I’ve been thinking alot about shadows- how the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. They are directly related, just as the dimmer the light, the lighter the shadow until it’s all one. (Of course there are other variables like ambient light, etc but stay with me) then I start thinking of heros, and events in history that are unthinkable, and how people somehow just let them happen. I think it’s like the light/shadow relationship. People want heros, but in order to have one you need the antagonist or else the hero’s deeds don’t matter. But by creating one you are also defining the other. You stop seeing the light in the others, and stop seeing the dark that is in the light. enemies are shaped by our defining our hopes - the edges of a shape being defined by it’s shadow, it’s shading, its degree of light to dark ratio. The stronger the light, or the more defined our heros, the darker the background becomes that surrounds it. So something that once was a lovely grey, in a field of various greys becomes sinister and flat when contrasted more sharply with a harsher light. And the more you focus on the light, the less nuance and detail you see in everything else. We are all a combination of light and dark, and we need to be ok with that before we blind ourselves. We refuse to see the nuance because we want our light to be brighter. Of course this doesn’t really help anything.
Maybe this pandemic is bringing attention to mortality, the great equalizer. There is no heirarchy in death. It happens to everyone.
I think this thought is somehow related to Taoism - please correct me if I am wrong- that the concept of evil is not the dark over the light, but either side being stronger than the other- an imbalance of opposites. The idea is to create balance and acceptance of differences. Too much order is just as bad as too much chaos, and beauty lies in individual differences not uniformity. By seeing the greys, accepting different peoples and their needs and allowing for their prosperity brings harmony to the larger whole. Idk Something like that. I just don’t get this world right now.