The Duality of Human Nature

“I learned to recognize the thorough and primitive duality of man; I saw that, of the two natures that contended in the field of my consciousness, even if I could rightly be said to be either, it was only because I was radically both.” -Robert Stevenson in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The duality of human nature can be separated in several different categories including good and evil, male and female, and right and left hemispheres. For the sake of this blog post, I'd like to consider the duality of human nature as being between good and evil.

As I ponder the topic of the duality of human nature I automatically imagine the scenes in The Emperor's New Groove where Kronk has a white angel on his right shoulder and a red devil on his left shoulder arguing over decisions Kronk must make. This image takes the duality of human nature and makes it outwardly visible and easy to understand.

A piece of literature that undeniably illustrates the duality of human nature is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. In Chapter 10, Jekyll writes clearly about the dual nature of human beings. He says that, as a young, educated man from a respectable family, he maintained an appearance of good behavior at all times. But he says this was a fraud - no one suspected his true nature, which was at times extremely immoral. Jekyll's experiments began in an attempt to separate the two sides of human nature and destroy the evil one. He discovered that the evil part of his nature was, indeed, part of himself, and therefore, in some sense, natural and part of the whole.

We, as human beings, all have both good and evil inside of us. According to The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it is natural for there to be conflict between the forces of good and evil within us. The novel also argues that the duality of human nature is unable to be separated. I agree that the duality of human nature is natural, however, I'd like to believe that we are able to separate it.

The Corrupting Nature of the Human Desire for Power

     The corrupting nature of the desire for power is a popular theme within many well-know pieces of literature. Look at Julius Caesar, Animal Farm, Lord of The Flies, and Great Gatsby. All of the main characters from those pieces of literature faced corruption due to their unquenchable desire for power.
      Another piece of literature that brings attention to this theme is Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. A big motivator for Faustus's handing his soul over to the devil is his desire for power. But here's the problem: in order to gain that power, Faustus has to give it all away—to Lucifer. Ultimately, the power Faustus dreams of could never be his. The power to rule not just men but all of creation belongs only to God in the world of Doctor Faustus. But the not-so-good doctor is not the only one in the play who has such high ambitions. Pope Adrian, too, uses his power to make all the world "stoop." We also know that Lucifer fell from heaven because of his lust for power. So the Pope and Faustus are probably destined to wind up right where Lucifer is—in hell.
      The corrupting nature of the human desire for power is obvious present in literature but is it an issue in "the real world"? Absolutely! One word: POLITICIANS. Corruption is characterized as the abuse of public resources, power and position to provide unfair advantage to individuals, families and friends. Common public resources that are often pocketed by politicians are money, goods, medical aid funds and budget allocations. Crazy, right? Take a look at Budd Dwyer:

                                                  
Dwyer was a Republican politician from Pennsylvania, Budd Dwyer was a member of the state House of Representatives from 1965 to 1970, and spent the following decade in the state Senate. Dwyer was then elected state Treasurer -- the post he held until committing suicide.

On January 22, 1987, Dwyer was one day away from a federal court sentencing hearing after a jury found him guilty of taking $300,000 in campaign donations from a computer company in a quid pro quo exchange for a $4 million state contract. Dwyer was also accused of five counts of mail fraud, four counts of inter-state transportation in aiding racketeering and one count of conspiracy to commit bribery. Dwyer faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and a $300,000 fine.

At a press conference the morning of January 22, with TV cameras rolling and reporters watching, Dwyer pulled out a loaded .357 Magnum from a manila envelope and took his own life

Dwyer had power, he was in the House of Representatives, the Senate, and then PA's state treasurer, but he wanted MORE. Not only is the desire for power corrupting, it's also unquenchable and eventually lethal.

Gender Roles: That was Then, This is Now?

