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Moral . States . of . Mind
The links in the table on the left take you to sub-headings in this article.
Sub - headings |
Effects of Social Change The previous article described the relationship between morality and psychology. Now I put the problems of social change into perspective. These problems become highlighted through the process of abreaction. During social abreaction, new ideas of relationships are created in the catharsis (these ideas often feature what is currently considered to be immoral) ; and then these ideas are cleaned-up and made respectable during the tail-end stage of resentment. So social abreaction ends by emphasising some aspects of morality. The initial ideas of relationships arise subjectively. The cleaned-up derivatives become objective standards. Hence this dialectical movement of ideas ends by strengthening the relative aspect of morality. |
| Summary 1 | |
| Circles | |
| Three ways | |
| Oscillations | |
| Diagramme 1 - travelling wave | |
| Diagramme 2 - output waveform | |
| Four modes of reality | |
| Reference |
The purpose of ethics is to enable the person to survive the resentment of social abreaction by creating ideals : these ideals are usually conservative and right-wing.
The purpose of psychology is to enable the person to survive the resentment and the bitterness of social abreaction by creating higher ideals : these are usually left-wing.
When ideals are not mature or intense enough then abreaction crushes them.
Human development requires left-wing ideas and idealists. The course of human evolution is a zigzag path through social change. Left-wing individuals arise to initiate social change, then the right-wing backlash fashions society into a new stability.[¹]. The test for the idealist is whether he can retain his faith and his beliefs throughout the periods of social resentments and bitternesses. To do this he will need an understanding of psycho-dynamic psychology theory.
Summary 1
The general trend of evolution is to make people right-wing.
The process is such that catharsis generates a medley of new and challenging ideas and then resentment treads most of them into dust, leaving only those ideas that society can handle. This right-wing movement of evolution creates mass stability at the expense of creativity : the process of change is resisted very strongly. Creativity is never a mass product – creativity arises in individuals, not in crowds. The higher development of the modern individual means that he always emerges from the crowd to the left of tradition ; the problem that he faces is that of retaining his left-wing sympathies.
As a corollary to these ideas, there is a pronounced effect caused by the resistance to change : it takes countless incarnations on Earth for the person to evolve his character and personal identity.
Morality centres on ideas of good and evil. During abreaction the immorality of the catharsis eventually leads to social respectability. Virtues arise from vices and hence morality from immorality. This dialectical effect leads to a peculiar outcome. The relative aspect of morality tends to keep good and evil separate, but the dialectical aspect links them together. This inter-twining causes the moral confusions of a society in the process of change.
There is a complication to the above ideas. Not only are good and evil relative to each other, but they are also circular in operation. Virtues arise from vices, but also vices arise from virtues. Good arises from evil, and evil arises from good.
How is evil created from good ?
In two main ways.
a). First of all, for a spiritual idealist, goodness depends on the person’s conscious (or subconscious) interpretation of justice.
A person’s views on justice are subconscious when he cannot articulate them and prefers to rely on feeling as his way of responding to injustice. Forms of goodness become the branches of a sense of justice. Justice can be derived either from nobility of character or else from resentment and righteous anger. Goodness can be practised and maintained only so long as justice is maintained. When justice is felt to be denied to oneself then goodness slides into badness. When justice is derived from nobility of character then goodness deteriorates into selfishness and the refusal to help others. When justice is underpinned by resentment then goodness decays into revenge or self-hate or dis-illusionment.
b). The second way of creating evil from good is through the repression of aspects of the person’s character that he does not like.
Repression is an adequate and effective method in low-stress societies, but not in high-stress ones. When the stress on the person becomes great enough to overcome his moral restraints then those moral repressions eventually lead that person to become that which he has repressed.
Consider antithetical thoughts – these represent the start of this process! [²]. Here the subconscious unpleasant idea is beginning to force itself into consciousness. Neurosis is the progression of evil from good. We decide to be morally good and repress ‘evil ’ desires and ideas. After a suitable number of incarnations, and in suitable circumstances when the level of anxiety becomes too intense, these repressed desires have become powerful enough to force their way into consciousness and we become that evil : that is, our ‘good’ conscious desires (as idealism or as morality) cease, or become identified with the subconscious mind. In the latter case we cease to distinguish between good and evil when it suits our subconscious desires. So morality declines.
In the Middle Ages the persecution and crucifixion of heretics and witches gave full reign to the moralistic Inquisitor to indulge all his sadism and sexual obsessions on the person of the accused.
And times when morality is in decline always go hand-in-hand with debauchery and sensuality. When after such a period of decline a new reign of moral purity ensues, this only sets the scene for the next scenario of ‘immorality’ that will inevitably follow ‘purity’. The reason for this oscillation in standards is that social abreaction is variable and unpredictable, so that the morality created from it is always immature and unstable.
