Hallo, this is Dr. Bin Song in the course of “Foundations of Morality” at Washington College.

Perfectionism drives people to demand the congruence of their standards of ideal human living with objective realities; once failed to witness it, they may start to damn themselves, condemn other people and curse the world.

However, there is another thinking fallacy which lies at the directly opposite side of perfectionism, but could wrench people’s mind with no less pains and sufferings. In terms of philosophical therapy, we call this fallacy “awfulizing,” viz., just as perfectionists think there could exist perfect things in the world, people that awfulize tend to believe once something bad happens, it could be the worst thing that one can ever experience in the world. In other words,

awfulizing makes us exaggerate the severity of bad events to such an unbearable degree that we become terrified, horrified, and awed with little remaining vigor and stamina to bounce back.

If these perceived awful events happen to the past of people’s life, they may become extremely sad and depressed whenever these occurrences return to their mind. However, if these events are anticipated to take place in people’s future life, it may cause an even more debilitating emotion of anxiety. Regardless, once we entitle the term “the worst thing in the world” with a referent in reality, its petrifying effect would crush us to a bottomless and hopeless abyss, as I said, with no further vigor to bounce back.

Nevertheless, is there really such a thing called “the worst thing in the world”?

• A man loses his job in his middle career may be very bad. But what if he loses his job and gets divorced? Isn’t it even worse?
• A man loses his job in his middle career and gets divorced may be very bad, but what if one’s life, family, job and property all get wiped out by a tsunami? Isn’t it even worse?
• But if you think gratuitous, seemingly meaningless death incurred by a natural disaster is the worst thing that could ever happen to human life, what if a wrongly charged, innocent young man was constrained into his prison cell, and hence, got mistreated, tortured and exploited for all his remaining life? This prisoner does not even have a chance of living his life!

Eventually, if you think any of these examples as the worst thing that could ever happen, please just do some addition: if you add any of them to another, then you will technically get a “worse” thing, and this process can continue forever! Therefore, ontologically speaking, there is no much base to use the term “the worst thing in the world”; employing whatever standards you judge things as good or bad, you will get to continually add items on your list of “the worst thing in the world” without a stop.

Moreover, the phrase “the worst thing in the world” is not only non-realistic in the sense that it lacks a definite reference in reality. It is also unreasonable because it is based upon an assumption that there is such a thing in the world which is purely, absolutely, and without-any-remainderly bad and evil. However, is there really such a purely and hopelessly evil thing in the world? Isn’t the fact that whether we can find something positive within the negativity is entirely up to our own perception, imagination and philosophy? In other words, the worst thing to happen in people’s life is what you think as the worst. If you do not have any reason to perceive anything as purely and absolutely evil, you would not encounter such a thing in your life.

In the following, let me use two examples from the philosophical tradition of Confucianism to explain why such a philosophical approach to confront evil and hence, to live a perfectible good human life is desirable.

To address the issue of the origin of human goodness, Mencius (372-290 B.C.E) took a metaphysical approach. He thinks every ordinary human being is innately good, and hence, is born with some incipient moral sprouts within their heart. The example he furnished is that every ordinary human being, regardless of color, country, culture, wealth, etc., would spontaneously have a feeling of alarm and fright, viz., a feeling of commiseration, when they see a baby about to fall into a well. For Mencius, to live a good human life, humans just need to continually nurture and enlarge this incipient moral spout to affirm and promote the value of “life” or “vitality” within a continually becoming and generating cosmos. For Mencius, this is how humans manifest the constantly life-generating power of the cosmos in the human world, and thus, serve and strengthen the being of the entire universe in a distinctively human way.

However, even if evil is explained by Mencius as the lack of human will to nurture their innate goodness, and thus, as being deficient of a solid ontological status, bad things indeed happened to Mencius. It actually happened a lot to him, since the time when he lived is called the period of “Warring States” in ancient Chinese history, and hence, replete with social turmoil and disruption. Like Confucius, Mencius was also dedicated to wandering among varying states with a hope to find enlightened rulers to implement his ethical and political philosophy, eventually of no avail. However, Mencius had a mindset of resilience to put all these bad things in his life-time into a larger, more enduring and meaningful context, so as to never perceive anything as purely and absolutely evil. The following quote is one example for this mindset:

“When the cosmos (天) is about to bestow a great responsibility on a particular person, it will always first subject one’s heart and resolution to bitterness, belabor one’s muscles and bones, starve one’s body and flesh, deprive one’s person, and thwart and bring chaos to what one does. By means of these things it stimulates one’s heart, toughens one’s nature, and provides those things of which one is otherwise incapable. One must often make mistakes, and only then can one improve. One must be troubled in one’s heart and vexed in one’s deliberations, and only then rise up. Those saddening happenstances must show in one’s face and be expressed in one’s voice, and then, one can eventually understand them.

If, internally, a state has no model families or cautioning scholar-officials, and externally, it has no enemies or foreign problems, the state will normally perish.

Only in these ways do we know that our life springs from sorrow and adversity, but our death from ease and pleasure.” (Mencius 6B, translation adapted from Bryan Van Norden.)

