ILLUSIONS OF A JUST WORLD IN A PASSIONLESS UNIVERSE

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

My oldest daughter, Marina, told about her classmate who “got sick again. And his mother is also sick”. He fell ill again - this is a relapse of leukemia. A classmate appeared in his class only a week before this summer vacation, before that - hospitals, chemotherapy … “Good boy. He draws so beautifully, polite, calm "- this is how Marina described him. And so - again … We handed over the money to him for treatment, Marina took her accumulated thousand, and then pasted an advertisement on the door of our entrance about collecting money … As for "his mother is also sick" … She also has cancer. Stage four. There is no one else, she is alone - and a son. And my daughter asks: "why is this with them?"

Why so? … Sometimes in such situations the question “why?” Sounds. The second question directly implies that there are some compelling reasons why disasters strike people. This is a very persistent belief, dating back to ancient times and, at the same time, to our childhood, and I would formulate it as follows: “This world cares about us, the world is watching us closely and determines how well or badly we behave. If it is good, we will have a "sweet", if it is bad - all sorts of troubles. " “World” can be easily replaced with gods, God, parents or just adults. If you simplify this fundamental idea a little, you get the following: “If something bad happens to you, then there must be a reason for it. And the worse what happens to you, the more weighty the reason should be."

This idea is called "belief in a just world." What is justice? This is an idea of the correspondence of a person's actions and rewarding him for these actions. Most people will agree that if a person works hard and conscientiously, then he should receive more than someone who works little and badly. It is another matter that in "many-little" or "good-bad" everyone includes their own meaning, but the basic principle remains unshakable: reward must correspond to merit. In the religious picture of the world, the role of the Judge, determining the fair distribution of reward, is played by God.

However, we are constantly faced with the fact that in our world justice is an extremely rare phenomenon, and, moreover, it is very subjectively interpreted. Well, what is the "justice" of the deadly illness of mother and child? A religious person who believes in a just world in the person of God has to go to a number of logical tricks, make a lot of props to his faith, which are called "theodicy", or "justification of God." This is an attempt to explain why, with an all-good and good Deity, so many misfortunes and injustices are created in the world. There are many attempts, and all of them are full of either bargaining with conscience, hypocrisy, or a final refusal to answer the question “for what, God ?!”. A little further advanced the concept of karma - the great impersonal and impassive law of Eternal Justice. If you suffer, you have done something in your past life. Himself to blame, in general.

Here we come to the main consequence of the belief in a just world. This is the victim's accusation (or "victim blaming"): if you feel bad, then you are to blame. Poor people are poor solely because of their laziness. If your apartment was robbed, then “why are there no bars on the windows” or “what is the front door with a lock that can be broken in a minute? Ourselves are to blame. " If raped - "there was nothing to provoke." Blaming the victim is an attempt to cope with the horror that arises in a person's consciousness when a huge, terrible and completely unpredictable world begins to beat into this closed consciousness. Anything can happen to you? No, this thought is too scary, and consciousness clings to the idea of control, which is so familiar from childhood from parents or, at a more conscious age, from preachers of all stripes. If you behave correctly, trouble will bypass you (they will not be punished). That is, you can control this world, the main thing is to follow the instructions, and disturb the water as little as possible, rock the boat, etc. So tyrants (domestic and state), establishing cruel and often impossible rules of conduct, punish the guilty for their violations, sentencing: it is their own fault, the rules have been violated, so pay the price. If the option is successful for tyrants / rapists, the victim herself will believe that she is guilty, and will not even raise the question of how legitimate both the rules and actions to protect these “rules” are. That is, the focus of attention shifts from the perpetrator to the victim: what did you do / did wrong?

At the same time, the accusation of the victim becomes much stronger in a situation of powerlessness, when people feel the impossibility of helping the sufferer: either they themselves are afraid, or they cannot really help. Then, as a protection from the feeling of their own worthlessness, the idea arises that “they themselves are to blame” - that is, they do not deserve much help, and even compassion, so we have nothing to do with it. Now, if the victim suffered innocently - then yes …

So, the idea that the world works justly has a number of consequences:

a) The idea of the existence of "right" and "wrong" behavior, followed by appropriate retribution.

b) The idea of controlling the world through "correct" behavior. "I am a good person and therefore should be treated well."

c) Blame the victim: the victim's misfortunes are the result of her wrong behavior, and not outward arbitrariness. "If you hadn't done this, nothing would have happened."