The circle of good and evil works in three ways :
| 1). | What we repress, that we become. This occurs in suitable circumstances, when the underlying anxiety is great enough to force its way through the repression. |
| 2). | What we express, that we become. |
| 3). | When justice is lacking then
goodness turns into badness. When justice is felt to be fair and impartial and non-vindictive then badness can be rehabilitated into goodness. |
Statement (1) indicates that karma (or psychological causality) resides in the subconscious mind. The major repressions of the subconscious mind eventually come to dominate consciousness. So by purifying our subconscious mind we thereby settle our karma.
Statements (1) and (2) are acts of commission.
Within acts of omission, consider love and hate (these are complementary emotions). The religious mentality is puzzled by why devils exist, if god is love. The answer can be simple. For an entity without a developed ethical code, then when love and justice are denied to it so it turns into a ‘devil ’. If love is denied then hate comes into the ascendancy.
To illustrate my view of karma I give two examples.
For a religious example, the austere ascetic may gravitate to sensuality and / or sexuality. Consider the life of Luther, who thought that sexual desire could not be conquered. Hence he eventually advocated marriage for nuns and clergy.
For a sexual example, consider Victorian England. This was a time of rigid sexual repression. The intensity of this repression gave rise eventually to the intensity of sexual freedom of the 1960s. This effect indicates that what is repressed intensely enough in one era may become part of normal consciousness in a later era.
Statement (2) applies to the cultivation of personality traits, whether good or bad ones. This is the training of the subconscious mind, whether done voluntarily or involuntarily. Morality is conditioning.
A person either conditions himself through ethical training, or is conditioned by society. Either way, the person has to learn self-control.
Statement (1) works on the individual through his own subconscious mind. Whereas statement (2) works on the individual through his social relationships, and the effects on him of other people’s subconscious minds.
Each person has to learn a better way of handling unpleasant desires and emotions than by either repressing them or by expressing them in any of his relationships.
My formula for handling the subconscious mind is to neither repress nor to express negative states of mind in social company, but just to be aware of them ; then later I allow them expression in phantasy when I am on my own. This formula allows me to acknowledge such states of mind without causing social chaos ; this way I learn to accept myself for what I am, with few delusions.
If we put statements (1) and (2) together we get the circularity of good and evil :
| Statement (1) is : good leads to evil. | |
| Repressing ‘evil ’ can make a ‘good ’ person eventually become bad or evil. | |
| Statement (2) is : spiritual idealism can turn evil into good. | |
| This is the process of sublimation, through social practices. | |
This circularity is strongly affected by the concepts of justice that the person ascribes to, whether they are based on equity or on revenge.
The traditional Eastern way of avoiding problems associated with statement (1) is to live in solitude, or else to live in an ashram where a group of devotees can act as a buffer between the teacher and the outside world. These ways enable the subconscious mind to fade in intensity, since the negative influences impinging on it from society are reduced. This makes control of it easier.
There is another factor affecting the relativity of good and evil. The cycles of the subconscious mind are superimposed on the oscillations of the unconscious mind (which is the collective mind). These oscillations are caused by the changes in feelings.
In my model of consciousness, there are three main levels of mind : there is the 'surface' mind which we are fully aware of and which we use in our daily activities, and then each person has a subconscious mind that is unique to him / her, and then there is the unconscious or collective mind that is the same for everyone. Feelings originate from the unconscious mind.
Feelings are always changing. In the practice of meditation their rising into consciousness, then their moment of peak effectiveness, and then their decline can be noticed and followed. Feelings are the base of emotions. [³]. So emotions are always changing too. Except during periods of concentration, the movement of thought reflects the movement of emotion, since any emotion is always associated with ideas. The mind of the individual is in a state of constant flux, and the origin of this flux lies in the perpetual process of change in feelings.
All emotions (except equanimity) arise from the two feelings of positivity and negativity, or pleasure and displeasure. (The negative feeling is unique, in that it gives rise only to detachment and equanimity). The process of change can be likened to a perpetual oscillation between the positive and negative poles of feeling ; the intensity of the feeling varies in magnitude over time. This oscillation occurs in the unconscious mind.
In diagrammatic form the process of change can be likened to a travelling wave (for example, the ripples caused by dropping a stone in water), or a sine wave, or a radio carrier wave. The wave is illustrated by diagramme 1. The blue vertical axis represents the intensity of the wave above or below the point 0. And the blue horizontal axis represents the value of time from the point 0.
Travelling Wave
The positive and negative feelings alternate in their direct influence on consciousness, with the intensity of them varying over time. However, since they are always present in the unconscious mind, the individual can consciously dip down into the unconscious mind and choose a particular feeling to centre on (an act of auto-suggestion). This choice will produce conflict if the person tries to focus on a good emotion whilst the negative feeling is dominant in the unconscious mind.
