Consistent Character
Human civilization is really just an extension of nature: man takes simple matter and converts it into buildings, machines, factories, industrial plants and all the other artifacts of the modern world. What enables him to do this is the fact that all things have been invested by nature with certain consistent properties. Once man has discovered these natural properties, he is able to use them to his own advantage. These properties make up the character of a thing; they are absolutely predictable: everything in nature can be relied upon to act in a certain way. All the advances of human civilization are the result of this predictability. Any change in the properties of basic matter, or unpredictability in its character, would reduce the whole of human civilization to ruins.
If one wants to build a bridge across a river, one uses steel because one knows one can rely on the strength of that metal to hold up the bridge; if steel turned out to be as soft as wax, the whole edifice would crash into the water. For the construction of buildings one uses bricks and cement, which one is sure will solidify into a firm structure; but if stones and cement were like a pile of sand, the buildings would collapse. One knows that when magnetic field and motion come together the resultant movement of electrons will produce electricity; if this did not happen, the world would suddenly be submerged in darkness.
Such occurrences would mean that things had lost their specific character and the building of civilization would then become impossible. Human civilization can only be fashioned when the things that are essential to it do what is expected of them—while they maintain their basic character. What good would an ice-factory be, for instance, if the water that was put into it turned into steam instead of ice? How could cars and other machines be produced if the iron cast into furnaces refused to melt?
Just as the things which contribute to human civilization have to display certain properties for civilization to flourish, so also do the individuals who constitute human society have to do what is expected of them if society is to run smoothly. They too have to maintain a certain character. The worth of all material objects is dependent upon their reliability in performing the functions that are expected of them. In the same way, an individual’s worth depends on his ability to maintain a consistent character under all sorts of conditions. There are certain attributes that constitute a human character; only if one displays these attributes can one be counted as a true human being.
If a person does not display the facets of human character that are expected of him, all one can say is that he has lost his human worth. A society made up of such people is doomed to unrest and discontent. Society is only as good as the individuals who constitute it. The inevitable result of inconsistent and irregular character on the part of individuals, then, is instability in the society to which they belong.
The corruption of human society manifests itself when its members break their promises instead of keeping them; when they are petty instead of open-minded; when they are miserly instead of generous; when they think only of themselves instead of society as a whole; when they are vindictive instead of forgiving, rebellious instead of accommodating; when they vainly pursue their own interests instead of acknowledging the rights of others; when they seek to pull other people down instead of lending them a helping hand; when, in short, people fail to treat others as they would have others treat them.
A society will only prove to be strong if its members prove to be human beings in the real sense of the word, if they display the character that is expected of them as human beings. Where resolve is required, they should remain as solid as steel; where pliability is required, they should be as soft as running water. They should remain as still as stones when silence is expected of them and as firm as mountains when constancy is the order of the day. When strong initiatives are required, their enthusiasm should cascade like a torrent. It is such people, who speak and act as true human beings, who constitute a strong and stable human society.
Individuals of this nature are as indispensable to human society as commodities like petrol and steel are to human civilization. If the things that contribute to civilization did not do what was expected of them, civilization as we know it could not survive; so if people were not to show consistency, reliability and predictability in their character, human society would crumble.
