The disremembered invisible reign

It was a while back when I had a discussion with a friend about whether humans are born bad and then imbibe good qualities or are born good and then acquire bad qualities. I’ve read articles that talk either way, so maybe it is not a clearly known fact. Today I got the time to reflect on it again.

If we’re supposed to learn moral ways of doing things from others, it means we were born bad and then try to grow good. But if you ever watched a kid grow, you would’ve been intrigued by the way the kid started to tell lies. It would've become obvious to you that nature’s adaptation process has touched the kid too. So, are we born bad and then we become good or are we born good and then we become bad?

One argument can be that if something comes naturally and easily to us, that’s probably our original self. Vices come naturally, but virtues have to be practised. If you’re someone who loses temper at the drop of a hat or someone who loses patience for every small botheration or someone who tries to procrastinate as much as possible or for that matter someone with any vice (I assume this includes all of us without exception), you’ll know what I’m talking about. But then you might not have had the vice to begin with, you would have acquired it as you grew. So, the question still remains unanswered.

Another argument can be related to chaos theory. One thing that I both admonish and admire about nature is its chaos. Though every single thing in nature tries to live in anarchy, there is a beautiful control that exists – the invisible reign of nature. As much as renowned philosophers might want to call this anarchy the free will of nature, self-proclaimed philosophers of the modern era (I think this again includes all of us) would want to call vices in people as free will too, especially in an attempt to support the existence of vices in themselves. But I think we willfully or ignorantly forget to correlate the invisible reign of nature to the invisible reign of conscience. Or maybe we tune our consciences on the fly, heavily biased for ephemeral gains, satisfaction and happiness.

Whatever may be the argument, most of the above accusals can be sanctified if we just take a moment to step back and perceive our own invisible reign of conscience. But where is the time to perceive conscience in an era where we don’t have time to even sleep well. I’m sorry, I think I asked for too much.