Congrats on scoring as a crow. Very very intelligent birds, and tenacious also, both very positive characteristics imho.
I like your tower analogy respecting evil and good. It satisfies that part of me that likes to play with abstractions in the same way that Tolkiens explanation of how Melkor/Sauron etc. cannot actually CREATE anything, but merely pervert that which is already created. And a perverted creation can never be as solid or as strong as the other.
But put me down as someone who believes as evil (and good for that matter!) as things that are independant of humans and others (if any!) rather than merely a dysfunctional aspect of those beings. But I do reject the concept of the evil as a personality; a traditional "devil" (whether horned n' tailed or otherwise). Instead, I think of evil as more a destination that we're potentially always either either heading toward or away from. And that one way we can measures the progress of our journey thru life is to see how far we are from it.
What I think makes this reality interesting is that seeing evil and good this way makes a position of "neutrality" - which I define as any attempt to sit on the fence between poles and not pick a side - as pretty much meaningless and perhaps even impossible. Say even you could actually find the exact middle and stay squarely inside that; the where" you stood wouldn't count so much as the direction you chose to face and move toward. And there wouldn't be a way to avoid that.
I'm sure that my "system" isn't unique, but then again I've never heard evil/good/etc. explained this way. (hmmmm....)
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Date: 2005-03-30 05:04 pm (UTC)I like your tower analogy respecting evil and good. It satisfies that part of me that likes to play with abstractions in the same way that Tolkiens explanation of how Melkor/Sauron etc. cannot actually CREATE anything, but merely pervert that which is already created. And a perverted creation can never be as solid or as strong as the other.
But put me down as someone who believes as evil (and good for that matter!) as things that are independant of humans and others (if any!) rather than merely a dysfunctional aspect of those beings. But I do reject the concept of the evil as a personality; a traditional "devil" (whether horned n' tailed or otherwise). Instead, I think of evil as more a destination that we're potentially always either either heading toward or away from. And that one way we can measures the progress of our journey thru life is to see how far we are from it.
What I think makes this reality interesting is that seeing evil and good this way makes a position of "neutrality" - which I define as any attempt to sit on the fence between poles and not pick a side - as pretty much meaningless and perhaps even impossible. Say even you could actually find the exact middle and stay squarely inside that; the where" you stood wouldn't count so much as the direction you chose to face and move toward. And there wouldn't be a way to avoid that.
I'm sure that my "system" isn't unique, but then again I've never heard evil/good/etc. explained this way. (hmmmm....)