       Gender roles are a hot topic in modern American society, as well as around the world. Should women be destined to be stay at home moms who wait on their husband's every need? Should men be forced to be the only breadwinner of the family and be looked down upon for being kind and compassionate to their children and wife? The short answer is no. First, let's take a look at gender roles in 1900s. One essay that outlines the gender roles during this time period, specifically those of women, is "A Room of One's Own", by Virginia Woolf. The presentation of women in "A Room of One's Own" is focused on the reasons and conditions that make it difficult for women to be artists or novelists. First of all, women could not be great artists or novelists because there was no freedom for them. They experienced great material constraints. Women were dependent financially on men. The effect of the role provided for women like this is that they became subservient to men. Here women only became the property of men: "...the poison and bitterness in those days bred in me...To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks".  In this quotation taken from "A Room of One's Own", it is clear that women generally had to do jobs they did not like, and what makes things worse was they had to do it with subservient attitudes like slaves. Some occupations that were open to women before 1918, Woolf noted, were “addressing envelopes, reading to old ladies, making artificial flowers, teaching the alphabet to small children in a kindergarten.” These economical and social constraints surely bred poison and bitterness in women who might have more capacity than doing menial works and also hampered them in actualizing themselves.
Back in the 18th and 19th centuries (and essentially all of history), women had little to no choice when it came to their future role as a housewife and servant to their husband. Has anything changed? To a degree. Of course women can vote, be land owners, and make their own money, but are they still pressured to be a certain way and fulfill a certain role? I would say yes. As I was doing research for the upcoming "Cult of Domesticity" discussion, I came across an ad that was filmed during the current 2016 year, in India, promoting a laundry detergent. Why laundry detergent? I'll get to that. This ad is titled, "An Apology From A Dad To His Daughter, On Behalf Of Fathers Everywhere." The ad features a father overseeing the relationship between his daughter and her husband. The daughter is taking a conference call while taking care of the children, cooking dinner, cleaning, and washing clothes. The husband is sitting on the couch watching tv and ordering his wife to wash his shirt. The father apologizes for never stopping his daughter as she played house and played manager of the house when she was younger and for not helping his own wife with work around the house. He also apologizes on behalf of her husband as he has learned his behavior from his father. The father sees the issue and addresses it by promising to help his wife with the laundry and do things around the house, thus the laundry detergent and the ad's slogan of #ShareTheLoad. America, like the father in this ad, has seen the issue between gender roles, now it just needs to be addressed. 

Here is the link for the ad if you care to watch it: http://youtu.be/vwW0X9f0mME

Women and Sexism.

        "What’s the sense in schooling a girl like you? It’s like shining a spittoon. There is only one skill a woman like you and me needs in life... tahamul. Endure.”  Mariam later understands her mother's brutally honest words and what it means to "tahamul" as she is constantly belittled, persecuted, and declared illegitimate due to her gender. Khaled Hosseini in his novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns, accurately portrays many of the inequities women in Afghanistan faced during the 1960s- early 2000s. Women were not considered equal to men, they were expected to comply to whatever men wanted. They were sub-par. A few examples I discovered include Mariam's forced arranged marriage, Rasheen's requirement for Mariam and Laila to wear a burqa because "a woman's face is only for her husband" yet Rasheen has a magazine of barely clothed women in his dresser, Laila and Mariam being forced to be housewives and being unable to financially support themselves, the spousal abuse that Laila and Mariam endure, Laila and Mariam not being able to ride the bus because they didn't have a man with them, the fact that the only hospital where women are allowed (when Laila needed help delivering Zalmai), was completely ill-equipped, and the contrast between Rasheen's disgust for "his" daughter and his pride in his son. Sexism, especially towards women, is prevalent throughout the entire novel. 
       While it's not even close to being comparable to the extreme sexism that existed and still exists in Afghanistan, there is also sexism within the United States. I have yet to meet a woman who hasn't been bothered in the street, one of the key examples of casual sexism. How many times have you been walking along, minding your own business, before being shouted at a man in a passing car, or bothered by some builders on the side of the road? It can be anything from a horn being tooted at you, to shouting things that are distinctly more unsavory. How about school aged girls being sent to the office because their clothing is too "distracting for the boys." I completely understand the necessity for a dress code, but telling girls that the reason for the dress code is so that you aren't distracting the opposite gender from learning, is insane. If a boy is too distracted to do his work because he can see my shoulder, he's got bigger problems. This is sexism. I'm not saying men don't face legitimate sexism, they do. For example, if a man and a woman comit the same crime, it is proven that the man will most often recieve a harsher punishment. Also, if the man and woman committed the crime together, the man is often charged as the "initiator." Another example is in divorce cases, the courts mainly side with the mother in custody battles over children. Male sexism is real as well, it's just not as prevalent or as advertised as sexism against females.
       Yes, women in America can now vote, work outside of the home, own property, and do many things that women in other countries cannot do but it doesn't mean sexism is gone in America. It's definitely still here and women should continue to fight for equal rights.
"A woman is human. She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man. Likewise, she is never less. Equality is given. A woman is human." - Vera Nazarian.

