Paradox: Infinite Love Vs The Cruelty of Survival

[bmcnicho]

I’m becoming more conscious of the cruelty of the capitalist system, and the cruelty inherent to most of our social and political systems.  However, given that other systems throughout history and in many other parts of the world were if anything worse, it seems to be inherent to survival itself rather than to any particular system.  

Even if reality is infinite, it seems that more entities will want to exist in any given space than will be able to, at least in realms of existence resembling this one.  Therefore wouldn’t cruelty be a huge survival advantage?  And wouldn’t you expect any entity that exists to have a certain amount of it?

Cooperation, of course, is also a very effective survival strategy, but even so a certain level of enforced conformity and exclusion would need to be present to keep things functional.

So how can reality be Infinite Love, as Leo has been emphasizing recently, if cruelty is so essential to how beings maintain themselves?  One answer could be that I only view cruelty as a negative out of fear of falling victim to it.  Would that then make cruelty good by definition because it exists?  Although it seems like cruelty would decrease as beings reach higher levels of consciousness.

[Nak Khid]

6 minutes ago, bmcnicho said:

.  Would that then make cruelty good by definition because it exists?  Although it seems like cruelty would decrease as beings reach higher levels of consciousness.

That's this theory, everything is good because it exists. Don't try to change or improve anything because everything is perfect as it is "infinite love" 

[bmcnicho]

@Nak Khid The idea of what is being perfect by definition seems strangely similar to social Darwinism or radical conservatism, even though it’s framed as a higher consciousness way of thinking.  Another weird paradox I suppose.

[Leo Gura]

@bmcnicho By "cruelty" what you really mean is selfishness.

Of course selfishness is inherent to surviving as a finite self. That's the whole problem of existence! If you are attached to a finite form and to life, you must be selfish to succeed in that. And the reason you are selfish is because you love life and you love your ego-self.

But this is not just some random shit that God threw into the soup for fun. The whole point of life is for selfish things to realize the joy and wonder of selflessness. Selflessness requires conscious realization. And for conscious realization of selflessness requires that you start out as selfish.

Since reality is ultimately nondual, selfishness must equal selflessness.

Think of it this way, if God could push a button right now and end all cruelty in the universe, would you happily agree to it? Yes? But that would mean that God would have to destroy all life, including you. Are you cool with that? See? So God is letting you hang around here and be cruel out of Love for you. Because you are too selfish to accept the end of cruelty. And God is too selfless to force you to be selfless. You must come to God at your own comfort level.