Precis: Evil must be eliminated; good must be moderated. Drawing on Aristotle and Bahá’u’lláh, this essay explores justice as the principle by which we distinguish between the two, and considers how even the greatest gifts of civilization can become harmful when taken beyond their proper limits.
 |
| Justice is the essence |
I am now studying ethics, specifically moderation. I have learned that moderation applies only to positive goods—that is, to virtues and not negative quantities like vices.
A thief, for example, cannot moderate his stealing; he has to give it up completely. The same applies to murder and indeed all other crimes. The saying, "Moderation in all things" really means all good things, not everything whatsoever. We can have too much of a good thing, or too little of it, but never of a void, a bad thing, or a wrong.
Such is the overarching power and importance of justice: of doing the right thing, of eschewing the bad, and moderating the good. Bahá'u'lláh even goes so far as to say in His penultimate Word of Wisdom that justice is the very essence of all that He has revealed—a mind-blowing thought that everything in His Cause and Teaching is there to establish justice, since there can be no unity or peace without it.
For example, the search for truth—the first Bahá'í principle—Bahá'u'lláh asserts here is the third, ineluctable step in a three-step process of working out justice in ourselves and society:
"The essence of all that We have revealed for thee is Justice, is for man to free himself from idle fancy and imitation, discern with the eye of oneness His glorious handiwork, and look into all things with a searching eye."— Bahá'u'lláh, Words of Wisdom
And the reason for these three, often arduous, steps is that everything in the individual and society must be weighed in the scales of justice to know its true value.
Extremes and extremists are unjust by definition. If you do not seek the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you are dividing yourself into a part human—not the creation or image of God that God seeks to project onto us. Partisans and party members are only partly citizens, for they stand for only one side—an atom of truth, not the whole, which must be universal enough to include the best of all sides. Taking things to extremes makes the search for truth impossible because it muddies the waters upon which we all depend.
"Whoso cleaveth to justice, can, under no circumstances, transgress the limits of moderation. He discerneth the truth in all things, through the guidance of Him Who is the All-Seeing."— Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings, CX
We know that evil has no positive existence anyway, since God only creates good things. Still, having ruled out all those evils, we are still left with just about every positive entity in this vast universe, so the importance of moderation cannot be overemphasized.
Bahá'u'lláh makes it clear that even the good things, the gifts of God Himself, become evils to us when we get too much or too little of them:
"Whatsoever passeth beyond the limits of moderation will cease to exert a beneficial influence. Consider for instance such things as liberty, civilization and the like. However much men of understanding may favorably regard them, they will, if carried to excess, exercise a pernicious influence upon men."— Bahá’u’lláh, Tablet to Maqṣúd
Too much liberty is as bad and dangerous as too little of it. How often do we witness a young life ruined by too much freedom too early won, and not enough discipline to make a good of it? Or too much wealth, or success, or privilege? The same applies to all goods. Too much culture, learning, and other benefits of civilization make it into a giant force for corruption and evil in itself.
That is the main warning and prophecy of Bahá'u'lláh in discussing moderation. Today the numbers of human beings have soared into the billions, with every soul among them owing their very lives to the science, technology, advanced agriculture, and other infrastructure that enables life to flourish at such a huge scale. Yet, in spite of that, the very word "civilization" has become as tainted and compromised as the word for its opposite, "savagery," was long ago.
Such is the "perniciousness" of the overall influence of an unmoderated civilization.
Which leaves us with our next question:
"What might a moderated civilization look like?"
No comments:
Post a Comment