Monday, March 7, 2011

Evil resides in the right and left brain

I was re-reading our first thoughts collected, and two person’s responses to Evil, I found interesting:

Person 1:

Evil: I believe that nothing can exist without having an evil side to it. Though some may be raised with the purest intentions, the vigilance of the soul cannot be maintained together. Evil is necessary; it contrasts our morals and helps us to establish our view of the world. No one can be purely good or evil; those archetypes are set aside to be used in mythology to teach us the true nature of ourselves. Also, evil cannot be destroyed. The hero, the paragon of purity, always seems to vanquish his/her enemy, but it will never truly be destroyed.

Person 2:

Evil: If there is a devil, then he is the only all-evil thing. Evil is the opposite of good, which is love, which is eternal and is real. Therefore, evil is equally eternal, and oppositely real, that is, unreal. This is a bit of a paradox; because that means that it actually doesn’t exist, though it lasts forever. So it must just be a figment of our sick imaginations. We create these obstacles for ourselves, blocking our view, and muddling the path, and then blaming it on something else; how typically human.

What I found interesting about these two people’s responses was that they were saying opposite angles of the same thing. They’re both talking about the same thing. One person’s angle was that it is evilness that is the underlying strain of humanity. The other person believed that it was love. While both did agree that evil is always constant, one saw it as what we all revert to, whilst the other saw it as where we tend to end up. The difference was their views of where evil is in respect to ourselves. So they’re both talking about the same unchanged thing, but each is standing on opposite sides of it. I think this is a division that we can see throughout humanity; what I wonder is whether this line traces that which is drawn to define right vs. left brain. I think, to an extent, this is so, the left brainer, the analytical one, will see the world in a logical, mechanical light, removed from emotion, whilst the right brainer will see the world as mysterious, romantic, and emotionally connected to himself. What I propose is that the left brainer sees the glass half empty, and contrariwise, the right brainer sees is half full.

1 comment:

  1. Your connection to the two sides of the argument to left brain vs. right brain intrigues me greatly. I would agree that the right-brained response would surely reference that underlying emotion of each action and concept. Sometimes, I see evil as only a creation of the right brain. From the morals that have been handed down by some predecessors, some humans may have developed deep, emotional responses to behaviors or actions that oppose those morals. These conflicting behaviors will be seen as evil, or perhaps juvenile, to those who hold the contrasting idea close to their hearts.

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