The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The amount of information about environmental issues - before the outbreak of war in Ukraine and Israel - had filled every corner of the media and could had easily educate the entire planet about the perils of humanity. Presently, there is little about the environmental issues, although nothing or close to nothing has changed in terms of, for instance, CO2 emissions: since the 1990s, they have increased by 60%... Similarly, issues like biodiversity loss, resource depletion, and water-and-plastic pollution are still there. Nonetheless, such issues – given the current geopolitical context - seem to be classed as secondary. They are still bad, but not as BAD as what is happening in Ukraine, Israel, or any other country with an ongoing military conflict.

Such is not because the environmental issues are trivial, but because wars pose a here-and-now threat. For a human mind, which constantly puts situations into good or bad perspective, such judgement is fundamental: a car accident happens – bad, someone wins a lottery – good; a Ukrainian soldier is killed – BAD, a Russian soldier is killed – GOOD; and etc. As can be observed, the mind is prone to bias and subjectivity. It categorises the situations in terms of its relationship with them. A death of a Russian soldier is GOOD because the soldier is the cause of the felt here-and-now threat that is perceived as BAD by the mind of a person living in Europe. From the viewpoint of an ordinary Russian citizen, the opposite is the case: the Ukrainian soldier is BAD while the Russian – GOOD. At the end, all judgments are related to the felt here-and-now threat. That is why the environmental issues are sidelined despite being experienced throughout the world. They are not perceived as a here-and-now threat by the mind but rather as a doomsday that none who are alive now will live to see. That is why the environmental issues are placed on the bad but not BAD shelf: they can wait.

There are many definitions of good and bad. In a nutshell, good is defined as something satisfactory, enjoyable, and pleasant; bad – the opposite of good. Yet, both revolve around a personal judgment that can easily transform into a collective condemnation or glorification of a situation. One of the best examples: a football match. The supporters of a team that has lost feel bad, while the supporters of a team that has won feel good. Next time, when these teams play and the previous losing side wins, the scale of good and bad shifts: the good feeling is replaced by the bad one, in the future when they meet again, potentially, the bad is replaced by the good, and so on and on. It is an endless game our minds play every single day. That is the reason why past events such as wars or genocides that at that time were considered as BAD dust in the history books and tend to repeat. During the time of peace, the mind struggles with the concept of BAD as there is no real here-and-now threat. If you listen to the people speaking about WWI or WWII nowadays, you will sense that the emotional level of the discussion is as if they are choosing the restaurant for a dinner. The experience is lost, and with it, the word bad capitalisation.

That is the ‘beauty’ of our mind. It operates in a self-centric manner. In a perilous situation, in most cases, a person will try to save oneself before even looking at another person. An exception can be made when we talk about family members. However, if a person is not directly threatened by the war in Ukraine, for instance, he or she will carry on with their daily lives and speak about the war with friends as if it was yesterday’s football game. That is what most of us do. Partly because we got used to it and with time, realised that there is no here-and-now threat. As with the environmental issues, it is out there… Somewhere in Ukraine. If you think about it, millions of people are playing military games while real wars rage throughout the world; more than one billion people live in obesity while around 250 million persons are facing different levels of starvation, including children; cars, houses, and properties are destroyed and burned daily in different parts of the world and yet, for most of us, these events are happening somewhere out there. Far away…

Now, think about the following: a lioness kills a zebra - good or bad? A person could say, ‘Good for the lioness, bad for the zebra.’ But in nature, good or bad does not exist. It simply is what it is: a lioness kills a zebra. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no judgement in nature: an eruption of a volcano is equal to the blossoming of flowers. It is like this because no one is making judgments. Nature is not judgmental. In the eyes of it, all situations are equal. But from the perspective of the mind, an earthquake is bad when there are casualties and damages, an eruption is bad when flights are cancelled, and so on. The earthquake or eruption transforms into BAD when a person is touched by them: a damaged house or a cancelled flight. To understand it is to move a step closer towards nature and a step away from self-centred thinking.

However, if you wish to continue playing the mind game of good and bad, you should be aware that the good does not exist without the bad as music without silence. They are the two sides of a coin. As soon as you stop flipping the coin, a deeper way of seeing opens. Yet, it does not mean to be passive or nonactive. Quite the contrary, as not playing the mind game of good and bad, enables to see the situation as it is. More importantly, to understand that nothing is more solid than changes and despite being currently shelved as BAD, the ongoing wars will dust in the history books one day with the new ones flashing in the media.