Seeing The Good And Bad in All Things

Something that I notice more and more is that people in general have a tendency towards grouping things as either all good or all bad. They will say a doctor is good and a criminal is bad. Or George Washington is good and Adolf Hitler is bad. Or this nation is good and that nation is bad. Or this religion is good and that religion is bad. Or even Jesus is good and Satan is bad. It goes on and on. People have a way of simplifying things and taking the whole rather than understanding all the different underlying dynamics and circumstances.

There is much more to George Washington where labeling him as simply "good" can not suffice. There is a lot more to Adolf Hitler where labeling the man as simply "bad" is elementary. Not everything George Washington did was and can be good and not everything Adolf Hitler did was and can be bad. We need to look deeper and really know the different forces at play here. Now, both of these guys are pretty extreme examples so it is a bit harder to see the contrary parts of their characters.

But what about something like the American Civil War? Was that good or bad? Something like this begins to have arguments on both sides. This one may not be quite so easy to take sides. Perhaps this event just was and it is not appropriate to label it as good or bad. Maybe it is appropriate to understand the good and bad parts in it and why they happened the way they did. Perhaps this one is best left as having elements of both. And maybe the best way to gain an understanding of such an event is to study the motivations of all sides and simply understand why things came about as they did. Simply saying it was good because it ended slavery or it was bad because it almost separated America is a shallow way of absorbing the event.

So why do people develop such a basic way of assigning things as simply good or bad? I think a major reason is discernment. People who are less discerning than others naturally will not be able to catch the subtle nuances of a subject. They will lack both the desire and capability to dig deeper in a matter and organize each piece of information into its own category. It takes actual effort to get to the bottom of things and far too many people would rather have somebody else do the digging for them. The problem, of course, is that by having somebody else do the work for you your own growth is stunted. And if you don't use the tools that you are given eventually they collect dust and rust. Pretty soon you have to come back again and again to this source for information as you no longer possess the tools to do it yourself.

The Good and Bad of the Wise

Some really wise people will often times seem like they almost agree with good and with bad - as if neither matter to them. They will side with good sometimes and they will side with bad other times - as if they are contradicting themselves. They are able to see the context of each situation and don't accept rigid, good/bad relationships. Things are much too involved for that.

Men like Manly Palmer Hall and Jordan Maxwell can almost trick you as they will argue either side of person or event favorably. But they are not saying this person or event is good or bad. They are saying this one action, under these given circumstances happened this way because these other events under these circumstances were happening.

People will hear somebody like Jordan Maxwell present certain parts of Christianity that he has found to be bad and they will think that he is anti-Christian. Just because somebody finds the bad in something where the majority of it is good does not make them anti anything, and it doesn't mean they are attacking the whole. It means they are taking a more refined understanding.

It's kind of like pixels and resolution, like in video games. Most people see the world through an 8-bit NES lens where there is not much detail going on. Some of the more wise people see the world through a 16-bit SNES or even a 64-bit N64 lens. The really wise may even see through the XBOX 360 resolution or perhaps no lens at all. And we all know the higher screen resolution requires a faster processor, more RAM and better hardware altogether, something in itself worthy of consideration.

So when the person seeing through a higher resolution, say 512-bit, comes along and meets somebody seeing through 8-bit he is able to say this 1 bit of red that you are seeing is actually 64 individual factors acting on making it red. While you may see it as simply being red, I see a whole story of principles and dynamics at work here. So both parties interpret the even at different levels of understanding commensurate to their hardware.

The following image should illustrate my point:

So as you can see, to most people everything is simply great and there are no worries. Easy come easy go. All is okay.

To those of a bit more education things are starting to become clear but they can't quite put the pieces together. They need to do more homework.

To the few that have done their homework and have found all the pieces they are able to see the most clear picture. They get what's going on and see how everything adds up.

Conclusion

People like Manly Palmer Hall and Jordan Maxwell form their opinion based off the facts rather than form the facts based off their opinion. Whatever their research leads them to they will include in forming their opinion. Facts on both sides of events will lead smart people to opinions on both sides of events. I think this is what all true scholars should learn to understand. Colleges and Academia have a way of taking sides and forcing certain views on subjects. But perhaps taking such a one-sided view is to take away from a more accurate meaning of reality.

So in consideration of all these things, maybe events throughout history are best left as containing elements of both good and bad. Sure, some more and some less than others, but never completely one way or the other. While having something as being all good or all bad makes for a quite romantic novel, it simply cannot be the novel of our reality.