Good and Evil
Good and Evil
In today’s world, most people split the things into two categories, black or white, good or evil, but that cannot be further from the truth since life is not rigid but liquid. The things are not good or evil but better said good and evil, as someone wise once said, they are faces of the same coin. Thinking rigidly is not healthy since you’re missing out of sight a lot of things thus you won’t be able to see the whole picture.
Subjectivity
First of all, the definitions of good and evil are entirely subjective, what I may consider being a good thing you may find wrong and the other way around, thus generalizing things is impossible. I think we can all agree that murder is a general wrong so governments should try to stop it but, if your actions are not harming others then no one, no government or church should impose their views about good and bad on you.
And that’s the reason why ideologies like Communism don’t work; you cannot implement a political system that perceives all the people the same because then, you strip them of their individualities. Anarchy is one system that could work since everybody is doing whatever the fuck they want to, as long as they don’t hurt others through their actions but at this date in time, it’s just a utopian idea. Nowadays, people are too crippled down and would not know how to handle such freedom, but maybe one day in the future, we’ll be ready for something similar.
Sides of the same coin
If you observe the things for a bit, as many people before us did, you will realize that there’s nothing entirely bad or good, there are just things less good or less bad. To give you an example, Batman, and The Joker, the first is considered to be the good one, and the last, the evil one but they are both good and bad at the same time. Batman, he’s saving people, fighting the good fight but at the same time, he’s murdering people and murder is still murder regardless of the people he’s killing. The Joker, he’s destroying stuff, killing people but he’s also changing Batman’s perspective in the end.
To hammer home this point, I’ll give you another example probably known by everybody, God, and Satan. God is seen as the good character but do you remember that one time when he floods the earth with water, yeah, not so fun, right? And Satan is perceived as the evil character, but he also gave Eve the apple which made her and Adam see the truth.
Conclusion
Ok, the point I’m trying to make is that nothing is entirely black or white, everything is a combination of the two, with more or less black and white. It’s yin and yang; you need the bad to appreciate the good, to be able to notice the good. The people that want only good in the world have no idea what they are talking about because if everything would feel good, then good would have no meaning, would be just meh. Yes, we can fight for a better world but not for a world without any evil.
If you would not hit your feet in the door and feel the pain, you would not be able to appreciate how well you’re feeling the rest of the time. You have to embrace both the good and the bad, the light and the dark, the joy and the pain because they don’t come one without the other, they are sides of the same coin, yin, and yang.
He hörd it with his own eyes.
Thanks so much. I've always thought of this and I wonder how no one else have noticed that they are simply "sides of the same coin."
As I see it 'good' and 'bad' are just social constructs. We attach the label 'good' to things, people, goals we as a society like and 'bad' to things, people, goals we don't like.
A bigger problem we've got today is that people have, broadly speaking, stopped thinking about morality at all - i.e. the question of 'what is good' or 'what is bad' hardly occurs to people (that is ethical questions), rather they are concerned with aesthetic issues (e.g. most of the food and photo bloggers on here) or with practical questions (what's the most efficient way I can maximize my return'.
So while I think you're right in what you say, and that 'good' and 'bad' are ultimately relative (which relates to Sartre's ideas about 'monstrous freedom') - the sadder reality is that most people don't even consider ethical issues.
Or to put it another way:
NB - This kind of thinking doesn't have a happy ending... Nietzsche (who wrote 'beyond good and evil' which I think is one of the earliest books that basically says ethics are totally relative) went mad, Sartre who followed on from him just seems to have ended up being miserable and gradually more and more contradicted, Foucault whose a later incarnation of these two (sort of) died of AIDS as a result of his 'freedom ethics' (sort of)....
I think I started off making some kind of profound point then just ended up rambling, anyway... Zygmunt Bauman is an interesting character to check out on postmodern morality.
Enjoy!
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I believe it's just like "Happiness" and "Sorrow". One won't see the value of being happy without going through sorrow/loneliness. Both go hand in hand to see its meaningful value.
When I speak with my friend of good and evil, three important aspects call our attention, first, by qualifying something as good or bad we do it from our own personal conscience, and we do it ... acting as veritable judges ... even from that we are children; second... we come relatively easily to a point of agreement or coincidence about what is good or bad with respect to something that we know or that affects us all, and rare the opposite happens, and third, the evil specifically related to an ethical or aesthetic evaluation ... such as love, order, justice, harmony, balance, well-being, peace or freedom ... is not defined or described in terms of yes, it is done ... directly or indirectly ... because it is the opposite of something else that constitutes positive evaluation, for example, disorder is the lack of order, hatred is the opposite of love, discomfort is the lack or the opposite of well-being.
The line between good and evil is so thin that sometimes it is impossible to understand where they replace each other. And all these perceptions, of course, are subjective. And change even one person over time or events in his life. Sometimes man, seeking to do good for someone, on fact only worsens situation, therefore makes evil. There is a fine proverb on this case "the road to hell is paved with Good intentions". All these reflections on good and evil can be carried out endlessly. This very huge, subtle and elusive the notion of that there is good, and that there is evil. And sometimes evil turns out to be good and Vice versa. Have you read the book "Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov? There, too, dispute about these notions. This is an eternal question in mankind.
I believe that we have to be good from inside, and this world is full of mean people, who are neither good nor bad, they just want stuff for themselves only, to increase their profits at any cost.
So, to protect ourselves, our values, we need to see the world as it is.
We should help anyone we can, and at the same time don't sacrifice ourselves in doing so.
I always believed that it's not the people, but the situations that are hostile (except a few, who were always assholes).
As you have mentioned it already in your post that there is good and bad in everyone.
Speaking of batman and joker, I always wondered since I was a kid that who is responsible for the people killed by Joker?
The Joker himself or the batman, because batman had many chances to kill joker, but he didn't killed him, just to protect his moral values.
So, in a way, batman was almost as evil as the joker was.
In our world, there are many batman and joker, they just don't wear the cape or the makeup.