Actually, the quote is from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
This may sound good on the surface. A dying flower may look sad to some and to others have a certain kind of beauty. Some people might think it is bad that flowers have to die at all. Others think that their very ephemeral nature makes them even more precious in their beauty.
But when it comes to human behavior, we must have standards of what is good and bad. Cruelty, brutality, bullying, child molestation, and all manner of torturous behaviors are not good and cannot be justified by simply saying that “good” and “bad” is merely in the mind of the individual.
Intentional cruelty that damages another living being and inflicts physical and psychological pain can never be called good, no matter how many mind games we play. We can play clever semantic games and twist the language around so that nothing means anything anymore. But we are fooling ourselves if we believe that there is nothing right or wrong, good or bad.
The karmic consequences of intentional human debasement are severe as well. Let’s not play intellectual games with moral relativity. There are things that go beyond the human mind and its limited thinking capacity.
This may sound good on the surface. A dying flower may look sad to some and to others have a certain kind of beauty. Some people might think it is bad that flowers have to die at all. Others think that their very ephemeral nature makes them even more precious in their beauty.
But when it comes to human behavior, we must have standards of what is good and bad. Cruelty, brutality, bullying, child molestation, and all manner of torturous behaviors are not good and cannot be justified by simply saying that “good” and “bad” is merely in the mind of the individual.
Intentional cruelty that damages another living being and inflicts physical and psychological pain can never be called good, no matter how many mind games we play. We can play clever semantic games and twist the language around so that nothing means anything anymore. But we are fooling ourselves if we believe that there is nothing right or wrong, good or bad.
The karmic consequences of intentional human debasement are severe as well. Let’s not play intellectual games with moral relativity. There are things that go beyond the human mind and its limited thinking capacity.
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