What Are We, by the Way?
By Mohammad Ashraf Chaudhry
Pittsburg , CA
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments: in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing”.
- Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws
What is man? Is he inherently good, or is he born wicked? Islam says that man can be better than the Angels and worse than the animals. Adam did commit a sin of disobedience, but he repented. So his eviction from the Garden of Paradise was not a punishment, but an opportunity for him to bring in play the element of creativity which God had put in his Fitra. His potential to be on either side of good or bad is more inter-linked with his own conduct, and less with his intrinsic nature. He is not born as sinful, but he has a tendency to commit sins. His actions basically define what he is. It makes sense. But it does not answer the question, which is, what precisely man is.
Let us first bemuse ourselves with some simple anecdotes. It once happened so in Trinidad. People saw a man being led through the town to the jail with his hands tied behind his back, and one of his ankles chained to the waste belt of the officer. Near the village square, a neighbor of this man recognized him and said, “What have you done that you’re in chains and sentenced to jail?”
The chained man sighed and said, “ I picked up a rope I found on the ground”. His neighbor said, “You poor man. There is more injustice in the courts than I ever imagined”. The man said, “Please tell this to the officer”. The man in chains had spoken the truth, but it was only half the truth. The officer informed the neighbor. It is true that the man in chains was being punished for picking up a rope, but what he was not telling was that on the other end of the rope there was a cow tied to it as well.
Here is another one: A boy, like yours and mine, one day came running into the house for a snack after school. He gave a warm hug to his mother. “How was your day?” his mother asked. The boy grinned. “I got a hundred on my math and history tests!”
This is what every parent yearns to hear. “That’s wonderful,” the jubilant mother said. “We’ll celebrate with a special supper tonight.”
A week later, the report card came which told a different story. “How could you get an F in history and a D in math when you didn’t miss anything on your tests last week? Did they catch you cheating? I certainly hope you weren’t telling me lies!”
“Oh, no ”, answered the boy confidently. “I‘d never cheat. And as sure as I didn’t cheat. I told you the truth”.
The boy had gotten a hundred, no doubt, on his math and history tests. But it was a combined score of 100 for both tests - a 60 on the math test and a 40 on the history test.
Whenever a chance occurs, we as humans, (adults as well as children), try to trick others, by hiding the whole truth tied to our conduct. So the question that begins to pique the mind is: “Are human beings basically corrupt, and prone towards evil? Or they are basically good, but are corrupted by the environments in which they live? And these are not new questions. Let us try to find some answers with relation to what is happening around us here and in Pakistan.
Man and Modern democracies
The foundation of modern democracies rests on the concept of a Social Contract into which humans have willingly entered to forego some of their liberties for the sake of living in peace. This assumption presupposes that man is prone towards mischief.
The discussion became heated during the Age of Enlightenment in Europe in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, and it was triggered by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who contended that man is fundamentally an untrustworthy being. He is corrupt to the extent that he has to protect himself from his fellow beings just as the beasts do. He finds it necessary to lock his doors against burglars and he even locks his chest against thieving members of his own household. He is basically wicked, self-centered and brutish.
The story of man as a corrupt being does not end here. According to Hobbes, what is worst about man is that he is quarrelsome and belligerent as well. Except for the brief intervals between quarrels, he is constantly at fight with others. Hobbes assigns three basic reasons for his cynical views on man: man’s aggressiveness; his distrustfulness of others; and his thirst for glory and fame.
Man is aggressive, according to him, because he is in competition with others; he is distrustful of others because he is scared all the time about his safety. He always feels the need for self-preservation. Thirdly, he is wily, cunning, and diplomatic and an expert in hiding the whole truth (as we saw in the above cited two examples) because he is hungry for dominance over others, is crazy about self-aggrandizement.
So man, acting on the golden principle of “do unto others that which you would have them do to you” enters into the Social Contract just to avoid the Jungle Laws in which might is right. The Social Contract is “that a man be willing for the sake of peace, to lay down his natural right and be content to limit his liberties to the extent that others are willing to curb theirs”. This Social Contract may mean a government or an agency that oversees that no transgression takes place.
Another big name that emerged in this discussion on man and society is that of John Locke (1632-1704). He holds a positive view about man and is less cynical. He believes that people are not ingrained or programmed to do wrong. They may act wrong, but they have the potential to learn from experience and improve themselves. They are reasonable beings, and as such, they have the natural ability to govern their own affairs and to look after the welfare of the society. They do not need one with a Divine right to rule over them. All people, he contended, are born free and equal with three rights to enjoy: right of life; right of liberty and right of property. The purpose of the government should be to protect these rights. If it fails to do so, then people have a right to overthrow it. (To be continued)
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