The Clothes Store - 12-42

Regarding Good and/or Bad events....

       Suppose you were in a desert with a group of 1,000 innocent political prisoniners and you were all dying of thirst, the Prison Warden only had enough water for one prisoner, so he held a raffle and it just so happens, your number was drawn and you won the drinking water. Your life is now saved, which, from your perspective, is a Good event...Correct? But what then of the other 999 innocent prisoners (men, women & children), who have all now been condemned to die a slow and agonizing death from dehydration and thirst? From their perspective, how do those who have just been condemned to die perceive the exact same event that YOU have labeled as Good? As you can logically see, there are no good or bad events, there are just simply spontaneous events that arise, linger momentarily and dissolve based on their supporting conditions. It is the presumption of the dualistic mind steeped in ignorance, that labels events as "good" or, "bad" or, "neutral".

          Suppose a young teenage girl was brutally and repeatedly beaten and raped and as a result she gives birth to a child that grows up and cures cancer, now, initially, this reprehensible and violent act perpetrated against this innocent child, is, by any sane and moralistic standard a “bad” event, but, the child that thew victim gives birth to,the child that was born as a direct result of this "bad" event, grows up and cures cancer, which would be an astronomically “good” event, correct? But without the initial event, the child that eventually grows up and cures cancer would have never been born. So how would you label these, hypothetical, yet very realistic and probable turn of events? Good or bad? Was the rape a good or bad event? If it was a bad event, what then of the child that was born as a result of this bad event? If the child that cures cancer is a good event, was the rape a good event, as well? If the rape was a bad event, when exactly did it turn into a good event?

          These questions and the related answers create a logical paradox and are basically unanswerable without launching into an infinite mire of minutia, technicalities and semantics that will inextricably lead us further and further away from ever arriving at a definitive and acceptable answer to these paradoxical questions. So, the only resolution to this moralistic Catch-22 is that we illuminate the source, the labeling of spontaneous and dependent events as “Good” or “Bad”, they are in fact, simply, events, neither good, nor bad, they just are.

          Now, if we dig deeper we find that not only are there no good or bad events, but that cause and effect is a misnomer as well. If the effect is dependent on its causes to arise and manifest and those events that have arisen are in fact causes for the next proceeding events, exactly when and where do the causes transubstantiate into effects?

If the effect is dependent on its causes to arise and manifest and those events that have arisen are in fact causes for the next proceeding events, exactly when and where do the causes transubstantiate into effects? Does the cause contain the effect? Can a cause be an effect and an effect be a cause simultaneously? Can a woman be pregnant and not pregnant simultaneously? Can a man be married and a bachelor simultaneously? At what exact moment does one event turn into the next event? At what exact moment does the cause become the effect and does this effect contain the cause of the next effect as well? And if the second event is dependent on the first event, how can one logically imply that they are two separate events? Also, if the second events is dependent on the first event, what about the causes for the first event?

          It also is dependent on its conditioning factors as well and on and on and on.... This is known as Infinite Regress, another logical paradox, which is always indicative of an initial, felonious assumption. An example of an Infinite Regress, is when you place two mirrors opposite each other, it gives the impression that they both regress into each other infinitely, but this of course is an illusion, as is the infinite regress of cause and effect.

          It is the mind that creates the illusion of Space/Time and thus the external World, the passage of time/events and the space that all of this supposedly resides in. It is the mind that links and labels spontaneous, inherently non-existent events. So if we assert that Cause and Effect is a viable theory we must ask: is there a first cause, that all proceeding causes and effects are a derivative of? If we answer in the affirmative that YES, there is/was an initial source and/or cause, we are then thrust into another infinite regress, with the question...well, what was the cause of the initial cause and if there was a cause that preceded the original cause, doesn't that render the original cause an effect?