Chaos & Light — At Principle Gallery
It is usual to think of good and evil as two poles, two opposite directions, the antithesis of one another…We must begin by doing away with this convention.
— Martin Buber, Good and Evil (1952)
The idea of polar opposites has been a subject here on this blog many times over the years. Light and dark, right and wrong, positive and negative, etc. I had always included good and evil in that list, thinking them as two sides of a coin or two poles of a magnet that pulls one in their direction.
But reading the passage from philosopher Martin Buber (1875-1965) that contained the quote above made me rethink that. We are not inherently either good or evil.
Both are simply directions available to us.
But one, Goodness, is more like a pole in that it is a destination that must be worked toward. There must be an awareness of it in order to set one’s course for it. It requires dedicated work and conscious decisions. It often entails sacrifice and service, as well a willingness to accept one’s responsibilities for one’s own actions and how they affect others.
To seek goodness means that you set a course for it and work hard to stay on that path. It might be well described as having a moral compass.
Evil, on the other hand, is simply the absence of direction. No moral compass nor desired destination.
As a result, evil thrives in all its many forms where goodness is set aside as a destination. The virtues of goodness are diminished then. There is then no sense of responsibility nor sense of shame. Empathy, compassion, and self-sacrifice are lost, and are viewed as weakness when they do appear.
I wrote the above a year or so back. It sat in the draft section and I would periodically pull it up and read it. Never felt like it was the right time to use. Wasn’t sure there was a right time. But this morning it reminded me of how I sometimes refer to our human existence (and my painting) as a balancing act between chaos and order.
I hadn’t thought of that chaos as being simply an absence of direction– a rejection of goodness that goes along with a lack of a moral compass to follow– that has the potential to morph into some form of evil.
It’s a simplistic point, probably disputable by finer minds than mine, but one that felt illuminating this morning for me.
How that illumination can be applied to the reality of this world is another thing altogether. It’s certainly beyond me this dark, cold morning.
This post did remind me of some of my paintings, such as the one at the top, that deal with my concept of the chaos present in this world. Here’s a 1989 song from David Byrne called Good and Evil such to fill out our dance card. I only became aware of this song recently but find a lot to like in it. As with most things from David Byrne, it is interesting.
Redtree Times 