Turning Around the Battle of Good Versus Evil

For a long time, I've been thinking about how we need a new narrative. I first tried to express it in this short video. A while later, I wrote this. I see the good versus evil narrative as a basic plotline that underlies so much of how we think and behave, so much of what entertains us, so much of what drives us. And I see that core storyline as a large part of what is setting humanity on a course of its own destruction. 

Humanity has been consumed in the battle between good and evil for the modern era. The atrocities within colonialism, slavery and the holocaust happened in the context of this story. We look back now and see the good and evil lines quite clearly, but at the time when those events were unfolding, the violent and immoral behaviors we see now likely felt subjectively like the pursuit of the good by those actors: part of expansion, spreading truth, research.

The lines of good and evil are actually not static at all. They are always in flux, and how they fall in our own mind depends on our perspective. Your personal position in a particular drama has so much to do with how your mind will put together a situation. The attachment you have to a particular benefit flowing to you will so sneakily color your view and set you on the good side, even if a view from another perspective would see you and your actions quite differently. The struggle you're experiencing in a situation also influences your view, making it more likely you'll see yourself as a good martyr and whatever you feel is responsible for your struggle as the evil problem. 

And yet, most of us have experienced how with the passage of time and the maturing of perspective, we often end up seeing things differently than we once did. Where we thought we were a hero, we learn we were hopped up on our own self-importance and didn’t realize how arrogant and disconnected from other people we were being. When we felt worthless and beat down, we look back to realize that our humble actions were quite heroic in how they filled a desperate need.

Good and evil are never objective realities that are clear and agreed upon. Often, they are perceptions split right down the middle with half the people believing a story painting one scene of heroes and villains, and the other half drawing the opposite picture in their minds. We are designed to see ourselves in a story where we are the main character, where we are in the right. So, as we cling to the battle between good and evil, we perpetuate our own delusions.

The narrative of good versus evil has become an overarching lens for so much of our community experience. The endless wars, conflicts and disconnection come in large part from this narrative touching so much of modern society: from advertising dramatizing the problems of our lives and which products or services can triumph over them, to politics where the other side is always cast as evil and needing to be eliminated, to sports and legal conflicts entertaining us with competitive drama, to the growing viciousness of cancel culture attempting to silence voices that are seen as dangerous and wrong by those resorting to cancelling behaviors. 

All the consumption and investment we have in this good versus evil narrative leaves us weary and depressed, anxious and afraid, separate and angry. I sense that to continue allowing this story to dominate our minds and our lives sets us on a course for human extinction, constantly lost in cycles of fighting, of being perpetrators and victims, of being blinded by the polarity in our minds.

I see another option though: flipping the narrative quite subtly to create drastic changes. We can move from the constant struggle between poles to a dance in Oneness. Rather than applying our cognitive powers to try to discern good from evil, we can instead focus our intellectual efforts on distinguishing between our own clarity and delusion. We can celebrate the effort to see all sides of a situation, instead of rooting for and working toward the success of what we deem the good side of any equation.

Instead of pursuing good, which is a subjective conclusion our mind is going to assign based more on our self-image than the objective truth of a situation, we can switch our focus and interest to pursuing clarity. In this process, how our egos attach to being right will become more and more apparent, and likewise will become more and more transparent.

We can train our amazing sensory perception and intellect to learn to explore the many different perspectives that could be held about a particular thing, instead of trying to find and settle into the “right” one. When we observe certain people behaving in a way that is different than we are inclined to behave, we could get curious about what motivates them and why they are choosing to align and move and speak differently than we are. 

What are they seeing that I'm not seeing? 

What have they experienced that makes them act the way they do?

In shifting the inquiry from trying to discern good to one of trying to see clearly, we learn to not only see what is better, but we learn to accept what is more. It is possible to live into what actually is rather than living in an endless fight for something else. Byron Katie has dedicated herself to teaching this idea through The Work. 

Whether fighting for the good, for justice, for change, for a better world, or even just for a win – we are still fighting. And in the fight, we are putting off our contentment and peace until the fight is won. And collectively, clinging to these battles contributes to the divisions in society, to the feelings of isolation, to the difficulties of different ideological groups to connect and work together for common good.

We could, instead, release the fight and be more awake to what actually is. We could learn about this world more, and be intrigued by the diversity of perspectives and the incredibly different life experiences that other people have. We could also have compassion when we see people behaving with cruelty or insensitivity, seeing more a need for healing than an evil person to eliminate. And this storyline doesn't need to be dry or boring or lacking interesting tension. It can be surprising and filled with twists and turns of a quite different flavor.

Obstacles and unwanted circumstances are a part of life, but when we’re not in a fight against them, a labeling of them as evil and needing to be fought, opposed and eliminated, something very different happens. In dropping the fight, we leave behind the anxiety and drama of the destructive crusades that have been the obsession of humanity for so long, and instead we travel through layers of illusion seeing more and more of our world and what this mysterious existence we are all part of really is. What we used to perceive as obstacles can become the fodder for learning and our own evolution, a sort-of Fierce Grace.

As we shift to pursue clarity as our objective, to be open to see that people with a different perspective aren't our enemy, we can transform our overarching narrative into one that's regenerative, redemptive and life-giving. With this shift of the core narrative we're running within, the narrative which drives so much of our storytelling in so many aspects of society, I suspect that we would open the door to all sorts of more life giving and harmony creating narratives and visions. 

I feel deeply that this core change could carry us into a new age of peace and sustainability.