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The Pressure To Be Good

Deepak Chopra - May 09, 2008

In a recent interview for his new book on democracy, Bill Moyers presented the bleakest face of goodness that one could imagine. He is too gentle to mount a jeremiad, yet Moyers' recent career has been one long lamentation. He says, "Politics can create problems that politics can't solve," citing the frightening rise of lobbyists, special interests, and ideological factions. The moneyed classes ride roughshod over the poor.

Political power slides into lucrative influence peddling the minute a senator, congressman, or president leaves office. None of these genies can be put back into the bottle, as he sees it. The forces of greed and corruption are too strong, too deeply entrenched. Democracy has crumpled in the grip of dark forces. What remains of Moyers' brand of Sixties liberalism? Only a residual feeling in people's hearts that a society should be decent, good, and fair.

I bring this up to pose a larger question. Is the pressure to be good powerful enough to counter the urge to be selfish? Essentially, Moyers stands for the politics of altruism, which can be traced back to the Great Depression. With an entire society buckling under mass economic distress, allegiances were formed across old boundaries. Giving a helping hand became a political ideal, beginning with welfare and jobs programs under FDR, ultimately culminating in the civil rights movement under JFK. Altruism depends upon doing good, seeing the needs of another person as equal to your own. The pressure to be good gets turned into political reality.

Yet many psychologists (famously led by Freud) take a bleaker view of human nature. In the balancing act between the forces of good and the forces of darkness -- fear, aggression, selfishness, greed, sexual rapacity, and revenge -- they see an inner war. Goodness may win temporary victories, yet the darkness exerts constant pressure that may prove irresistible. Nazism became the satanic exemplar of this ever-present danger, and to liberals of Moyers' generation, Reaganism fits the same mold in a milder way but one no less alarming. Reaganism took what was most worrisome in human nature and painted it with a smile.

I think the bleakness of this view discounts how powerful the pressure to be good actually is. One aspect of goodness is tolerance. Once altruism had its day, liberalism deflated in America -- there simply were no big crusades left to fight on the social justice front. (Not to mention the effect of a backlash against drugs, crimes, immigrants, the poor and racial minorities.) With little left undone on its 1930s agenda, liberalism fell into a period of passive toleration for the right wing. Other societies like Japan have governing elites controlled by wealthy business interests that seamlessly merge with the political elite. Perhaps America would become such a country, allowing the free market to rule everything, converting influence peddling from a felony into business as usual. The problem with this laissez-faire attitude is that it left goodness out of the equation.

In the past decade we have experimented with amoral toleration, and it hasn't worked. The poor have grown poorer; racial divisions have been cemented in place; health care and an aging population pose enormous burdens. Moyers' concept of the good-hearted citizen has started to come to life. Young people in particular are aroused by finding solutions that cross political divides -- they seek fixes where the whole society bands together to help everyone. This isn't pure naivete by any means. Other societies based on rational goodness are succeeding: Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Holland, for example. The big difference is that those countries are homogeneous, while America bursts at the seams with divisive forces. Goodness must find new ways to cope with these pressures. The enemy isn't evil so much as gaps: between rich and poor, churchgoers and non-churchgoers, one race and another, the native born and immigrants.

Rather than lamenting the end of the politics of altruism, we should focus on how goodness is morphing into something new. For example,

--The so-called "millennials" -- young people born since 1982 -- are tending against conservative values.
--They are more blind to gender than previous generations. Men accept women as equals in the workplace, for example.
--They freely mix across racial lines, making friends and dating without regard to color.
-- Compromise and toleration are rising values among young voters, who see themselves as much less tied to rigid party allegiance.
-- Charitable giving and volunteerism are strong forces in society, and by some measures they are on the rise (discounting a recent falling off in giving traceable to the poor economy).

Pollsters tell us that over 80% of responders feel that America is heading in the wrong direction. If that number represents mass discontent, resentment, and hatred of "the other," deep trouble lies ahead. But it could stand for another kind of discontent, the kind that seeks new solutions and creative change. In essence a second culture has evolved in America that marches under the banner of goodness, and even though it appears weak compared to the anti-democratic inertia that holds sway in Washington, we may be at a turning point. The experiment in amoral tolerance has fizzled, while the pressure to be good never lets up.

www.deepakchopra.com

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Posted by Deepak Chopra at May 9, 2008 01:14 PM

  
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Go for it America. Be Good.

"...the pressure to be good never lets up." ~ Deepak Chopra

The new consciousness is expanding into the world, the old consciousness is dying, and it is gasping and lashing out in the throes of death.

THE WORLD OF FICTION IS COMING TO AN END

The finite games resulting in detriment to the many, in favor of a few, are being canceled.

A new “collective authority” will replace the current authority, nations of participatory self government, void of the weakness of individuals that create disparity, imbued with Socratic dialog, and transparency so that the truth can be discerned and the new foundation built upon it.

Those of the old consciousness will parish with it, with a new life, a new beginning for those that evolve.

Even now one plots to cast them into the pit.

One intends not to take the bread off of any plate, but to ensure that bread is to be found on every plate.

“Goodness” is a natural inherent part of the new consciousness induced by the resulting benefit understood through wisdom.


What is good?

