Good and Evil

I’ll try to make this as brief as possible, though the subject is probably going to end up getting away from me.

Within us are obvious biological drives - to eat and reproduce being the most essential to survival. Beyond this though are also innate aspects to us like the instinct to the creation of language. We are collectively whether as a particular people or as individual within infancy, with this language instinct, drawn towards intellectual engagement with reality, and the very sense of self changes with this engagement. As a natural extension of this engagement is the creation and appreciation of art, particularly story-telling art, in words but also pictorially. 

Another intrinsic aspect is in many areas the desire for sensual pleasure. This quite clearly can extend far beyond simply questions of crude biological necessity. So love of food for example can go well beyond simply the nutritional and energetic side of things into the sensual pleasure aspect.

Also at our core is the sense of good and evil, and desire for good to be victorious. Within the story-telling nature this battle of good versus evil from earliest times is probably the most vital common aspect of our stories. Within the Book of Genesis it takes very little time before it enters, with man tempted by an evil force, and folklores all around the world operate within this dynamic. This sense of good versus evil is so powerfully within us that it is very easily embedded into situations not worthy of such a dichotomy. It is very tempting for things to be so clear cut. It’s very easy for example for Hollywood to wallow in satisfying this inner world, and preferably amidst much violence and excitement so the adrenaline highs go along with the visible victory of good over horrible evil. People will also very willingly view sports rivalries in this light, where say one’s hometown is good, and one’s nearby hated rival is evil. It makes things far more interesting! Or in politics where the existing regime is considered corrupt, which is generally true to whatever degree, then the rival force - who may in truth be very much of the same group who have been in power - is often able to ride in satisfying the desire for things to apparently conform to the reality of good versus evil. Barack Obama and a few years earlier Tony Blair were placed within this euphoric scenario to embarrassing and very successful degrees.

That the wish for things to equate to good versus evil can be so easily perverted and manipulated though shouldn’t lead to cynicism about the very existence of this moral and spiritual truth as intrinsic to reality. And this is probably the core of cynicism - having misplaced this desire for the good in unworthy causes or people, and then inner faith in good being poisoned as a result of viewing one’s ideal be revealed to be false. I remember someone describing Othello’s descent into utter despair wasn’t a result of his jealousy but because Iago convinced him and seemingly but falsely proved to him that his ideal, Desdemona, was in truth perverse. The shift of the loved ideal from outright good to perverted evil was too much to bear, so powerful is that instinct for the good embedded within us, and so Othello disintegrated along with his ideal.

I can’t even remember quite why I began this piece, and it’s certainly gone far beyond the neat parameters I’d hoped it might be contained in! So anyway I’ll finish it here for now and hopefully come back to it.