Humanity was made good, which is why it can and should be said that humanity is good by nature. The problem is that we, as persons, tend to ignore and cut ourselves from our innate goodness, from our common humanity. We go from being persons in a relationship with others, as we were meant to be, to being individuals cut off from everyone. We end up thinking that we can do all things all by ourselves, that one of the goals of life is to be “self-sufficient.” We end up propping ourselves up, thinking we are above everyone else, or else, we end up hating ourselves for not attaining the success we think we should have. This is because we have accepted the false identity given to us by individualism, that is, the false ego or self; by embracing and accepting it, we not only find ourselves tempted by the poisons of pride, avarice, and malice, among so many others, we accept them in the process of our individualization, allowing them to override our connection with our own innate human goodness:
True nature is one. Human fellow-feeling, a sense of moral duty, proper norms of behavior, wisdom: these are the true nature of true nature. Intelligence and understanding are the substance of true nature. Joy, anger, grief, happiness: these are the emotions of true nature. Selfish desires, alien energies: these are what cover over true nature.[1]
We need to find a way to balance ourselves, to balance our inner life with what is beyond us, so that we can balance our personal needs with the common good; we must resist those temptations which try to get us to act against our own good or the common good of all humanity, those passions which make us inhumane:
Desire, avarice: these are illnesses of the soul and wounds to the mind, which lead the soul all the way to the endangerment of salvation and to the death of sin. And so, the one who lies sick in sins of this sort, even if he is sound in body, is sick all over. The one who is sick in his mind, is sick in his soul. [2]
This is why, though there is all kinds of talk in various spiritual traditions about resisting the passions, we must understand that talk as being about resisting all imbalance which will cause us (and others) undue harm. We must not ignore or resist those feelings which we possess, feelings which come to us naturally, including sorrow and grief; after all, Jesus, Mary, John the Baptist, and others who serve as the best representations of humanity, can be shown to have engaged their emotions: Jesus cried at the death of Lazarus, and Mary grieved at the death of her son, Jesus. We should not think our spiritual ideal is one where we become emotionless, but we should also not become so attached to them that when they come up, we hold onto them beyond their proper time and place. We should let them flow, recognizing when they emerge, letting them properly play out, and letting them come to their proper end, for in doing so, we realize something of who we are as a human, and we remain true to ourselves and the qualities which make us good.
We must, therefore, accept and embrace what is common with all humanity, that is, the good which we share with everyone else, and engage it; we must not cut ourselves from others, or from our own humanity, thinking that by giving in to temptations, those passions which suggest we should be selfish or self-hating, we will attain that which we want most. We certainly must reject those temptations which would have us undermine our humanity or the humanity of others. Greed (or avarice) is one such temptation which, though it has always been a major concern throughout the centuries, has only become greater over time, as now it is often defended instead of rejected by many in society. If we give in to it, we lose sight of our true humanity: “If you crave wealth and high rank and abhor poverty and low rank, whether you succeed or not, this attitude of craving and abhorring has already separated you from true humanity.”[3] It is not difficult to see the truth of this as we see the harm done to society when those who are greedy control it; they constantly undermine the good of others, finding ways to turn public goods into private goods, and once they have done that, they cut off many people from those goods they need to survive. For, as St. Jerome explained, “For money is not accumulated by one person except by means of another person’s loss and harm.”[4]St. John Cassian pointed out that avarice, in this fashion, does not really do us, or humanity, any good, as it has us go beyond our need and our well-being; it is for this reason it can even be said to be unnatural:
That avarice is unnatural, however, is plainly evident from the fact that its origins demonstrably do not have their source in us and that it does not arise from what pertains to the possessions of the soul and flesh and to the stuff of living. For it is certain that nothing has to do with the utility and needs of our common nature apart from daily food and drink. But everything else, with whatever eagerness and love it may be looked upon, is nonetheless clearly unrelated to human need and even to the utility of human life itself.[5]
This unnatural aspect of avarice (and other similar passions) is why it can be said to act as a parasite, destroying us from within; the more we give in to it, the more it grows, the more we undermine our natural humanity. All it knows is how to consume, to destroy being, and it thrives on that destruction; it will go on until it is stopped either by us or due to the fact that it has nothing left to feed upon. As long as we follow it, it will have us share in its own destructive character; when we take it in and make it a part of ourselves, as we use it to cover up our true self and our innate good nature, creating through it a false self which we then use to deny even to ourselves who we really are. It is this false self we try to preserve through selfish acts, and the more we do that, the further we will find ourselves from our humanity:
As soon as selfish ideas sprout, the basic essence is already covered over, eaten away, blocked off. Its basic state of flowing shining awareness is no longer there. Therefore, we must break through selfishness. After this, the flowing aware essence can be fully developed. This is why innate knowledge must be extended: only thing is virtue illuminated and personal existence properly cultivated. [6]
We must, therefore, resist trying to separate ourselves from our innate goodness, from our humanity, from the humanity which we hold in common with every other person. We must not try to individuate ourselves, propping ourselves up as an individual above our humanity or the humanity of others. If and when we do that, we fall into great sin and destroy ourselves and the good which we are meant to have and live out. And, as we have, in various ways, already failed to live out our innate goodness, we must try to discover it again. We must do what we can to recover our proper relationship with everyone else, to be persons instead of mere individuals, realizing our innate goodness, our humanity, requires us to be in a proper relationship with everyone else. When we do that, we will discover in our humanity the goodness which God gave to it, a goodness which connects us not only to each other, but to Christ, and through Christ, to God, experiencing not only our common humanity with everyone else, but the kingdom of God as we end up participating in the life of God.
[1] J.C. Cleary, trans. and ed., Worldly Wisdom: Confucian Teachings of the Ming Dynasty (Boston: Shambala, 1991), 39 [Wang Yangming].
[2] St. Chromatius of Aquileia, Sermons and Tractates on Matthew. Trans. Thomas P. Scheck (New York: Newman Press, 2018), 49 [Sermon 12].
[3] J.C. Cleary, trans. and ed., Worldly Wisdom: Confucian Teachings of the Ming Dynasty, 17 [Xia Shangpu].
[4] St. Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah in St Jerome: Commentary on Isaiah; Origen Homilies 1-9 on Isaiah. Trans. Thomas P. Scheck (New York: Paulist Press, 2015), 493.
[5] John Cassian, The Conferences. Trans. Boniface Ramsey, OP (New York: Newman Press, 1997), 188 [Fifth Conference; Abba Serapion].
[6] J.C. Cleary, trans. and ed., Worldly Wisdom: Confucian Teachings of the Ming Dynasty, 96 [Chen Jiuchuan].
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