suffering produced—then the good is whatever is diametrically opposed to
that. The good is whatever stops such things from happening.
Meaning as the Higher Good
It was from this that I drew my fundamental moral conclusions. Aim up. Pay
attention. Fix what you can fix. Don’t be arrogant in your knowledge. Strive
for humility, because totalitarian pride manifests itself in intolerance,
oppression, torture and death. Become aware of your own insufficiency—
your cowardice, malevolence, resentment and hatred. Consider the
murderousness of your own spirit before you dare accuse others, and before
you attempt to repair the fabric of the world. Maybe it’s not the world that’s
at fault. Maybe it’s you. You’ve failed to make the mark. You’ve missed the
target. You’ve fallen short of the glory of God. You’ve sinned. And all of that
is your contribution to the insufficiency and evil of the world. And, above all,
don’t lie. Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell. It was the great
and the small lies of the Nazi and Communist states that produced the deaths
of millions of people.
Consider then that the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering is a
good. Make that an axiom: to the best of my ability I will act in a manner that
leads to the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering. You have now
placed at the pinnacle of your moral hierarchy a set of presuppositions and
actions aimed at the betterment of Being. Why? Because we know the
alternative. The alternative was the twentieth century. The alternative was so
close to Hell that the difference is not worth discussing. And the opposite of
Hell is Heaven. To place the alleviation of unnecessary pain and suffering at
the pinnacle of your hierarchy of value is to work to bring about the Kingdom
of God on Earth. That’s a state, and a state of mind, at the same time.
Jung observed that the construction of such a moral hierarchy was
inevitable—although it could remain poorly arranged and internally self-
contradictory. For Jung, whatever was at the top of an individual’s moral
hierarchy was, for all intents and purposes, that person’s ultimate value, that
person’s god. It was what the person acted out. It was what the person
believed most deeply. Something enacted is not a fact, or even a set of facts.
Instead, it’s a personality—or, more precisely, a choice between two
opposing personalities. It’s Sherlock Holmes or Moriarty. It’s Batman or the