Do good and…

“Do good, and goodness will find its way back to you. But as you ascend to greater heights, never forget the road that brought you there.”

I drove, along with a cousin of mine, 170 km from home to visit a nephew who was hospitalised after a severe stroke. I followed Google map to reach the hospital which was near Kollam. On our way back, I wanted a break and a coffee. Soon a small eatery named Chaipu came in view. The word ‘chaipu’ in Malayalam means ‘lean-to’ and ‘chai’ means ‘tea.’ Chaipu is an interesting play on words.  

I liked the place which looked quite homely with a whole side opening to a lush green landscape. We ordered coffee and a plate of veg momos. As I waited, the inscription just above the entrance caught my eye. The meaning of that inscription is the opening quote in this post.

Does life / nature / universe / whatever return good for good? This is something I had thought about many times and discarded with a definite ‘No.’

There’s no such consoling law in nature. There is no guaranteed return of anything. Rain falls on both the virtuous and the wicked alike – even Jesus said something to that effect, Mathew 5:45. Nature favours adaptation rather than moral merit. Nature’s laws like gravity, entropy or evolution are entirely neutral to human intent.

However, it’s good to believe that your goodness will come back to you in some way, somewhere. It makes us feel good. It makes us do good. After all, how can any human society get on without such beliefs and hopes?

Traditions like Hinduism and Buddhism conceptualise karma as a cosmic law or moral cause and effect. Accordingly, do good and good will come back. And if you do evil, you’ll get evil in return. Christianity assumes that divine justice will do that job of reward and punishment. But getting something in another world for what you’ve done in this is quite unjust, according to me.

I’d prefer the philosophical outlook, like Kant’s, that virtue generally leads to happiness. If you do good, you feel good. Moreover, doing good is the moral responsibility of any thinking creature because that generates more goodness and goodness is what we all want.

From a socio-biological perspective, reciprocal altruism is real, as I’ve noticed. Doing good increases trust, strengthens social bonds, and builds reputational capital within a community. People are generally more likely to help those who have helped others, creating a real-world network of mutual support.

Why then do we find most of the right wingers in India today behaving like monsters? And they do it all in the name of some god!

Something is seriously wrong in India today.

I’d paraphrase Sree Narayana Guru thus: Whatever the religion, it’s enough that the God be good. What he said was: Whatever the religion, it’s enough that the believer be good. I have little hope of religious devotees becoming good in today’s Indian context. Maybe, if the gods decide to be good, there’s some hope.