The Battle between Good and Evil

The term may be often used, but the battle is not really between Good and Evil: We don’t have a universal standard of “Good” and all parties in a conflict naturally believe that they are the good ones and the enemy is the evil one; so effectively this is really just a means to justify a conflict.

The real battle is actually inside us — between Love and Hate: can we, instead of reacting with (righteous) hate, respond to those that may hate us today with love, so they will not hate us tomorrow?

As a first step — to understand the causal factors that contributed to the series of decisions that led them to hate us, as well as the emotions that clouded their decision making ability?

To perhaps empathize that in their shoes we might have done exactly what they did? And… if you are thinking “but i wouldn’t do that” (pick an atrocity, any atrocity) that’s because you haven’t actually been able to take your own shoes off. Not yet.

This post is Part 1 of The Mercury Rule series (Regular version, Medium app optimised version)

You may also be interested in my other writing on Education, Politics/Power, Ethics/Philosophy/Humanism, Parenting and “Lost in Translation”