Overcoming turns out to be orders of magnitude more effective than survival. Understanding and studying the problem allows you to do anything with the problem, to bypass it along any trajectory, and not just the one that was fixed by selection. It can solve the problem, transform the problem, and make it a support for further development. So, we destroyed the smallpox virus in one case. And in another case, they took an adenovirus and used it as a vector for a vaccine against COVID-19. See the diagram in Figure 3:
Fig. 3. Overcoming death and survival.
Let’s look at this difference in another example. Before the advent of airplanes, people did not fly by themselves, and therefore we do not have instincts and behavioral programs selected by evolution for safe flight. But still, experienced pilots learn to recognize dangerous situations thanks to the sensations from the experience gained, and, according to the readings of the instruments. The devices on the airplane are more complicated because good and evil do not manifest themselves unambiguously, as on a thermometer when baking a pie, but in a complex ratio of indicators of different devices.
Now imagine that an inexperienced pilot is sitting in the cockpit of an airplane: he knows how to fly correctly, but he is not yet able to recognize in time how the plane goes into a dangerous mode. His feelings have not yet been fixed, and he cannot quickly understand the complex correlations of instrument readings. In this case, when there is a problem with the plane, the pilot remains calm, after all, he is alive, his instincts are silent, and he does not try to survive despite the plane steadily approaching death. Not knowing how death is approaching him, the pilot does not try to overcome the problem. Survival in its purest form does not help.
Then there comes the moment when the pilot realizes that the instrument readings are out of acceptable parameters – he learns about the problem. What actions should the pilot do? He has no flight instincts, because he is not a bird, and he cannot rely on instincts. This means that before performing actions to save the aircraft, the pilot must know exactly what problem needs to be overcome. He needs to understand exactly what the problem is. The aircraft lowered its nose too much or lifted its nose too much at a given speed and current altitude. The speed is too high or too low for the known weight and size of the aircraft. The height is too large or too small with the existing terrain, and so on. But only after understanding it will it be possible to overcome the problem; only after the pilot finds out exactly what the problem of flight is. So, we see demonstrated what the difference is between survive and overcome the problem. Of course, in ordinary life we can use both concepts in the same situation, but survival is rather an animal state associated with instinctive and reflexive activity to avoid problems «here and now» and always in the present moment. Contrarily, overcoming the problem is a purely human condition associated with understanding what is happening in the dynamics of the system of times: the future, the past and the present.
Let’s set the situation: an inexperienced pilot in a falling plane is quite motivated to live, and he wants to live, and wants to be happy, to experience pleasure. But these desires in themselves do not motivate him in any way if he does not know about the problem that has arisen. The pilot is motivated only by knowledge of the problem.
We clearly see that the categories of good and evil show us the relation to the problem, and not to life, being, happiness or pleasure. If we start with an understanding of a separate and distinct good: life, happiness, the common good, an increase in universal pleasure, and so on – we will only come to contradictions, which will be discussed later.
Fig. 4. If an inexperienced pilot does not know about the corkscrew, then the desire to survive in itself will not help him in any way, because until the plane falls, nothing interferes with the pilot’s life. But only a pilot who knows about the death that is rapidly approaching due to a corkscrew can take actions to avoid a future death that exists only in an abstract model and does not yet exist for him in reality. So, the knowledge of death alone is more effective than survival.
In general, if we want to evaluate the flight as a whole, then we evaluate the ability to overcome death in the entire flight process, and not just the result of survival. Only a flight that has not had incidents and has not suffered a catastrophe will be undisputedly good for the pilot. If there was an incident in flight, even if it did not lead to a catastrophe, but just had a threat of catastrophe, then we will call this flight bad, although the result was still survival. The fact is that we knew about the risk of death in an emergency flight, which was significantly higher than in a good flight without an accident. So, we see that ethics evaluates the success of the process of overcoming death, and not the resulting survival.
Fig. 5. In the figure, survival corresponds to both the good and the not good, with an incident flight. Thus, good and evil does not correspond to survival, but rather expresses an attitude to the problem of death. This gives an assessment of not good to the flight with the incident.
We can also identify the essential binding of good and evil completely abstractly. For example, in the case of a game, when one person is looking for an object in a room, and another tells him, cold – warmer – colder – hot, we understand that we only conditionally color proximity to the goal with a certain physical connotation. So, when the seeker approaches a hidden object, warmer or colder means approaching or moving away from the goal, not the physical temperature of the goal. The desired object does not exude heat but is endowed with such a property for the convenience of communication. Therefore, the words warm / cold can be replaced without losing the meaning of the described game with positive / negative, or good / bad, and, finally, good / evil. In fact, nothing at all will change. Therefore, good and evil are not good or bad in themselves, they only allow a person to search for some fundamental essence. And this essence, as a result of the game, will not appear to us in any form of good or evil, such as the embodied negative / positive, warmth / cold, as you have already guessed.
Note, an interesting point: the result of the game resets good and evil. After finding the desired entity, we are no longer interested in these categories.
Further, it is necessary to clarify the following statement of Aristotle: «But a certain difference is found among ends; some are activities, others are products apart from the activities that produce them. Where there are ends apart from the actions, it is the nature of the products to be better than the activities.»
It is not clear why Aristotle defined goals in two ways: as activities and as results. In theory, only activity leads to result. Can there be an activity in itself as a goal that does not need the result generated by it? Probably, but then, if the result of such an activity-goal is still generated, can it be undesirable in the sense that such an activity-goal should always be unfinished or never ending? And wouldn’t it be easier in this case to call activity-goal simply goal, and efforts that do not allow it to result – activity? At least then we won’t have to mix the concepts together. When Aristotle mentions goals that exist separately from activity, what goal can we achieve without doing anything for it? Do we need a goal that does not need to be achieved in any way? Neither by physical actions, nor by thoughts – meaning, even desire. After all, in this case, we would rather call it not a goal, but a given.
In future work, Aristotle still makes an attempt to deal with goals and activities more constructively, but since the starting point is chosen incorrectly – the desire for good as a non-existent goal – then he does not logically come to understanding the problem, repeatedly returning to happiness, then to being as an activity.
«…For even if the end is the same for a single man and for a state, that of the