09/11/01
The Practicing Idealist
Considering the events of the day, the newsletter I had prepared seemed inappropriate. As I listened to the outraged talk of retaliation and revenge, I reflected on how challenging it is, personally and nationally, to remember that the good ends never justify bad means. It is only by living as practicing idealists and acting in ways that are in keeping with our ideals that we can end the cycles of violence that are seen on one side as an acts of terrorism and on the other as acts of righteous retribution.
The following passages are excerpted from Jane Robert’s 1981 book, The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. The remarks are from Seth, the entity who spoke through Jane, and are from the book’s last section titled "The Practicing Idealist."
You will often condone quite reprehensible acts if you think they were committed for the sake of a greater good. You have a tendency to look for outright evil, to think in terms of "the powers of good and evil," and I am quite sure that many of my readers are convinced of evil’s force. Evil does not exist in those terms, and that is why so many seemingly idealistic people can be partners in quite reprehensible action, while telling themselves that such acts are justified, since they are methods toward a good end.
That is why fanatics feel justified in their actions. When you indulge in such black-and-white thinking, you treat your ideals shabbily. Each act that is not in keeping with that ideal begins to unravel the ideal at its very core. …If you feel unworthy, or powerless to act, and if you are idealistic, you may begin to feel that the ideal exists so far in the future that it is necessary to take steps you might not otherwise take to achieve it. If you want to be a true practicing idealist, then each step that you take along the way must be worthy of your goal.
Many people want to change the world for the better, but that ideal seems so awe-inspiring that they think they can make no headway unless they perform some great acts of daring or heroism, or envision themselves in some political or religious place of power, or promote an uprising or a rebellion. The ideal seems so remote and unreachable that, again, sometimes any means, however reprehensible, eventually can seem justified. To change the world for the better, you must begin by changing your own life. There is no other way.
You begin by accepting your own worth as a part of the universe, and by granting every other being that same recognition. You begin by honoring life in all of its forms. You begin by changing your thoughts toward your contemporaries, your country, your family, your working companions. If the ideal of loving your neighbor like yourself seems remote, you will at least refrain from killing your neighbor—and your neighbor is any other person on the planet.
In a manner of speaking, you must be a practicing idealist if you are to remain a true idealist for long. You must take small practical steps, often when you would prefer to take giant ones—but you must move in the direction of your ideals through action. Otherwise you will feel disillusioned, or powerless, or sure, again, that only drastic, highly unideal methods will ever bring about the achievement of a given ideal state or situation.
Your thoughts and beliefs and desires form the events that you view on television. If you want to change your world, you must first change your thoughts, expectations, and beliefs. If every reader...changed his or her attitudes, even though not one law was rewritten, tomorrow the world would have changed for the better. The new laws would follow.
You must be reckless in the pursuit of the ideal—reckless enough to insist that each step you take along the way is worthy of that ideal.
You will understand, if you are a practicing idealist, that you cannot kill in the name of peace, for if you do so your methods will automatically undermine your ideal.
I would like each of my readers to be a practicing idealist, and if you are then you will automatically be tolerant of the beliefs of others. You will not be unkind in the pursuit of your own ideals. You will look upon the world with a sane compassion, with some humor, and you will look for man’s basic good intent. You will find it. It has always been there. You will discover your own basic good intent, and see that it has always been behind all of your actions—even those least fitted to the pursuit of your private ideals.
The end does not justify the means. If you learn that lesson, then your good intent will allow you to act effectively and creatively in your private experience, and in your relationships with others. Your changed beliefs will affect the mental atmosphere of your nation and of the world.
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