Please help us layman to know this.
As good varies for each and every individual.
It also varies for same individual at various times.
Good may be different for an animal.
Good may be different for a actor.

Please help me to know what is good.

During a war thousand of people will be killed.

A government would submit to the media a photograph showing a group of soldiers playing with children all over the world to prove that war is good.

What is good?

God please please help me to know WHAT IS GOOD?

God with a double O.

Dear Life Coach, your silly, you know what feels good, you always have. When you see love in peoples faces, in war time or not, you know this. You feel goodness its undeniable.

Tammy is right, feelings are the indicators. No need for a fictional debate as to what is good and bad. We all know the pleasant feelings induced by sharing, just as we know the uncomfortable feelings when we covet and hoard. Feelings don’t lie. Of course the pharmaceutical companies would have us take drugs to obscure our true feelings so that we can continue to live a lie.

Hi Deepak,

How are you this merry day of May? I hope that you are taking time to smell the flowers -- lilac here in the Northwest is divine! I can now say this is a "merry" day because I just passed through some stormy weather. It's always a blessing to feel sunny and outgoing again.

In response to your post I want to say that we are not only human -- we are also angelic. This uplifting spirit gets us through troubled times and stormy weather.

Stormy weather brings a selfishness in that one has to go within and remove oneself from the world. It's a self-absorption and one feels sad and alone. And yet it's part of the whole emotional cyle and wheel.

Your post speaks of a different kind of selfishness -- one that is based on disconnection. This creates sadness and aloneness as well. The difference is that this latter selfishness stays stuck. It doesn't move any where new because of ego's disconnect.

Angelic identity lifts us up to see the whole and in seeing we move along the wheel of life. A natural effect is to reach out to others. Reaching out and connection is our nature. It's the expansion that follows contraction. Outward push following inward pull.

Human/angel being is who we are and it is what turns the tide. We witness it in a dark world (both inner and outer)...and this witnessing deserves to be reported and broadcasted.

We acknowledge both dark and light. The missing piece - light - now gets highlighted in its circulation.

Love this merry day in May,

Trish~~

Of course there is going to come additional pressure to be good, the instigator beyond our control.

Since disaster brings out the goodness in us and causes us to reach out and bond dropping many ego impediments, the petty fictions become meaningless, and disaster is a great equalizer among men, it might be a good thing for our evolution. Of course the wise drop the ego impediments and discard the petty fictions to anticipate a disaster and prepare so they can adapt.

True, disaster can bring out the worst in some people, but in the majority it brings out the best.

When one prepares, and anticipates what often would have been a disaster becomes an inconvenience and a focus of collective attention and adjustment. Helping one’s neighbors is an investment in one’s future good fortune in the event of a disaster or strenuous situation.
Speaking of disaster the world has what two years, maybe less, to switch from oil as the dominate energy source?

I am always looking for data sets that could indicate energy increases and acceleration of such increase. There is a new data set; well it is actually an old data set that became important and meaningful. Microseisms are caused by large storm waves crashing into the shore that transfers energy to the land, and the resulting microseisms travel for thousands of miles. They are picked up on Seismometers that monitor earthquakes. These smaller vibrations caused by ocean storm waves were until recently considered noise. We have many years of these recordings that create a record of change.

The data examined showed a "systematic increase" in the number of storm-caused microseisms over the last two decades. An increase of about 6%, with an acceleration near the end. This data would represent only a small portion of the kinetic energy spectrum. Factoring other items to get the whole system picture we may actually be seeing a 30% increase in total system energy and based on the acceleration this energy increase could be 60% in two years. This would increase the system turbulence and the rate of change, which might mean a doubling of storm power and a tripling of vortex energy especially the micro vortices.


A long while back here and elsewhere I wrote the piece “1 Degree Counts.” Many would think what is the big deal over a few degrees over a number of years? Not much as it relates to your individual skin surface experience.

Water changes “state” at 32 + 1 degree from solid ice to flowing liquid which sets molecules into motion; releasing stored kinetic energy. Water is able to convert gravitational energy into new energy forms and vectors. It is still not known, the volume of effect if any, on the total energy in the system and how much is transferred to other forms from the change of state occurring in massive amounts of water.

This one degree change can increase the energy absorption factor. Over a large region this one degree is a huge “change of state” that further increases the rate of change, resulting in a snowballing effect. So we have an increase of kinetic energy and an increase of photon energy, which combined produce an increase in phonons, vibration energy.

It is not entirely clear where the additional energy is coming from of if it is one source or multiple sources increasing in concert.

This new energy must be something that we do not monitor or know about yet. Known sources of energy don’t add up as expected to account for the increases.

Taking all the numbers and analysis we would expect to need to migrate 30 – 60 % of the population within the next 2 – 4 years. Could you imagine migrating 60% of the population? If we do this we would need to rebuild in the new locations. Common sense would have us realize this and take this future required investment and invest it in the present to build “sustainable adaptive decentralized” infrastructure in place eliminating some of the future inconvenience and need for migration.

Just maybe if we simply stop claiming there is a shortage of energy, and harness the free flowing energy all around us and the universe will quit sending us so much.

If we are to succeed we must transcend the ego impediments which stifle our evolution and adaptation, and disrupt natural flow. This is why it is imparitive that we embrace the Art of Advanced Being.

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