Who really is Godot?

          So, let's discuss Godot from the play Waiting for Godot, by Samuel Beckett. Many people would automatically assume that Godot represents God, and how could you blame those people? I mean Godot literally has the word "God" in his name. Not to mention the play references Cain and Abel and establishes Godot as a type of savior. So why is Godot not symbolic of God? Beckett, the author of this play, is believed to have said that the name Godot comes from the French "godillot" meaning a military boot. Beckett fought in the war and so spending long periods of time waiting for messages to arrive would have been commonplace for him. The more common interpretation that it might mean "God" is almost certainly wrong. Beckett stated that if he had meant "God," he would have written "God". We, as readers, can't argue with the author so we have to find another thing or idea that Godot can symbolize. Who or what does Godot represent to the characters in the play? In my opinion, he represents that thing you use to bring value to your life. The characters in Waiting for Godot use Godot as a way to add meaning to their life. The main characters Vladimir and Estragon constantly ask each other if they can leave the tree they've been standing at and each time they reply to each other, "Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot." They can't leave because they are waiting for this person they don't know. The best support for why Godot represents the ambiguous object or idea that a person uses in order to bring value to life is when both Vladimir and Estragon contemplate taking their own lives but in the end of the play, they choose not to. Why? They are "waiting for Godot."
      We must ask ourselves, what does the idea of Godot mean to me? For me, at this point in time, Godot is my grades and my faith. They add value and meaning to my life. My Christian faith is a big part of my life and it gives me purpose.  It reminds me that I'm here for a reason. I have my grades too. I know your success is not defined by how many one-hundred percents you earn in high school, but in my head, it does. I am definitely a perfectionist (I would honestly keep working on this blog for several more days, but I know it's due at midnight tonight). My grades add value to my life and I try to put forth my best effort. If I have a bad grade in something, I feel as though I'm less than adequate. My grades and my faith are my Godot.

