Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Lurs
I think a problem with this question is that it seems to have a predefined parameter. It is based on binary oppositional thinking, and I have always found that thinking in twos is dangerous. Why is it that good and evil are even positioned as polar opposites, as if these are the two only possibilities in this scenario? Maybe you just need good people to do nothing for so called evil to exist, but that is not to say that one exists because of the other. Is indecision a good or evil thing? Is fear? Is making a uniformed choice is also a possibility? Are unintended consequences good or evil? Neither concept is universal, absolute, or clear and I don't think you need one for the other to exist. It is like saying there is no gray area or there are no other colors, just black and white. It is also like saying neither bleeds into the other or informs the other. To think this is to limit both the discussion and one's thinking.
|
When you're discussing conceptual opposites, it is necessarily the case that neither pole would exist in the absence of something different with which it can contrast. So, the concept of "big" is meaningful only if we also have the concept of "small", as big and small are meaningful descriptors only relative to each other. Thus, if every object in the world were "big", we would never use the concepts of big and small because they would become meaningless.
By analogy, if everything in the world were good, we would not use the terms "good" and "evil" because they would be similarly content-less. This need in no way imply that all decisions fall neatly into the polar opposites of good and evil. Rather, the middle ground, as it were, can exist only between the two poles. The absence of the evil pole, then, necessarily collapses into the absence of a middle ground.