Dear Friends,
It seems to me, most if not all the evils visited on humanity, have been as a direct result of presumption. Someone presumes to know what is best for another, society or humanity and acts according to their prescription of their idea of “right.” Of course, their remedy is never for themselves or their family, it is always for others to pay the price for the presumer’s cure. Behind such presumption lay great hubris. When someone believes he or she is so much more intelligent, wise and beneficent than others, is the path to presumption. Recognizing hubristically fueled presumption as a source for evil in our world, is the first step to solving those evils, so that no one ever has to suffer under the presumption of arrogance again.
So much of what is wrong with this world, crimes against humanity for instance, are from those who presume to know what is best. From the Eugenics movement to slavery, those who have presumed to know what is best have done great evil, often in a perverted sense of justice. As I have explained before in past articles, justice can be summed up by the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” No one who was or is a advocate for eugenics would sterilize themselves, their solution is for others, since by their selfish standards, they are the best and brightest. This shows the absolute lack of justice in their actions, since doing something to another that the actor would never allow done to themselves, is in direct contravention of the golden rule.
Presumption is the basis for civil crime as well. The bank robber presumes to have the right to the funds of others, because they believe their needs and wants trump those of others, since he or she sees his or her own wants and needs close at hand, while they see the needs and wants of others at a distance. Therefore they presume their need for immediate wealth should come before the needs and wants of those people who earned the money by the sweat of their brow. This same logic applies to those who steal from the wealthy. Even speeding is based in hubris and presumption that the speeder is such a good driver they need not follow the speed limit. No matter what crime you use for an example it is founded in presumption and presumption is rooted in hubris.
Politicians are the greatest hubristic presumers there are especially progressive politicians. They presume that because they won a beauty contest, they have the democratically bestowed right to visit evils on others, while they themselves would be deeply offended if they were yoked with those same evils. This is one reason why politicians never hold themselves to their own laws. The biggest advocates for tax increases universally cheat on theirs and when they get caught there are never consequences. This is why politicians whittle away at any restraint there is on their power, because they arrogantly presume they are above any foolish Constitutional limits on their actions. Their hubristic argument usually goes, “Aren’t they the representatives of the people?” While they make this presumptuous contention they violate the golden rule without a thought.
Religions also fall prey to presumption. Those who are rabid followers of this or that religion presume they will go to heaven and no one else will. Atheists presume that even though they undermine the religion of others by the spurious worship of science, if they are wrong, they will go to heaven anyway. When one religious community attacks another it is presumption that is the “moral” underpinnings of their actions. Truth told, religion should be the place where presumption is the least, yet it is often where people presume the most, because all saintly religions have the golden rule as their foundation, and the golden rule is the opposite of hubris and presumption.
Presumption provides those who would visit the most heinous crimes against humanity cover for their hubristic egoism. To look at a fellow human being, and presume that the other should be sterilized because they are “mentally deficient” by the observer’s arbitrary standard, to be so arrogant one enslaves another, to have such a lack of a moral compass that someone kills another because they disagree with that person’s religious belief, or any of a thousand other presumptions that give people free reign to do what they arrogantly believe is “right,” is always based on presumption fueled by hubris. Moreover, that the hubristic presumer never subjects him or herself to their own remedy, is a naked violation of the golden rule and therefore is the definition of injustice, proves the hubris and presumption better than a thousand pages written on the subject. Yes, we as members of the human race need to recognize this predilection of ours to presume what is best for another, and learn to mind our own business, else we are the the villains in our own story.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
