with a group of others, hence still within a particular conditioning - associating with people who have higher ethics, emotions and thoughts, again still within a range of conditioning - increasing the level of consciousness (rising on the planes of creation) veiled under the symbol of Jacob's Ladder.
This last is intrinsic to genuine initiation. And of course it is the true initiate who progressively is Master of the lower worlds (as they exist within his/her light body) and free from lower influences (as far as permitted by group and systemic karma).
... Freemasonry, making good men better ... !
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting…trailing clouds of glory do we come from God, who is our home -Wordsworth
There are certainly many brethren who, not long after initiation, noticed how they progressed in (up)righteousness without quite knowing the mechanisms
