We know. We know. There seems to be plenty of evidence that many of us behave badly. For example, researcher Bella De Paulo found that: “Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting ten or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30% of those with whom they interact one-on-one.”[i] This could be called The Pinocchio Effect and would seem to say that some of us are “bad” some of the time. And of course some of us do things way worse than telling “little white lies.” The very worst thing many of us are doing every moment of every day is telling ourselves lies that obscure the Truth about who we are.
Obviously, we are going to have to transcend formal logic to excuse the behavior of our unconscious false self. Joseph Campbell can do that for us while reminding all of us that we are involved in the “hero’s journey.”
“There’s something … exhilarating about putting yourself on the side of life instead of on the side of protective ideas. When all of these protective ideas about life that you’ve been holding onto break down, you realize what a horrific thing it is, and you are it. This is the rapture of the Greek tragedy. This is what Aristotle called ‘catharsis.’ Catharsis is a ritual term, and it is elimination of the ego [false self] perspective: wiping out the ego-system, wiping out rational structuring. Smashing it, and letting life–boom–come through. The Dionysian thing smashes the whole business. And so you are purged of your ego judgment system by which you’re living all the time.”[ii]
We cannot hope to defend the perfection of Creation without being obliged at the same time to argue against the existence of good and bad. To do that we will have to bring out the big guns. See the supplemental reading on the next page for more.
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Supplemental Reading: Good and Bad, The ABC’s of Simple Reality, Vol 1
#56 The Pinocchio Effect
[i] http://www.psychologytoday.com/the-truth-about-lying?
[ii] Campbell, Joseph. The Hero’s Journey. New York: Harper, 1990, p. 66.
