The inevitability of Human Nature?

Wahrend die Weltzeit Uhr auf Alexanderplatz auf Mutters Gebuhrtstag zu rasste, vereinigte ein kleiner runder Ball die geseltshaftliche entwicklung die geteilte Nation und lies zusammen Wachsen was zusammen gehorte.

There are some things in life which I find deeply moving, one being images of the Berlin Wall being overcome and people flooding across the border. In general I find images of people overcoming such artificial constraints to be really beautiful. Yesterday I went to the Newseaum in DC where they have a corner dedicated to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Of course, being America, we can't help but wrap it in a thick patriotic treacle; that Kennedy and Reagan were somehow more responsible for the fall of the wall than thousands who risked lives to undermine its symbolic power, and who literally tore it down with their hands. Even so, the images of the repression followed by images of people bursting forth and celebrating the reunification are powerful.

I have a personal connection to these images, not only because I have been to Berlin and seen where it all went down, or because I did some indepth research into the democratic transition in East Germany, but mainly because I am, in a sense, German. At least part of my identity is German. For example, walking around the monuments in DC, like the Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, has less effect on me than walking around the Reichstag or seeing the black, red, gold.

Anyway, back to my point. As I was looking at these images of people flooding across the check points in Berlin, and then later watching a film about the moments when Sport became a force for social change, I felt goosebumps. I felt like I was watching a great testimony to the Human Spirit and our ability to endure, to resist and to overcome. But, and there must be a 'but', I began to think about the paradox of these moments. They do not exist in a vacuum.

These profound moments in human history don't happen spontaneously, or 'just because'. Rather, they are a response to something terrible, like repression, war or racism. I realized the implications of one of the truths I hold to be self-evident, that all things in the world exists in a causal relationship with one-another; that the nature of ying and yang means happiness and pleasure are created from sadness and cruelty, and vice-versa. There is something inevitable about our lives in that system. It means we can only know good if we also know evil. The ying and yang on my shoulder began to burn a hole in me.

The cyclical view of human nature, supported by the highs and lows of our history, carries with it the disturbing possibility to justify an act of genocide or repression of free expression. If this is indeed human nature, if we are destined to continue moving through time in this fashion, then we must accept all parts of the human experience, including total evil. But how can we say that the actions of Hitler or Arkan are just part of life? It reduces the profound suffering these men created to just another passing moment in the march of history, from which there is ultimately nothing to learn.

I cannot accept this, yet how else can we define ourselves? To change the system, the paradigm, means what? A profound identity crisis? How does something exist without its counterpart? I scoffed at the idea that beauty can exist by itself, with out a concept of ugly. But now I understand the implications of that concept. If you believe beauty can exist in and of itself, then you are not caught in the inevitability of Human Nature; then you can be free of the confines of history and of the modern system, but how can you exist?

Experience is what defines me as a person. I know that I like blue because I don't like green (but would I like blue without some comparative reference?); that I like strawberries because they taste better fish (thus the good / bad paradigm); that I love you because I don't love others, etc... Thus, I see these profoundly beautiful moments in history as a response, a reaction, to the total evil which went before them. The evil, which paved the way for the good, is then part and parcel of the good. But that is as tragic as it is joyful. 

In chapter 48 of the Dao de Jing we find an articulation of this very same concept. The lines, which I am paraphrasing, arguing that the good has its roots in evil, and disaster is right behind good fortune. I read the Dao as a text for the individual rather than the collective, and thus I find encouragement in the knowledge that when things are aren't going well, there are better times ahead; it also forces me to be more conscious of when things are going well, because this too shall pass. The problem, and this is the raison d'etre of this text, is that we are not isolated, but rather that we live collectively and are interdependent. Thus, what applies to us as individuals, must also apply to the collective in some fashion. It is, as they say, inevitable.