The Necessity of All Things, Both Good and Bad

yin-yang symbol or Taijitu

There is both good and bad in all people, all nations, all cultures, all religions, etc. If this is true in the "microcosm" of the tiny part of the universe we know, why should it not be true throughout the "macrocosm" of the entire universe, or the "microcosm" of any other given planet, solar system, galaxy, etc.?

We know so little about our universe at large, and understand even less, though we may delude ourselves to the contrary. Is it really a matter of what is good or bad, or are good or bad merely a result of our perceptions of them?

Much ado about the "greater good"

Simple because something has a negative connotation for us as individuals, or even as a group or society, does not necessarily make it bad, or even "evil". Without knowing if there is a higher meaning of "greater good" involved, we can't truly be the judge of such things, good or bad. What has a negative meaning for one person or group can always have a very positive meaning or outcome for another.

As the saying goes, "Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider, is chaos for the fly." Set in the mouthpiece of Morticia Addams, this is actually a quote from "The Addams Family" creator and cartoonist, Charles Addams. The general consensus here seems to be that normal is essentially "good", while anything viewed as "abnormal", or even "weird" from a societal standpoint should be considered "bad". To me, the aforementioned quote typifies this elusive ideal of a "greater good", and its obverse, "greater bad", as well. After all, a concept such as war can be put forth as a means to greater good, and be a means of greater bad at the same time.

All things in balance

Balance is not only a fundamental concept of many religions and ideologies, but one of basic physics as well. In religion, we must have evil in order to see good. In physics we must have dark to contrast with light, and positive to balance negative.

Balance is key in all things, from the the changing of day to night, to the balance within ones diet plan, to the precarious "balance of powers", wherever that particularly elusive balance may reside. All things must have their equal and opposite present in order to balance themselves on the teeter totter we call life. Good and bad are then relative to which side of said teeter totter you happen to reside upon.

Would we even recognize good as such without the presence of bad? Do we recognize bad without the presence of good? It depends on our perception of such things does it not? Such perception itself depends on our personal vantage point within a given situation. It is not possible for one to exist without the other. It is no more possible than light existing without dark, male existing without female, or Alpha existing without Omega.

Image Credit : Wikimedia Commons, This image shows the character U+262F ☯ published by The Unicode Standard.All graphic representations of Unicode Characters are in the public domain.