Dining time was an event in itself. It was an occasion of palaver and powwow.
Since the first night in boarding school when we sat across each other for dinner, we boarding school-ers have engaged in discussions and debates.
Many of them revolved around our Houses and their superiority over the other houses. Most of the discussions however, were light hearted and silly.
Some people retain their curiosity into adulthood. They probe deeper into the seemingly obvious, for they can see through the façade.
Where are these people? Did any of them go to SV? How many philosophers do you have in your class? Are any of them girls? What are the questions they ask, and do they provide answers to them?
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Nightingale Daniel from the class of 2007 – Silver Jubilee batch – has been asking questions for as long as she can remember – questions that seem to have ambiguous answers, questions that have no answers as of yet, and questions that can only be answered by other questions. Occasionally, she also provides her thoughts on some of these questions on her blog: https://randomthoughtsflow.wordpress.com/
Written in a question and answer format, she takes the reader through a light philosophy class through the experience of reading her blog. Here are some excerpts from her reflections on Good and Evil:
As I was looking at the world and pondering of its many evil things, it made me wonder how mankind seems so immersed in evil. If we take a look at the news, it’s a horrifying picture of how evil seems to rule the world. But how about looking at things in a different perspective or a balanced perspective?
To begin with, it might look like mankind is born evil. But think about it plain and hard.
When you look at a new born baby, all you can see is innocence in it’s purest form.
The baby grows up to learn to walk, talk etc through imitation. And so as time goes by, it learns evil things. Evil is learned, not born with. Evil is not in our instincts. Think about it. If you look at extreme cases of evil like a serial killer, there is always some damage done to them when they were really young.
And of all the living creatures in this planet, humankind is the only one with morals and the ability to differentiate between good and evil. And whenever a human is born and not damaged at all or to the minimum, they always lean towards the good end and not the evil.
To conclude, it seems only fair to think that the humankind is inherently good. Evil only seems to be an external influence (that’s a whole another story on a different level) present in this universe and cannot be denied.
Humans, when broken and damaged may end up functioning evil. Evil deeds are the fruits of broken souls.