Good vs Evil - Is Life only Two Dimensional?

Once upon a time, there was good and there was bad. Bad hated the good and played tricks to trouble the latter. One day Good decided to teach the Bad a lesson. He fought and defeated the bad.

Moral of the story: Good triumphs Bad

We have heard this story probably a zillion times in different forms, versions, languages, folk tales, comics, books, films, plays, bed time stories, religious texts, etc. We believed in it, we learnt it, we followed it. But did we ever question it. Here are a few follow up questions that come to my mid:

 

Why was Bad so Bad?

Why was Good so Good?

Are people only Good or Bad?

Why did the Bad hate the Good?

What if Bad would have won?

Recently I saw a new series called 'Game of Thrones' it shows a multi-dimensional viewpoint. There are no heroes or villains. They are all driven by their selfish motives – love, family, power, victory, money, fame, honor, pride, heritage and list goes on. To say you are a proud and honorable man – is to say you are driven by your pride and your honor and your vows and your principals. So in the end of the day its selfish and personal. There is nothing like pure good or evil. We are a mix of our own desires, experiences, judgments, struggles, circumstances and challenges which of course we choose to uptake or give in to. There are millions of examples across the world – Fairy Tales, Harry Potter and Voldemort, Frodo and Sauron, Ram and Ravan, Kaurav and Pandavas, America and the Terrorists, and many more.

What might be evil to you is another's good - it shows the story from the view point of all the parties involved. Not from an audience - a neutral party and neither a hero's view point. Why does a Narrator have to be the good party, or the winner, why can't it be the evil or the losing party. Ultimately what happens is whoever wins/ survives in the end becomes the hero. History has proven it time and again.. the ruling and the conquerors have modified books and stories to show themselves as the heroes and the losers as the evil ones or wrong doers. This is how Good won and taught bad a lesson. This reinstates their glory in history in line with the age old euphemism - How Good always triumphs over evil.

 

Loser turned "Evil" didn't survive to tell the tale, or no one bothered to listen to him.  What if he was the Right who was wronged? What if "Evil" had won and presented the story to show itself as the Winning Good… What if the devil had won and presented himself as the TRUE GOD!! Let's take Ravan and Ram.. what if Ravan would have won.. he would have shown himself as a victorious Good over evil Ram who was anyways thrown out by his own father from the kingdom for his evil deeds. In fact Ravan had saved the poor Sita from the clutches of evil Ram and eventually married her and made her the queen (instead of leaving her to be the King of the people).

 

Hence, The winning party is always right. There is always results of a War – a victor and a loser. This is a necessity for 'A Happily Ever After'. All wars, struggles, fights have to be summarized as two sided with winning side as True winners. If the Evil won or the Good didn't win, the war can't be over and people don't want that. They want it to end and summarized and forgotten.

Our legal, religious, political, civil, economic systems are the biggest examples of 2 dimensional theory with only Right and Wrong sides. In judicial system the accused and accuser fight out for justice and whoever puts up a better fight is considered RIGHT. Can't it be that one lawyer was more talented, connected and hardworking than the other. Justice is assumed and accepted. Simple yes, but not Right!

 

Taking these same questions to a broader level:

White vs Black - How is White prettier than Black?

Life vs Death – How is plain Living better than plain death?

Light vs Dark – How is Day better than Night?

Yes vs No – How agreement is better than disagreement

Heroes vs Villains - How can anyone be just good or just bad?

God vs Devil – How is God more powerful than Devil?

Fact vs Fiction – What if Fiction becomes Fact and Fact becomes Fiction?

Truth vs Lie - How can any statement be pure Truth or Lie?  

 

As children we are taught to tell Truth, but on our own we learn - the Naked Truth, White Lie or hiding truth, or diplomacy, manipulation, the in betweens in the extremes of Truth and lie, as acceptable dimensions. Two, dimensions are easy to interpret and see with the naked eye but it needs a vision to see the larger picture - the  age old fight of Good and Bad with each side fighting for good and against the Bad.

 

Calling it a 'Grey area' would be simpler but it takes you to a 3 dimensional world. You can't have 1 fight 2. It's unfair 1 has to merge with another to keep the fight 2 dimensional. You can't have Game of 3s – it's always 2 and 3^rd becomes the audience – the neutral party and then also it's a 2D view - Iin summary 'It is not what IT IS, it is what WE WANT IT TO BE.'