The Spiral

You’ve seen it, in others. You are at least part of one, if not more. It’s not made of something touchable, although it’s a definitive part of each and everyone of us. It has the ability of driving you further or pushing you deeper. It can go slower or steeper, only you can turn backwards and start climbing or fall back and plunge faster into descent. It’s the main characteristic of our modern society, especially in the modern, post 2nd World War times. The ascending spiral was the goal of the ancients, but the descending one got embraced by the youth of our days.

Let’s think for a second about a simple topic: the way people got used to accept new things in their life. In the primitive times, humans went round and round in circles, resuming to the basic activities required for survival, such as gathering food. Then fire came into play: the humanity leaped one level, and the circle bent into a slightly upward spiral. Fire was put to good use or bad use, steepening or lowering the spiral as the Homo Sapiens evolved in wisdom or degenerated into conflicts. The conflict itself had split the single spiral that was before into three, the spiral of survival, the spiral of knowledge and the spiral of power. The last two were derived from the spiral of survival, but their purpose rendered them distinctively. Survival became dependent on knowledge, for the time period in which life had to accept the progress in order to evolve. Power became dependent on knowledge, transforming the information from knowledge into force and influence, thus corrupting the benevolent nature of man and plucking out yet another spiral, that of morality. And, at that very moment, these 4 spirals ceased to evolve in the same direction. An action with the purpose of reaching a higher level in one lead inexorably to a descent in other. And man stopped and thought about which way to choose.

Should I care more about my survival? Then, isn’t it that power can help me assure my well being? Yes, a very tempting thought. Why give a f**k about the others around you? Ones that chose the way of survival often found out that it’s quite easy to prey upon the weak and obey the ones that have more power than you. They realized that survival was the game in which lie, deceit, corruption and vile actions granted the ability to sneak past the hard parts of life. Morality was obsolete when knowledge and power had to take the lead, and the survivors plunged so deep down the moral spiral, that they ended up being consumed by power and rendered slaves to it.

Knowledge was the hope of the ancient scholars. They craved to learn more about the mysteries of the surrounding world, their dream was to unravel the fabric of nature and use its secrets only to make other discoveries possible. For them, survival was a matter of how much you knew about the world, it wasn’t a goal by itself. Power came as a peaceful derivative of knowledge, used only to share and teach the others how to think, act, and behave civilized. Morality was something of a sacred nature, being held most dear and considered divine and immaterial, unreachable by thought, existing as a congregation of supreme ideals in the world of ideas. But knowledge wasn’t always beneficial. Many discoveries lead to the evolution of the military ideas, and knowledge started to slip down hill when survival became more important. And down the moral spiral they went, again…

Power was often seen as the perfect solution to all problems. It ensures the survival, forcefully brings knowledge required for more power and makes you immune to moral issues that can cause trouble. Now, power is seen differently, as each individual possesses his own degree of perception: power through political influence, power through money and property, power through fear. The most illusory of these three is the second; many have fallen to the luscious life of luxury and decadence, they believed with their hearts and minds that the amount of money they spent to maintain their social status is the very symbol of wealth and financial strength. The spiral of power is the steepest of them all: as you go further up, you’ll desire even more power, it gets addictive, like a drug. And as all drugs it will slowly, but surely, start the decay of your moral fabric, until you collapse and never ever return to what you’ve been before you tasted the sweetness of its deceptions. It may lead you to death much faster than any other spiral, contrary to the instinct of self-preservation. And the descent from it is far more mentally depressive…

We end at the spiral mostly forgotten by the others. Morality was promoted by religion. It showed the way to interact with your fellow man without imposing your will upon him, without demanding his obedience, without tricking him. It demanded only the following of basic moral principles that ensured the cohesion between followers and the supreme being which they worshiped. And that’s where the weakness appeared. So many people were eager to believe in something as long as it gave them the illusion of safety, that they blindly accepted immoral actions and behaviors imposed by certain groups with certain interests. Religion ceased the moral ascension and shifted to commercialism, fanaticism and persecution. The corruptive influence of power extended her leash upon the holy members of churches as well, making them realize that religion was also a good way to keep people in line. Fear of losing the soul and being punished for the sins commited in the mortal life determined the mass to follow the moral conduit, not out of an inner impulse but out of fright. And yet again, morality died with a scream.

Is it worth speaking of morality these days? Is there any left, outside the holy monasteries on top of the mountains?