What if good and evil weren’t what you think they are? What if they’re like long lost brothers or estranged friends. Aware of each but keeping a healthy distance from each other.
In this article, I will discuss good and evil, and what lies beyond the conventional notions of good and evil.
God and Satan
We’ll start with the typical good and evil. On the good side we have God, on the evil side we have Satan. And this isn’t a religious site, I’m not of religious affiliation, but it’s a good framework to discuss this topic with right? Many people won’t know this, but even in the bible Satan isn’t seen as in adversity to God, he’s seen as a heavenly prosecutor.
‘One day the members of the heavenly court came to present themselves before the Lord , and the Accuser, Satan, came with them.’
Job 1:6
So kinda like Satan’s the bad guy but he’s not really the bad guy you know what I mean? Like he’s just doing his job man, and someone’s gotta handle the dirty work right? We obviously can’t let God get his hands dirty in the affairs of humans. So it’s kind of funny to see how in conventional conversations Satan is painted in adversity to God’s command, when actually he’s part of a heavenly court.
Yin and Yang
This typical notion of good and evil is further defied further in concepts like Yin-Yang. Now of course the conventional notion is that Yin-Yang is balancing energies, good and evil, per say. But have you ever actually looked closely at the symbol itself? It’s not just two balancing energies; within the light there is the presence of the dark, within the dark there is the presence of the light. So that is to say, that there is no such thing as absolute light and absolute dark. Even within the light there is an aspect of the dark, and within the dark there is an aspect of the light.
Let me break that down for you in layman’s terms. Imagine a priest, conventionally part of the “good” side, but imagine he becomes so rigid in his religious doctrine that he becomes oppressive, foregoing the nuance that humanity depends on. And on the evil side, we have the typical robinhood character. On the surface he is stealing, but he is actually stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.
Spectrum of Good and Evil
So we can see from these examples, how when you take any side to the extreme it can become detrimental to its intended effect. And it also paints the picture that things are not always as they seem on the surface. What may be “good” or “bad” to you, when examined under the lens of nuance, can paint a totally different picture. There is not really the binary options of black and white in much of society, a lot of life is grey. Emotions are grey, social interactions are grey, no party is truly right or wrong. We must apply nuance and discretion to truly understand where each party stands on the spectrum of truth.
And of course there’s the whole “good and evil are two sides of the same coin”. That’s actually true in a lot of ways. What we see as light and dark are rather a spectrum, rather than cohesive separate entities. Darkness is the absence of light and light is all the colours of the spectrum converging at a single point.
So I hope that helped you on your journey of understanding the greater cosmos, and maybe next time your neighbour tells you to “fuck off”, just give him a “thanks friend” and an affirming smile. And he won’t know what hit him.
Peace ✌️