Here, all adversities human life could possibly live through are understood as needed opportunities of empowering people with further abilities, merits and virtues so as to shoulder greater responsibilities. Please don’t get Mencius wrong here. The “responsibility” that Mencius talked about are by no means limited to ambitious and grandiose ones. In difficult life situations, taking good care of oneself, protecting and loving one’s immediate family members, strengthening one’s closer human network can all become a great motivation for us to perceive the positive from the negative, and thus, work ourselves up using the mindset of resilience that Mencius has so brilliantly articulated.

Another Confucian philosopher that indicated a similar mindset of resilience, yet with a different philosophical approach, is Xunzi (Circa., 316-235 B.C.E).

Rather than thinking with Mencius that humans are born with commendable dispositions towards the empathy with distressed human fellows, Xunzi thinks what humans are born with is not those concrete dispositions towards moral excellence. Rather, all humans prefer life to death, food to hunger, security to danger, health to illness, and order to disorder. However, without undergoing education and social ritualization, the inborn dispositions of humans are just not quite different from animals. Our intrinsically self-serving and egoistic nature will lead to endless competitions and conflicts among humans over limited resources, and this would eventually cause death, hunger, danger, illness, and in other words, all evils in the world. So, what is the value of evil after all? According to Xunzi, without witnessing and experiencing these evils, humans would not realize the value of cultivation, education, and ritualization for the sake of individual flourishing and social harmony, and thus, the value of evil is exactly to motivate us towards becoming good. Here is an exemplary quote of Xunzi’s thought:

“In every case where people desire to become good, it is because their nature is bad. The person who has little longs to have much. The person of narrow experience longs to be broadened. The ugly person longs to be beautiful. The poor person longs to be rich. The lowly person longs to be noble. That which one does not have within oneself, one is sure to seek for outside. … Looking at it in this way, people desire to become good because their nature is bad.

Now people’s nature is originally without an awareness towards ritual and rightness. Thus, they must force themselves to engage in learning and seek to possess them. Their nature does not know of ritual and rightness, and so they must think and reflect and seek to know them. So, going only by what they have from birth, people lack ritual and rightness and do not know of ritual and rightness. If people lack ritual and rightness, then they will be chaotic. If they do not know of ritual and rightness, then they will be unruly. So, going only by what they have from birth, unruliness and disorder are within them. Looking at it in this way, it is clear that people’s nature is bad, and their goodness is a matter of deliberate effort.” (Chapter 23, translation adapted from Erik L. Hutton.)

So, clearly, for Xunzi, every bad piece of human life, including both gratuitous natural disasters, chaos and varying adversities engendered by human efforts, is a sign of the corresponding incoming good. Without experiencing bad things in life, people would not be aware of what good things are, and how to achieve them. This by no means encourages people to put themselves in a bad situation voluntarily. Rather, if we enjoy our life as a perpetual process of perfectibility, advancement and creativity, we have to admit: the existence of imperfections in our life is just necessary and indispensable.

Using the examples of seemingly awful events mentioned above, I would say: without a concern of losing our jobs, we would not continually motivate ourselves to refine our employable job skills and entrepreneurship. Without an anxiety of worsening marital relationships, we would not dedicate ourselves to perfecting it. By the same token, without all impending natural disasters, human society would not be likely to pause to reflect upon human behaviors for a better future of the society. In a word, using the mindset of resilience indicated by Xunzi’s thought, there is no purely evil thing in the world of which we cannot make some good.

Therefore, let’s not use the language of “the worst thing in the world”, since there is no such a thing. Let’s put all bad things into a larger context, and thus, courageously confront evils to advance an endlessly perfectible future. Once we succeed to so, we will understand: the worst thing in the world is just that we think in the worst way, and hence, the thinking fallacy of awfulizing does not have much real ground to hold on to, since how we think are under the control of ourselves.

Required Reading:

Elliot Cohen, The New Rational Therapy, pp. 49-63.

Quiz:

1) Although the thinking fallacy of awfulizing is the opposite of the one of demanding perfection, they share the same irrationally absolutist view of the world: one thinks there is the worst thing in the world, and another thinks things in the world can be perfectly good. Is this statement true or false?

2) How does Mencius see adversities of human life?
A) They make individuals stronger and better to fulfill greater responsibilities.
B) They are not bad things seen from a larger, enduring and more meaningful context.

3) How does Xunzi see the value of evil?
A) The experience of evil motivates human beings towards becoming good.
B) Evil does not really exist, and evil things are just a lack of goodness.

4) “Man, as the animal that is most courageous, most accustomed to suffering, does not negate suffering as such: he wants it, even seeks it out, provided one shows him some meaning in it, some wherefore of suffering.” Whose view is this?
A) Nietzsche
B) Buddha
C) Confucius

5) The British philosopher David Hume thinks there is a gab between facts and values; one cannot infer “ought to” from “is” without imposing their own rating. Therefore, it is up to human individuals to decide whether anything awful has happened to their life. Is this statement true or false?