Duality and evil.
I've been thinking about the dualistic mindset very recently. This need to have "Them and Us", the need for evil. A need for evil? Do we need evil, or is it just the lager talking?
I think some folk do need the concept of evil. They can take the things that make them uncomfortable, that they don't like, and distance themselves easily. I suppose these things can ideologies, people or organisations. Simply package those things as "evil" and it's easy to distance yourself.
But what of the Taoist? We don't do the dualism, we recognise that positive and negative exist in the same person and, like a magnet, you need both poles for it it work. You can't distance yourself from the things that you think are negative (others may disagree) and you have to accept them. One or two of my earlier entries touched on this and I suppose this is an extension of my thinking there.
5 comments:
Yeah, this is a tricky one. It's got me thinking, so it's been good to read.
It's easy to say this about things that others think evil but we personally do not. But what about the things that we DO consider evil?
If we accept evil as part of things (and part of us), do we then have to act out that evil, or let it be acted out by others? Is stopping an evil act from happening resisting evil instead of accepting it?
Good questions indeed.
I agree, very good questions.
Personally, I think it's a matter of accepting that the negative exists, but rather than trying to simply write it off as "evil", trying to work through it and resolve the core problem.
Of course, certain things (human rights abuses, etc) need to be opposed, though non-violently wherever possible, but I think there's a difference between accepting and allowing negative acts.
Yes we can accept our negative sides, and even harness them for positive effect, but we don't have to act on them.
Perhaps what is "evil" is decision to act on the negative, not the negative itself?
Certainly there is something to be said for the wisdom of "what you resist, persists", and in that way, fellows like Gandhi have proven that taking up arms against evil only perpetuates the problem.
I agree with you that dubbing something "evil" is one hell of a distancing and judgement technique, and for the "good" it wraps things up in a neat little package, re-inforcing a sense of goodness without really having to be any good or deal with anything too difficult. In other words, it makes that which is blurred, clear-cut. Though we know it isn't really like that.
I've heard one theory by a guy called Dan Millman, that essentially it is not our thoughts that we can control (you can direct them to some extent, but in the end, they'll arise and disappear regardless), but we can control our actions, and thus, we need to ease up on ourselves for judging ourselves terrible even if we have a terrible thought and don't act on it.
I think it's better to get away from it altogther. Some societies think it's great to eat the heart of one's enemy, for all that juicy courage - but some would consider that a great evil. Let's refrain from labelling, do what we feel it right, and let go of this violent, hateful and fearful resistance to "evil".
It's a difficult concept. I tend to think that yes, there is evil (bad people choosing to do bad things) and yet it's also all good - per Taoism one can use anything for good, eventually. Anyway that's how I like to see it!
This duality is often why we tend to demonise 'villians' such as Hitler and pretend that he's a one-off and that no 'normal' person could do what he did (and I'm not excusing anything he did or that the holocaust did happen - before anyone hits me). In the same way as we viewed the concentration camp guards, Pol Pot, Idi Amin etc., etc.
The depths to which some people seem to go appears to scare us, probably because we realise (however unconsciously) that there are aspects of that person in us.
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