The Falsity of Cultural Relativity

        Cultural relativism wrongly claims that each culture has its own distinct but equally valid mode of perception, thought, and choice. Cultural relativism, the opposite of the idea that moral truth is universal and objective, says that there is no such thing as absolute right and wrong. There is only right and wrong as specified by the moral code of each society. Cultural relativism maintains that man’s opinion, within a given culture, defines what is right and wrong. 
What do I think? I believe truth is absolute, immutable, and unchangeable no matter the cultural differences.  Where this gets tricky, I think, is in determining what is truth and what is simply cultural practice. The book titled Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe, contains great examples from the Ibo culture (a group of people from Southeastern Nigeria) that challenges the idea of cultural relativism. One example of cultural relativity is when the "Oracle" in this book tells Okonkwo, the main character, to kill a boy deemed as useless, named Ikemefuna. Okonkwo, right after the boy calls him FATHER (ouch), delivers the final blow with a machete to end the boy's life. Okonkwo listened the his elders and followed the objective morals set by his culture. Was Okonkwo right in the murder of this innocent boy simply because his culture established it as "acceptable"? Absolutely not. It is a moral truth that life is sacred and should never be taken without just cause. Achebe proves that cultural relativity is a false idea, and that there are certain moral truths that traditions can not overcome, by showing readers how Okonkwo feels after he completed this deed. Okonkwo is distraught, does not eat for two entire days, and goes to his friend Obierika for consoling. If there are no moral truths, then why does Okonkwo feel like this after doing what his culture deemed as acceptable? Practice does not trump truth, as far as I'm concerned.
How people choose to dress, certain traditions, or their personal hygiene habits or body markings (tattoos or piercings) are generally cultural choices disconnected from any moral truths. They're simply choices. An example of this in Things Fall Apart is the tradition of the kola nut (side note: I thought this said "Koala nut" until yesterday and was mildly confused). The kola nut seems to be a key aspect of being a welcoming host. The kola nut tradition is another way of communicating respect. Does this tradition of giving a kola nut to a guest break any moral truths? Definitely not. If a tradition or manner of being does not violate any moral truths, then let it be. It can neither be considered absolutely wrong nor absolutely right. It's an aspect of life that defines the culture. If every culture had the exact same traditions, dress, language, ...ect, there would be no point in having different cultures.
While I disagree with the idea of cultural relativity, I think we can all learn something from the character in Things Fall Apart named Obierika. Obierika disagreed with Okonkwo's choice of killing Ikemefuna but what did he do after his friend Okonkwo violated the moral truth of there being value in a life? He brought the truth to his friend's attention. He did not banish Okonkwo from his house nor demolish the friendship that they share. Their differences in perspective did not indicate the relationship they had with each other. The one character understands the idea of moral truths while the other character disregards any type of absolute truth but that does not mean they cannot be friends. That's the really important part to notice. Whether you agree or disagree with cultural relativity, just remember that cultural practices do not determine whether an individual person is good or evil. 



 

White Men Above All the Rest?

Ralph Ellison speaks primarily to any young African-American in his novel Invisible Man but he also relates those African-American to females. He chronicles the experiences of a young, black male in the 1920s and the 1930s. In this time, blacks were not treated with any amount of respect and were often looked down upon. Even American, black, citizens could not vote. I, myself, as a young, white, female can not fully comprehend what they were going through but I began to understand the humiliation during the Battle Royal in Invisible Man. The Invisible man’s public speaking skills result in an invitation to speak to a group of a wealthy, white men. When he arrives, he is informed that he must participate in a battle royal with other young, black men. The boys are forced into the ring. In the center of the ring stands a beautiful, blonde, white woman. She is completely naked and the boys try to avert their eyes from her, until she begins to dance. The invisible man notices a “certain merchant who followed her hungrily, his lips loose and drooling." The woman is now  presented as an object. The men outside the ring are looking at her as a sexual object and not a woman. She becomes humiliated when the men being to reach out to touch her. Soon, she runs for the door and the invisible man describes the men as “they caught her just as she reached the door, raised her from the floor, and tossed her as college boys are tossed at a hazing, and above her red, fixed-smiling lips and disgust in her eyes, almost like my own terror." This shows the correspondence between the naked woman and the invisible man. They both feel the same terror from the men watching them. At the same time that African Americans were being treated as inferior, women were also being treated as inferiors and more of an object than a person. Women were not suppose to go to college and could certainly not hold the same jobs as the men. While many things have changed, and arguably "progressed," since the 1920's and 1930's some things will always be present and the treatment of African-Americans and women are no exception. Take, for example, the fact that in 2014, a study showed  female full-time workers made only 79 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 21 percent. African- American males made only 74 cents for every dollar a white male earns. How is this all fair? It's not! This is something that we, as Americans, have the power to change. We need to close the gap between gender and ethnicity. No one is inferior to another man, solely different from them.