The good man is not the one who seems good to most. If most knew what the good was, then there wouldn’t be so much evil in our world. The good man is not the man that has good intent. Intent alone is not a strong enough force. A gullible man, who spreads false messages that he believes to be true, has good intent, but is ultimately bad. He leads others astray with his good intentions because he lacks the ability to know delusion from reality. So he spreads myths. He spreads lies. Is a child innocent in crimes because they are ignorant? And isn’t the grown man expected to know better than the child? Isn’t that why he is held responsible for his crimes and the child is not? Some grown men are more ignorant and gullible than others; and some stay a child forever. Then there are those who are trapped by dogma, and they too spread myths and tell lies out of ignorance. Who then has the ability to be good? Well, maybe no one. And who has the ability to do evil? Well, maybe everyone. We know how to hurt each other—that is easy—but we do not intuitively know how to be good to each other? Some children are kind, and some are vicious little monsters. Are they reflections of their parents? Or are they all innocent and good until life molds them into Being’s capable of doing evil things to one another?
Children and youth is a very sensitive topic in the west, and touching on these things can torment the minds of some. I have not had kids of my own yet, but I did work with them for 7 years. And I did see incredible acts of kindness from many children, and their acts did seem so pure of heart and genuine. But also, I did see kids do horrible and malicious acts of violence and revenge to each other. Were these acts evil? Because of ignorance? Some kids were victims of passion. Some were just hungry or tired. Some felt so much empathy for a hurt friend, it was overwhelming to watch. Kids lie, and steal, and hit, and bite, and torment others; so why is childhood looked at as so pure and innocent? If kids are naturally good, then is growing up just the slow corruption of that good? How can that be? They are saying that we start off pure, and slowly evil gets burned into our souls? No, I think not. Ignorance does not equal innocence, even for children. How much time has passed in one’s life does not determine a spectrum for which our actions should be judged on. The elderly impatient lady, and the young impatient child, their actions are weighed on the same scale as everyone in between. How could it be that the elderly, the adult, and the child are all judged by us differently? The elderly woman, and the child, are innocent in your eyes? Why? You hold them to a different standard then you hold yourself to? Why?
Yes, I agree, we should be forgiving, for no one, from birth to our forever nap in the dirt, is perfect. None of us are. So, who do you condemn? Who is evil and why? They can't be a child or an elderly person, they must be in between, and they must not be ignorant of the consequences of their evil actions? They must knowingly do something to hurt someone, with a mind that is sane enough, and they must not be forgiven for it? What is this logic? Who is truly evil then? Surely most of the acts we condemn are not this. People kill in the name of their dogma. This fine line, that separates good and evil, is constantly moving with each epoch. It dances on the line through all of space and time. Can good and evil only be known subjectively and intuitively? Point me to an objective line for good and evil, good people. Yes, Fredrick tried, I think. I skimmed that book. Read about half of it. He wanted to get beyond God, but I am not so sure about that one. I understand his intent in doing this, but it seems to be another bad myth; another lie. And why wouldn’t it be? There have been no philosophical laws discovered in the souls of man. It is a game for the magicians, who make things disappear, and do not replace it with something else. And they don’t explain their tricks. They just entertain their fellow man with their destruction of reality. With all of our philosophy and psychology, how much further have we come since the time of Socrates? Have we drifted closer to the idea of the ‘good’? Or have we drifted closer to the idea of ‘evil’? Or, perhaps those terms being redefined with each new epoch? A constantly moving moral goalpost? And maybe we always need a target that is a little beyond our reach in order to make progress. If that is what we are doing, then we will never be satisfied. We will always seem evil in some moments, and good in others; progress towards good or evil becomes impossible to record if we are always moving the goalpost.
There are multiple traps and paradoxes that come along with being products of our epoch. It is so important to have one eye on the past—going as far back as our understanding can—and also, keeping an eye of the future—as far forward as our understanding can take us—while also keeping our third eye on the present moments that greet us. Three eyes to ride the wave of life.
“But sir, I only have two.” Silly caterpillar, we are capable of so much more than we understand we can.
"If you don’t believe in yourself, then believe in me, who believes in you.”
The line from a Japanese show that I watched once stirred the soul as I write this. I can’t help but think that they took that from someone's bible. Sometimes we lose our faith in ourselves, and this is one of the many reasons why our relationships with each other are so important.
“If you don’t believe in yourself, then believe in me, who believes in you!”
This time, in my mind, the little character is yelling it at someone.
There’s a video that I watch when I am feeling unmotivated; and there’s this part with this football coach, who is screaming words of motivation and encouragement to one his his players, as his player is on his hands and knees, blindfolded, with a teammate sitting on his back, as he crawls 100 yards.
“Don’t give up! Don’t give up! Keep going! You can do it, Brock! Let’s go! Keep it moving! You can do it! I believe in you, Brock! We believe in you!”
“It burns! My arms burn!”
“Let it burn! Let it burn! You’re almost there! Don’t you dare give up! Keep going!”
The kid makes it all the way across the football field, and the coach tells him to take off his blindfold.
“Look, Brock, look at how far you went.”
I always imagined that these were the words of God, and he/she was the one screaming at me to keep going. But now I think those kinds of words are the alchemical mix of God and man. Those words are gold. Man and God. Man and nature. Man and technology. Man and the stars. Zoom out and we might see that it is all the same thing. We are everything and nothing. We are so much more than we can see. And we are so much less than we expect to be. It is the law of equal opposites. We will always be capable of acts of good and evil. That is what free-will is. It will always be a combination of chaos and order. We will never solve anything, but at the same time, we are the answer; everything is the answer.
Zoom out and see everything. Zoom in and see your lens; and know that it is just that—a lens to see everything through. Keep one eye on the past, one eye on the future, and your third eye on the present.
And lastly, “If you don’t believe in yourself, then believe in me, who believes in you.”