Week 5 - It's Always Black, White, and Everything in Between.

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.” - Adam Smith.

  "The crow wished everything was black...the owl that everything was white." - William Blake.

Bill Hicks tells a joke about how he’s in a cab with a sign “Please don’t smoke, Christ is our unseen guest,” to which he quips, ‘so that explains the extra 30c on the meter…’

Religious thought has so interminably corrupted the idea of morality that it is impossible to use the word. In this sense, it’s governed by a cosmic carrot and stick approach; the ‘unseen guest’ will reward you for doing what he/she/it/they prescribes, and punishing you for disobedience. This is not useful.

Jesus knew what was really going on, by the way, but the game of Chinese whispers that the religions have played (after they killed him) has warped this into oblivion. It’s about surviving, and about empathy.

Mirror neurons were discovered in 1992 by a team of scientists headed by Giacomo Rizzolatti. These are neurons that fire in the brain of an observer of an event, in exactly the same manner as those neurons that trigger in the participant in the event. It is the biological mechanism that proves human beings to be naturally driven from our very core by empathy. This core drive is confused by secondary drives, beginning with religion as a means to try and explain it – take Kingdom of Heaven (2005), for instance. Guy and Reynald want war in the name of God. Balian, Salah ad-Din and Baldwin I want peace, love, and unity, in the name of peace, love and unity. At the end of the inevitable seige of Jerusalem, Balian surveys the fields of the dead. "If this is the Kingdom of Heaven, then let God do with it what He wills."

Steven Weinberg (1999) contends: "Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. "

If we then look at the case of Game of Thrones’ (2012) Stannis Baratheon, in the series' War of Five Kings, he was the legitimate heir to the throne, and the best one, in my opinion, for the job. He says “a good act does not erase a bad act – nor a bad the good,” to Ser Davos Seaworth, the Onion Knight. Davos was a long-time smuggler who sneaked in a ship full of onions past the blockade to save a besieged and starving Stannis, who knighted Davos for saving him, and cut the last joint of every finger on his left hand off for years of illegal smuggling. You’d think Stannis a good man, until he murdered his own brother, Renly, for his own gain…not long after he found faith in R’hllor, the Lord of Light. I still think him a comparatively good man. Look to your sins, Lord Renly, for the night is dark and full of terrors.

It isn’t a matter of who’s right or wrong, because this is a false dichotomy; rather it matters who is right and who is left. Thankfully, then, humans are biologically wired to care about each other. This is what empathy is and the foundation for all morality. Plato didn’t know this, and science only has for 20 years. That’s not yet long enough for the ideas to sink in, but we’ll get there, slowly. Culture has always evolved thus, and religion is just an expression of culture that is, thankfully, becoming a smaller and smaller voice in the world. Empathy is the true unseen guest, the invisible hand, the core drive of every human being, and the wellspring of all morality. That’s the true message of Jesus, who was himself against religion: Be like me, because you are like me; you just don’t know it yet.

References:

Benioff, D & Weiss, D. B. (Show Creators), & Martin, G. R. (Book Author). (2012). Game of Thrones Season Two [T.V. Series]. Home Box Office.

Hicks, B. (Creator & Performer). (1996). In Memory of The Dark Poet [DVD Anthology]. Lightbulb Studio.

Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L. (2004). Mirror neuron: a neurological approach to empathy. Retrieved from [http://www.robotcub.net/misc/review2/06_Rizzolatti_Craighero.pdf]

Scott, R. (Director) & Monahan, W. (Writer). (2005). Kingdom of Heaven. 20th Century Fox and Scott Free Productions.

Smith A (1759) The Theory of Moral Sentiments (ed. 1976). Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Weinberg, S. (1999). At an Address at the Conference on Cosmic Design, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, D.C.

Pictures obtained from:
http://azizaizmargari.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/black-and-white/
http://tumblr.com
http://www.empathiceducation.com/mirrorneurons.php