In morality class we have been discussing the unfolding of Adam and Eve as well as the notion of freedom.
Your human nature is comprised of two elements: your intellect and your freedom. Together, these elements make up your rational soul. They make you different from any other species on the planet, they make you the human that recognizes that they are human.
Your intellect is thereby defined as the ability to recognize good vs. bad, and your freedom is the ability to choose. It is the power rooted in reason to make a choice. However, there is an unintended consequence of this freedom: evil. In other words, because you are free, you can choose to do the good, but you can also choose to do the bad. You can choose not to harm, or to harm, you are free after all...
For this reason, we more accurately understand the good to be that which leaves your intellect and freedom intact. Ultimately, it is in your nature to do good because it is in your nature to be free in both body and mind. If that is in fact the case then evil is anything that jeopardizes our freedom and intellect. It is the absence of the good that should be there by nature. In other words, the good upholds our nature and the evil is anything that jeopardizes it. We do evil when we choose to act against our freedom or impair our intellect. It is when we put ourselves in a situation in which we do something that we would have not otherwise done when our freedom and intellect were intact.
So your freedom exists in two fashions, both internally, and externally. Inner freedom is the ability to make decisions, external freedom is the ability to act on them. One can jeopardize their inner freedom with ignorance (a failure to recognize or find the truth) and duress (anything that impairs your intellect - stress, substances, etc...). When one's inner freedom is impaired they are unable to make decisions that align with their nature, with the good. External freedom is impaired when one lacks the ability to act. This could happen for an assortment of reasons: injuries, incarceration, etc...
The ultimate goal becomes the retention of one's freedom and intellect; however, we often lose sight of this fact. We lose sight of it because we take our freedom for granted, we do not recognize its importance until it is gone, and sometimes that moment happens too late.
When we examine this struggle through the lens of Genesis, it becomes quite clear. Adam and Eve failed to recognize the beauty of the garden until it was gone. But it makes sense: when your reward for the good is that you simply get to keep doing the good, we don't see it as much of a reward at all. When the reward for their obedience was simply that they got to remain in the garden, that also did not seem like much of a reward. We are not particularly impressed when we are told that good decisions will keep everything the same, and this is why Adam and Eve were tempted by the character in the tree, he offered something that appeared to be an actual reward: immediate gratification - the opportunity to be like God.
And for this reason, Adam and Eve gave up their freedom to this influence, and they lost the ability to continue life in the garden. I imagine the garden looked quite impressive from the outside.
For us, all too often, it is the same. We don't appreciate the reward of remaining free until our freedoms are taken away from us. But in reality, most good things work this way. What is the reward for working hard at your job? The fact that you get to come back the next day and do it again. What is the reward for winning? That you get to keep playing. What is the reward for staying faithful in your relationship? That you get to stay in it. More often than not, we fail to recognize that the biggest rewards in life are the continued ability to simply keep living it.
We do not see all the freedoms we possess. We don't wake up and say things like: today I am free to not do meth, though you are because you don't suffer from an addiction to it. We don't wake up and say today I am free to go to school, though you are because you are not incarcerated or living in a place that prevents you from receiving an education. These freedoms are products of good decisions, and once we recognize that, we have a better understanding of how important they are.
You see, the reward for doing the good is that you get to keep doing it. (And if we understand Aristotle correctly, the good allows us to be free and intellectual, and when we are free and intellectual we are happy, so in a lot of ways, the reward for doing good is that we get to continue to pursue happiness.) Unfortunately, the consequence of doing the bad is that we forgo our freedoms and our intellect. And sometimes, we get so deep in the bad that we can not longer choose not to do it. We give up our freedom in its totality.
So if the reward for using our freedom well is that we remain free, shouldn't we do everything in our power to use our freedom well?
Because at the end of the day, is there really anything more valuable than freedom? I guarantee that anyone who has ever lost it would say, no.
No comments:
Post a Comment