Naturally, the daily practice of human life inevitably entailed a different view of the world. The Bible book of Job is one of the first attempts to think about whether God is really just (after all, in this book the good man Job became, in fact, a victim of arbitrariness on the part of God and Satan). As a result, another, also very old, idea took shape about what the world is like: the world cares about us, but this world is insane, unpredictable and, more often than not, unfriendly. There are no rules, nothing will save you from arbitrariness. Enemies are everywhere.

This is a world from which no actions of yours can save. And here the main consequence is the syndrome of learned helplessness: no matter what you do, nothing will help. A person is assigned the status of a powerless, incapable victim, for which it is useless to make any efforts. For all the same tyrants and manipulators, this idea is also gracious - the very posing of the question that the victim can or could somehow influence what happens to her is declared illegal and blasphemous. You are a victim of arbitrariness, and accept it. Nothing will help. Lie down and howl. Or dream that the planet will take and be replaced. "Stop the planet, I will step off!". This is the world of trauma, the world of the feeling of absolute impossibility to resist imprinted in the mind. Just lie down, curl up in a ball and wait for a savior to whom you can hand over your life (often this is the only thing that keeps you in existence).

These are two extremes: "just world" and "madly evil world". At the same time, they are generated by a general powerlessness and fear of the vast Universe and the forces operating in it, only in the first case you hide behind the illusion of universal rules, and in the second, you already give up and hope simply for mercy. But in both cases, the world cares about us, it interferes in our life, regulating it.

There is a third view of how this world works, and I personally adhere to (and experience) it. This is the concept of an indifferent world. That is, the Universe does not care whether we exist or not. She simply lives by her own laws, grinding those who are unlucky enough to be on the way with her millstones. She is not watching us - she may not even be aware of our existence. If it slams, it is not at all out of malice. It's just that the cards went like that.

In this world, there is no candy for good behavior, and no rod for bad behavior. There are just actions - and their consequences, some of which we can calculate, and some - not. In this world there is no question "for what?" or perplexed questions about why scoundrels die in wealth and in their beds, and good people in poverty and in the trenches. It's just that some did this and that, while others did (or did not). It is impossible for this world to set conditions in the style of "I behave well - therefore you owe me …", but there is no need to howl in horror, expecting the inevitable punishment from the evil and all-powerful Universe. This aphorism very well conveys the feeling of this Universe: "Time passes" - so we say because of an incorrectly established idea. Time is forever. You come through. " We pass, and there is no way to change it. There is no way to manipulate this world through the observance of the rules - he sneezed at these rules of ours, at the entire human civilization, the lifetime of which is a moment.

So what should a person do in an indifferent universe? What he always did was to settle her down. We cannot change, turn the world upside down, but we can draw its attention to ourselves. I cannot make other people love me. But I can show myself in such a way that there is a possibility that they love me. I cannot force the other person to become clear to me - I can only be clear myself, and this will give the other a chance to become clear to me. We cannot eliminate unhappiness and misfortune from the world - we can only reduce their likelihood. We cannot control this world - it would be good to learn to control ourselves. This is not as reassuring as in the "just world", but it gives a chance that is not in the insane world. Gods and demons left us alone, leaving us to ourselves. In such a world, I have the right to pose such questions: what can I myself do to reduce the likelihood of becoming a victim of certain phenomena of this world; how can I influence the world to make it a little safer. “Blame the victim” here loses its force, because the questions are always to the one who acts, and not to the one who reacts to the impact. To the one who attacks, not to the one who defends.

Instead of “live by the rules, and then everything will be fine” and “no matter what you do, everything is useless until the world changes” comes another, long-known rule, with one amendment: “do what you can, and whatever happens” … I cannot stop cancer in mother and son and cure it. Or fight crime. To establish peace in the world … It is in my power to do the little that we are capable of at the moment, and hope that the result will be the way we want it.

- Dad, why is this with him?

- It just happens, daughter. It doesn't matter if you are good or bad, you deserve it or you don’t deserve it. It happens…