What are points, lines, and planes?

If one has good faith in psychology, then the reason why the the good should be rewarded while the evil should be punished comes from the ideas of reinforcement, punishment, and operant conditioning.  Essentially, operant conditioning is increasing or decreasing the probability of a certain behavior due to the effects the behavior has.  Reinforcement increases the probability of a certain behavior occurring, and punishment decreases the probability of a certain behavior occurring.  Thus, if the good are rewarded, the probability that they will repeat their acts of goodness will increase, and if the bad are punished, the probability that they will repeat their acts of evil will decrease.  Overall, the amount of good behavior increases.  Humans are naturally hedonistic creatures, seeking pleasure and satisfaction in all that they do.  If good behavior is the goal, then there should obviously be some sort of reward that gives humans pleasure and make then want to achieve good behavior.  Operant conditioning works because humans strive towards happiness.

Biologically speaking, the meaning of life is to create more life, and humans should act ethically to increase the probability of the species surviving.  It is the natural order of things.  If everyone were to kill each other, which can be considered as the epitome of evil behavior, nobody would be left to carry on the human species.  Even if one person was the ultimate victor over all other humans, it does takes two to create life.

However, this is not the only reason why humans should demonstrate good moral behavior; there is some aspect of personal development involved.  Somehow, humans are born with a moral compass that tells one what is right and wrong, what is good and bad, and when there is not somebody, such as God or a friend, to tell one what he or she has done wrong, the moral compass informs the individual, and the individual may punish himself.  So, even if one is punished for acting ethically, the moral compass and one’s inner conscience will provide the reinforcement and confirmation that what one did is right.  Job, even through his punishment, asserts his goodness because his moral compass tells him so.  The aspect of satisfying one’s own moral compass, not one of another, motivates man to act ethically even in face of punishment.  Psychology suggests that acts of good behavior decrease with punishment, but innate characteristics of man can override learned behaviors.  To listen to one’s moral compass provides the personal development that is qualified as “good”.  In simpler terms, good leads to more good and bad leads to more bad.  The world needs people to continue on the good, which is the function of the moral compass.

Even though I can speculate as to why humans strive toward good behavior and try to reduce evil behavior, I cannot say why good is good and why bad is bad. The concepts of good and bad are almost like the “givens” of life, similar to the three undefined terms in geometry - points, lines, and planes.  One cannot define good and bad without it being circular, and I will not attempt to define them.

So if good behavior is desirable, why does God punish Job, a man who has been good his entire life?  It is less of an issue of divine retribution but of divine power.  God wishes to maintain his power and wants to assert his power over Job, to tell him that he is just a man living on Earth while God has traversed the path to heaven and death.  He brings out the behemoth and the leviathan to show the control He has over the world, that even these huge creatures are under his control.  Because God initially punishes Job, he can come down in a whirlwind and tell Job how limited his human perspective is and how unlimited His perspective is.  What applies in the human world does not apply in the animal world; God shows Job and his friends that He has allowed the lion to kill other animals because it is part of the natural life cycle, even if it does involve brutally killing other animals and drinking their blood.  Human morality, on the other hand, dictates that one shall not kill another.  God shows Job the limits of his knowledge by spending a significant portion of his discourse chiding Job for his misuse of imagery and the faults in his reasonings, such as with light and darkness.  Humans, unfortunately, cannot know everything, and God wants them to know it.

I want retrospect in the present.

The story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden is perhaps one of the most well-known stories around the world.  Retold again and again, many people have misinterpreted the story or made assumptions about it, drawing conclusions that have no concrete basis in the text itself.  In relation to the actual story of Adam and Eve (the one found in the Bible), Emily Dickinson, in her poem “Eden is that old-fashioned House”, describes the life Adam and Even had in the Garden of Eden and the departure from Eden.  Adam and Eve, who live in Eden everyday, are innocent and ignorant, two characteristics that comes from a lack of knowledge.  They live unsuspectingly of evil and sin, not recognizing their nakedness and lacking the ability to foresee the consequences of eating the fruit off of the tree of knowledge.  Eden is a place where they “dwell in every day / without suspecting [their] abode” (ln 2-3).

When Eve eats the fruit and then gives the fruit to Adam to eat, they leave their state of innocence and gain knowledge that cannot be unlearned, thus marking their inability to return to their former state.  Adam and Eve leave Eden without any conflict and “[saunter] from the Door” (ln 6), and due to their development, they can “discover it no more” (ln 8).  They would not be able to walk around Eden naked; instead, they would want to wear the clothes that God made for them.  Eve will not be able un-become the mother of all the living and unlearn the pain of childbirth, and both Adam and Even will never lose the knowledge of good and evil.  They will never be able to return to a state of blissful innocence in which they are not aware that they are not aware of something.

As a child, I was not aware of what my life was like in my home.  I did not know a life in which my parents were not there to teach me, to make decisions for me, and to perform tasks that I could not do myself.  My parents made every decision that affected my life, such as initially choosing to sign me up for soccer and basketball or setting aside money for my future.  God set the rules for Adam and Eve, in a way making their decisions for them, and they lived in blissful innocence, as I did as a child and am right now, even if it is not so blissful anymore.

While I will not “[saunter] from the Door”, in a casual and relaxed manner, I will leave my home without much thought, having known for a years that after high school, I will move away to a different city and live separately from my parents.  I can guess what my home means to me, but I will not truly know the significance of living with my family until I move away.  However, the terrible thing is, once I move away, I can never return.  Adam and Eve, while living in Eden, do not recognize their great living conditions until they are forced to leave; everyday they live without any worries and have an endless supply of fruit to eat.

A great majority of people have encountered at least one person who talks about their high school days and their college adventures.  I always thought that these people had such remarkable things happen to them, and I lived a bland life with no incredible stories to recount if I were to ever share anything about me.  As I come to the end of my high school career, I am starting to wonder if it is the notion that one cannot return to being a teenager that makes a simple event, such as stopping at a truck stop on a band field trip, into a significant and remarkable event.  One does not recognize the uniqueness of Adam and Eve’s living situation until they are forced to go.  I anticipate that the unsuspecting stories of my childhood and teenage years are the ones I am going to reminisce about as I grow older and depart from my teenage years.

Perhaps what I am most afraid of is not that my home will change or my parents will change, but that I will change.  Because I have lived my entire life under the roof of my parents, I am afraid that living out on my own will alter me.  I will lose the quirky things that characterize me, habits that I have acquired because I have lived in such a secure environment for 18 years.  These little things somehow make me feel like I have a connection with my parents, a connection that I perceive is weakening between my sister, who is in college, and my parents and that I fear I will lose.  When my sister comes home, she is different; she does not accept the strange things we do as a family, criticizing the family traditions that she used to partake in.  Even though I know that our family dynamic has adjusted to her absence, it seems as though she is the one who has changed the most, not us, because she now lives with other people, and I do not want to be another misfit in my family when I return.  I may not outwardly show it, but I like my family members and prefer to be like them rather than adopt the customs of the others.  I know change is inevitable, but I would like it if I could avoid it for a while.

Ender's Game ! ! !

For those who have read Ender's Game, this is too great not to share.

At MIT.  Source of photos.