Is there an ethic to life, to man, to his memory? I am not terribly concerned with the ethics of man, or any particular ethic. Primarily I would tend to take a contrarian perspective and view what is bad as unethical rather than look for what is good. Good is much more difficult to define and most definitions of what is morally good or ethically good tend to lead to an awful lot of badness.
I would like to point out something here from the judaic-christian story of the fall.
There is a greater parallel in the hindi myth of Vrikasura. In this tale Vrikasura is a follower of Shiva and is granted the power to burn people to ash if he touched their hand. Ostensibly to be Shiva’s messenger to cast evil people from society. But Vrikasura, now having the power of death in his hands, decides to become the ultimate arbiter of good and evil and wants to touch the hand of Shiva. Vrikasura is tricked into touching himself and burning himself up. The story indicates that given the power to judge evil from good, the power of judgment becomes evil in itself.
While Native American tribes have many differing folk-motifs in their mythologies, there is a common recognition in a great deal of these folk-mythologies on man becoming the source of imbalances. Evil might exist in many of them in the shape of an animal or the dead, but the motif that runs through many of these folk-mythologies is evil appears when man, or some men, dis-center the balance of existence and evil is the consequence. There is a similarity to the Dao and the Greek dog-philosophers (cynics), that those who take upon themselves to make judgements against others (man, animal, minerals or other elements of the environment) create evil by declarations of the good. These types of mythologies include evil and good as polar balances. Evil exists because of a striving for good and because of the striving for good, evil exists.
While it is extremely difficult to determine actual folk-mythologies of most of the African tribes (as well as much of their history) because almost all of the interpreters were from a western perspective that transposed their own ideas of kings and empires upon African history as well as their own ideas of “evil spirits” upon their transpositions of African folk-mythology. This allowed for the interpreters to view the Africans as seeing ghosts behind every curtain and thus belittle their ability to make judgments. The reality may be something akin to the Djinn, the spirits that combined the good and the evil; or basically a perspective that good and evil are not opposites but a composite that contains each other.
Slightly parallel is the Zoroastrian creation story from the Bundahishn. Ohrmuzd creates the world and it is good but Absolute Darkness (Ahriman) attempts to smother the creation with his darkness. Gayomart, the created, is snuffed out of existence but the moon (Mah) preserves his seed and plants the seed from which life grows. The parallel is of course that Ahriman, the end of existence and evil are connected on one end and Ohrmuzd the beginning of existence are both essential and the “battle” of life is between the polar necessities.
Of coarse Zoroastrianism thereafter, like the judaic-christian traditions create a morality that is needed to now defeat the unleashed Ahriman and the battle of becoming good by allying oneself with the morality of Ohrmuzd, El, YHWH. or the Trinitarian God of Christianity becomes ac waged battle “between good and evil.”
In the Pandora’s Box myth we once again see a remnant of this opening of evil into the world by opening the box she was not supposed to open just as Adam and Eve opened the box by eating the fruit of the tree they were not supposed to eat. Now I don’t care much at this point for the separation of the creation and the garden of eden fall by some interpreters because the description of the fall, unallied with Genesis 1’s creation disturbs the meaning of both folk-myths and transforms them into a theology that defies what they are actually saying to their hearers.
There is a similar connection between the creation and every aspect of the creation being “good”. The garden god creates is good. The warning to not eat the fruit is the same warning Zeus gives to Pandora.
Now a common interpretation of both is that God, or Zeus, knew men’s curiosity would get the best of them and they would bring evil into the world. But pay attention to the contrast in the Pandora story (all is good) and the fall from the good outside the box. The “knowledge” gained in both stories is not evil—but the “knowledge of good and evil”. Unlike the folk-myths previously described where good and evil are a polar composite, Pandora and the garden present a differing perspective that does not see any necessity for evil but sees evil as the determination of evil; or the judgments (knowledge) of good and evil.
And this becomes the error of viewing the creation story of Genesis 1 as a methodology of creation when each act of creation is about the act being good and the fall being placing judgments (knowing good and evil). The contrast is that such judgements themselves are the fall from recognizing what exists, the creation, is the good and judgments placed upon it, or upon any of its elements are the judgments good and evil that don’t exist without the judgment.
Essentially what am I trying to define is that man has long seen himself as the potential evil and his ethical proclamations that separate good and evil and place judgments upon this separation as the author of evil, or wrongness, a word I generally prefer. What all of these folk-mythologies are suggesting is that in some way there is a connection between both concepts and the evil comes from this definition of separation.
So judgments that first define what is good or bad create the bad; it is not that these early thinkers didn’t recognize any evil, but what they saw as the evil were the judgments themselves that opened the floodgates of evil. The power to rule therefore was always a power to judge and the folk-mythology of the necessity to see a unity in the wholeness of creation became a power to judge that created evil. And so what was evil was those that assumed these powers of judgmentalism.
Of course they had leaders but they did not give these leaders the power to judge, only the respect they earned by wise counselship that allowed this respect to seek their leadership. But to call these leaders as “chiefs” or ‘kings’ is once again transposing an authority to them they did not possess. The bountiful hunt and the drought were both part of the same good existence that needed to be recognized and the leader who could lead from the drought to the bounty were respected as leaders.
So my reflections in this thought are not upon what is good and proper but on the idea or ethic of these ethical concepts.