STARVING THE GOOD ANGELS
Phyllis Palmer
    
    Why is it we hold children to a much higher standard of morality than adults?  Think about it.  Parents and teachers work very hard to teach children not to lie, bully or hit other children, and to play fair and share what they have with others.  Yet we take it for granted that adults, particularly in politics and business advertising, will lie in promising what they have no intention of delivering, and to cover up wrongdoing.  Most Americans have a double standard on the subject of sharing: We want our children to share, but are horrified at the idea of expecting adults to share their wealth with others less fortunate.  That smacks of Communism!     
    We punish children for hitting, yet many parents reserve the right to hit their children.  And we not only do not punish those adults conducting the largest mass murders of innocent people, we call them war heroes, give them medals and promote them!  Lincoln’s Secretary of War, Edwin M. Stanton, is quoted as saying, “Why is it that military generals are praised and honored instead of being punished as malefactors?  After all, the work of war is the making of widows and orphans, the plundering of towns and villages, the exterminating and spoiling of all, making the earth a slaughterhouse.  Though governments might argue war’s necessity to achieve certain objectives, how much better might they accomplish their ends by some other means?”
    What would our world be like if we demanded of adults the same level of moral conduct we require of children?  What if we decided that violent behavior would no longer be tolerated – by adults as well as children?   By nations as well as individuals?   (Structural violence – unjust and oppressive governmental policies that create suffering and lead to terrorism – should be included in our definition of violence.)  We would have to explore alternative non-violent ways of resolving conflicts, just as we do with children.  The hundreds of billions of dollars now spent on military defense and wars would then be available for education and other human needs.  The resentment and desperation that leads to wars and terrorism would be diminished when we begin to share our wealth fairly with those in need around the world, and stop trying to dominate and exploit other countries.
    “A utopian dream – totally unrealistic, given human nature,” the cynic insists.  But if children are capable of the level of moral behavior we demand of them, why not adults?  Is “human nature” something that only adults possess?  And is selfishness and violence the essence of human nature, or a corruption of it?  What if human nature in its purest form contains the potential for loving and altruistic behavior as well?  Certainly we see that side brought out in many people in a crisis when they risk their lives to save others.  
    A relevant parable has the wise elder telling a young child about the two angels of his nature – the good angel and the bad angel – competing for control of his life, and the child asks which will prevail in determining what kind of person he will turn out to be.  “The one that you feed,” the elder replies.
    I wonder if the same principle doesn’t apply to our communal life, as well as to the individual.  We live in a culture that constantly and deliberately chooses to feed the bad angels of human nature and starve the good angels, which Jimmy Carter calls a “culture of death.”  When the popular culture a person is submerged in during his formative years is awash in violence and hostility, alienation, duplicity and greed, artificiality and commercial exploitation, which brings out the worst in people, it has to be much harder for the individual to develop his good side.  Violence in our entertainment media is good for the economy, we are told.  But is it good for our society?  For our world?  For our souls?  Those who insist that all this “virtual” violence is harmless need to explain how it is that the number of firearm homicides in the U.S. was about 30 times that of the country with the next highest toll – 30,419 vs. 1,034 in one recent year!  
     Trying to raise moral children today has become a counter-cultural activity for conscientious parents.  It’s high time we stopped feeding the bad angels and starving the good angels, if we care about the quality of people we are growing in America.  Some European and Scandinavian countries, with their greater emphasis on “quality of life” – as seen in their support of families and of the fine arts, and their love for nature – could teach us practical ways of nurturing the best in human beings and creating environments that make it easier for people to be good..                         
    We also need to challenge America’s glorification of militarism and the unquestioned assumption that military violence is the only way for our nation to maintain our freedom and security in today’s mean and dangerous world.  This belief is precisely what makes our world so violent and dangerous!  Our knee-jerk reliance on military force creates a vicious cycle of attack and retaliation which must be broken at some point before our escalating violence brings the human experiment to a catastrophic end.
    For a fresh perspective, imagine that a far more highly evolved being from another more advanced  planet visits earth.  Appalled by the level of hostility and violence of earthlings, this being sets about teaching us what we should have learned in Kindergarten – that violence is NEVER an acceptable way of resolving conflicts, that kindness and justice can accomplish what violence never could in the world.  Then, gradually we begin to learn ways of feeding the good angels of our nature as individuals and as societies, so that violence and war eventually become unthinkable.  Could it be that this is God’s dream for our world, and the good angels within each of us are really God’s spirit struggling to make it a reality?