If goodness does not happen naturally but is brought about as a result of love and submission to the rule of law, how are we to manage love, being so given to cruelty, asks Rebecca West
Rebecca West, the well known journalist and novelist, gives voice to something all of us feel but perhaps have not been able to articulate so well. “When I was young, I understood neither the difficulty of love nor the importance of law. I grew up in a world of rebellion, and I was a rebel.” West hits the nail on the head when she says emphatically with a slight hint of indignation, “I thought human beings were naturally good, and that their personal relations were bound to work out well, and that the law was a clumsy machine dealing harshly with people who would cease to offend as soon as we got rid of poverty. And we were all quite sure that human nature would soon be perfect.”
The innocence of believing all people as good is the first impression of humankind as a whole. But what are the conflicts that wrest a human away from being good?
Answers, West, “...I see as the main problem of my life, the balancing of competitive freedoms. This involves a series of very delicate calculations, and you can never stop making them. This principle has to be applied in personal relations, and everybody knows that the Ready Reckoner to use there is love; but it takes a lot of real talent to use love effectively.” If that is a sentence, a thought to live life by, here comes another: “The principle has to be applied in social relations also, and there the Ready Reckoner is the Rule of Laws, political scientists call it; a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honoured, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.”
So much to keep love in place! As ironical as it sounds, West continues, “I believe in liberty. I feel it is necessary for the health of the world that every man shall be able to say and do what he wishes and what is within his power, for each human being has a unique contribution to make toward our understanding of life, because every man is himself unique...So he must be able to tell us something which could not be learned from any other source. I wish I believed this only when I am writing about politics, but I believe it also in my capacity as a woman with a family and friends...it’s not just a matter of giving everybody their head. It happens that if you let a man say and do what he likes, there comes a point when he wants to say or do something which interferes with the liberty of someone else to say or do what he likes.”
As she grew older and reported on many crimes including World War II she admits, “I realise now that what’s good on this earth does not happen as a matter of course; it has to be created and maintained by the effort of love and by submission to the Rule of Law. But how are we to manage to love, being so given to cruelty?” There is anguish in her voice. And she asks the most pertinent question of today: How do we preserve the law from being corrupted by our corruption, since it’s a human institution?
“As I grow older, I find more and more as a matter of actual experience that there is a God, and I know that religion offers a technique for getting in touch with Him, but I find that technique very difficult. I hope I am working a way to the truth through my writing, but I also know that I must write to the thought of God in my mind for it to have any value. It’s not easy; indeed, it’s much more difficult than being a rebel. But I remind myself that if I wanted life to be easy, I should have got born on a different universe.
Web link
http://thisibelieve.org/essay/17089/
via The Hindu Newspaper http://www.thehindu.com/life-and-style/society/article3811808.ece
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