Letter from the Editor
The Notions of Right and Wrong: Good and Evil, and Beyond Shah Nazar Seyyed Ali Kianfar, Ph.D.
“There exists a field beyond all notions of right and wrong, I will meet you there.”
– Rumi
In reviewing the notions of right and wrong or good and evil, we notice that the human being faces two kinds of energies in this regard: two forces of good and evil. These energies are born with the birth of human nature; good is rooted in the praiseworthy and moral notions of justice, rights, unity, balance, wisdom, love, compassion, and so forth; while evil may be rooted in a deeper state of selfish desire for self-promotion and power at any cost, while ignoring the need, honor, rights, and peace for the human family. If we look at the natural mixture of the elements of fire, water, wind, and soil, we may realize that we are offered a range of information inherited from generations, eras and cultures. Some are fueled with constant competition, greed, jealousy, war, and bloodshed–all in the name or for the cause of survival; a battle ground between the consumer and that which is being consumed. Encyclopedia Britannica writes that the “Human beings are anatomically similar and related to the great apes but are distinguished by a more highly developed brain and a resultant capacity for articulate speech and abstract reasoning.” So perhaps the
11
Sufism: An Inquiry Vol XIX, No. 1
human being, with a more highly developed brain, and a capacity for more coherent speech and reasoning, is expected to also develop the notions of right and wrong as a way for survival of cultures, nations, ideas, and so forth. Perhaps morality, or lack of it, is only found within human cultures. In the animal kingdom, for example, no one is looking for justice in the story of a fox that catches a hen and eats her for lunch! We do not portray the fox as guilty and the hen as innocent; we see these incidents as forces of nature–fox is set to hunt and hen is set to feed. No one seeks justice for this act of harm, because we accept this as one of the many ongoing rules of animal nature and animal kingdom. And we are not surprised if at some point the fox is eaten by a larger animal with sharper teeth. These creatures of nature may not be subject to the notions of good or evil; religions are not for them, as far as we know. They may follow different sets of rules not relevant to human-made logic and systems of reasoning. Research by scientists, scholars and philosophers about the root of human being is that human being is walking on an extended bridge between abstract rea-