This oscillating waveform of feeling (within the unconscious mind) has superimposed on it the current states of emotion, and hence of desires and beliefs (or thoughts in general). Here we have three layers of activity. Feelings and emotions come from the unconscious mind, and thoughts from both the subconscious and the conscious minds. In pictorial terms, thoughts are like a radio-station’s output superimposed on a carrier wave.
The current intensity of a person’s mood will therefore be a blend of the individual intensities of prevailing conscious, subconscious, and unconscious factors : this is illustrated by diagramme 2. The maroon spikes along the travelling wave represent thoughts.
Output Waveform of Thoughts
All thoughts, whether visual ones or verbal ones, oscillate between the varying intensities of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ emotions. People usually like to try to maintain preferred states of mind, such as happiness, excitement, mania, anger, resentment. A ‘good’ emotion, such as joy, and ‘good’ attitudes will be strengthened during the positive half of the carrier wave’s oscillation and weakened during the negative half. ‘Bad’ emotions and attitudes will similarly be strengthened during the negative oscillations and weakened during the positive oscillations. This view implies that sometimes the practice of morality will succeed, and sometimes fail. Sometimes a rogue will be bad, and sometimes good.
The ego in its conscious mind can choose what to focus on, and try to maintain stable conditions, stable states of mind. But this stability is not usually possible because the unconscious mind continually changes. The conscious mind is just a ‘cork’ that bobs up and down on the oscillating waveform of the unconscious mind.
The practice of concentration raises the person above this pattern, but how long the person can maintain concentration depends on his strength of will. Will power holds back the change, rather like the way that a dam across a river holds back the water. But eventually the held-back emotions build up enough in intensity to sweep away the will (and the concentration), leaving the person feeling mentally exhausted.
I assume that the unconscious carrier wave of feeling is universal throughout reality, but the ‘amplitude’ (or maximum intensity) of it differs according to species. The amplitude is minimal in plants and insects, and increases as species sophistication develops. In humanity the amplitude is greater in sensitive and creative people than in ‘average’ people.
I give a psychic representation of the unconscious carrier wave.
In yoga theory there are three channels of psychic activity associated with the spinal cord and its nervous systems. These channels are called Ida, Pingala, and Sushumna. Sushumna is the middle channel that represents the neutral feeling, whilst Ida and Pingala are the outer channels : Ida is the ‘negative’ and Pingala the ‘positive’. The psychic activity of the central nervous systems alternates between Ida and Pingala. The physiological correspondences to the two outer channels are the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, whilst Sushumna lies within the centre of the spinal cord.
Four Modes of Reality
I use a simple scenario in which I place the law of sorrow. The person has four major modes of reality acting on him ; these are the modes of ethics, existentialism, dialectics and psychology.
These modes, when suitably compared, allow me to define a relative ethical practice for contemporary needs. I pair off the subjective modes together and then the objective modes together. This gives the following arrangement :
Purpose is ethical : this is subjective.
Meaning is existential : this is subjective.Form is dialectical : this is objective.
Content is psychological : this is objective.
The subjective component is the existential search for a satisfactory ethical purpose.
The objective component is the process whereby psychological values and standards change in a dialectical manner in order to adjust to the new ideas of the age.
Therefore, in a relative morality :
It is process that is objective,
and
It is inquiry that is subjective.
In order to evolve, a person needs to eliminate ignorance, confusion and self-deception as much as his historical circumstances can allow. Whatever morality he may espouse he has to understand the psychological reasons why he endorses it ; only then can he eliminate subconscious desires for power and domination, or of dependency and resentment.
In Summary
A suitable ethical practice that attempts to be in tune with modern times is one that combines process with inquiry.
The number in brackets at the end of the reference takes you back to the paragraph that featured it. The addresses of my websites are on the Links page.
[¹]. The process of social change is given in the article Language and Society, section 6. [1]
[²]. Antithetical thoughts are thoughts that are opposed to, or the antithesis of, other thoughts which the person prefers or which he / she intends to manifest in action. If a person is contemplating the good things in life, then antithetical thoughts may arise and evoke ideas about the nastiness of life. In states of mental disorder, antithetical thoughts are usually described as internal voices.
There is an article on Antithetical Thoughts on my psychology websites The Strange World of Emotion, and Discover Your Mind, and Patterns of Confusion. [2]
[³]. Emotions are the result of the interaction between feelings and ideas. My definition of emotion is that it is the activity of feeling directed into a mental concept. There are only three feelings -- these are the negative, the positive and the neutral feelings. However, since they are associated with many different ideas, so they produce many different emotions. The model of emotion that I use is described in the articles on Emotion on my psychology websites. [3]
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The articles in this section are :
Moral States of Mind
Copyright
© 2003 Ian Heath
All Rights Reserved
The copyright is mine, and the article is free to use. It can be reproduced anywhere, so long as the source is acknowledged.
Ian Heath
London, UKMy email address is likely to change.
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