FREEDOM VS GOODNESS

I always wondered why people tend to say ‘I am bad’ much more than ‘I am good’. When I looked into the matter, I observed that people often say such things when they are confused in making a decision about doing something. The confusion arises from one or more conflicts in the mind. Usually the war is between the natural prompts of a person and the acquired beliefs in the subconscious mind. Natural prompts are the feelings, intuition or instinctive calling that direct towards the healthiest choice or choices. Beliefs are mental statements that form or deform continuously as analysis of any particular person, place, object etc or their combinations is carried out by the mind.

Questions arise. Which wins? Why does it win?

There is no rule about who wins in a particular situation; it depends much on choice making capability and power of will. The choice made on the basis of beliefs often leads to expected outcomes while the one made following a natural prompt (with or without reasoning) opens the door to new and uncertain results.

The fear of uncertainty or the insecurity phobia makes us choose the easier or projected path and for that we often need to suppress (consciously or not consciously) our natural prompts.

Question: What’s wrong with that?

If an animal is kept in the home, fed and paid attention, it is tamed into a friendly and useful companion. But if it is put into a cage, fed improperly and beaten, it would become a raging beast ready to pounce on anyone whenever it would get a chance. Similarly human nature cannot be suppressed for long, prompts become urges that sum up to become temptations and finally these temptations explode in the distorted form of frustration and aggression resulting in bizarre action and finally becoming addictions. The simplest example would be violence and sexual abuse all over the world.

The trick is to listen to the natural prompts that are feelings and combine them with reasoning based on past experiences and beliefs to make a choice that would be morally appropriate and would also help one to explore new aspects of life. This is what ‘Goodness’ is; making choices that help Life (people, events, experiences) to be, grow and prosper. ‘Freedom’ is the fundamental faculty of the human being that makes one possible to be ‘good’. Hence freedom has a higher value that goodness because goodness comes from ‘freedom wisely expressed and experienced’.