In Beauty and the Beast, Phil Donahue talks about humans’ amazing ability to make wonders and their evils and cruelty. In the end the author raises a question about whether this contradiction is an ingrained part of human condition or it is something that we can change for the better. In my view, virtues and vices are both inseparable part of human being, but we can try not to be controlled by the dark side.
Animals are controlled by desires, and humans make no exception. Animals have desires of food, companion, shelter and even glory, and humans have more. The basic desires prompt humans to pursuit better lives, but the excess of them can lead to terrible things. The ancient Greeks were aware ofthe vices of humans, and attributed it to Pandora’s fault, and the Bible has named seven deadly sins as the cardinal sins. As humans are born with desires,they are born with the possibility to misuse their desires. Some may have never saw this possibility, some felt it but never had a chance to pursuit it, some realised it but immediately turned it down, some tried to decline it butfailed, and others do whatever they can to fulfil it. Thus, the various outcomes and the achievements of human geniuses together formed a history fullof both laughter and tears, justice and fairness, niceties and ugliness.
However, nothing is perfect, and we should never despair of that. We have already taken a series of measures to deal with this problem. We have long-lasting codes of morality, and have established various laws to prevent crimes. But they are not enough. Things like the crusades tell us that sometimes the cause of an atrocity may be the combination of a few powerfulpeople’s decision and social frenzy. Thus, the problem has its root on thepower of individuals. In the past, when the monarchs wanted to use the peoplefor their own desires, they tended to make them ignorant and foolish. Today, onthe condition that every individual enjoys relatively large personal freedom, personal judgement and sense is probably the strongest weapon to sabotage awicked scheme of the influential. And it is only through education can weattain this end. Most of the education we receive today mainly helps us to be just another useful “screw” of a huge machine, whether it is a country or acompany. It focuses more on how to make a person more useful, but useful doesnot necessarily mean virtue and sense.
Therefore, to answer Donahue’s question, the contradictory co-existence of good and evil may persist, but we still can try our best to make it better, through education. And this brings up the next question, how can we change our education to subdue this contradiction?
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