Wednesday, August 3, 2022
5:15 a.m. The set of George Gently CDs that I bought with my birthday money came yesterday, and it’s the same story as I watch them, as when I watch anything that has any drama in it at all. At the heart of the drama is always good v. evil. Almost the only exception I can think of at the moment is Andy Weir’s novels, where the drama comes from a protagonist fighting the elements, fighting to survive a situation, not fighting to overcome someone’s evil.
Of, of course there are plenty of examples of drama not predicated on good v. evil; it required a bit of remembering, though, to come up with them.
You need to focus, if you’re going to see it and express it.
Yes, thanks. Focus, receptivity, clarity, presence. It’s simple enough. You are persuading us that good v. evil is only one way of seeing things, not an inescapable way of seeing things. But dramas based on the kind of things that go on in the world – the specifics I’m thinking of, from one of Gently’s cases, is the systematic sexual abuse of children – make it very hard to hold in mind the reality of all being well, and always well. Or, take the five-part Netflix series I watched called “Turning Point,” that examined Sept. 11, 2001, its genesis and consequences. How can you look at all that stupidity and malice, all that deliberately inflicted pain and suffering, all that on-going self-righteous – well, you know.
Even as I pose the question, I am aware of a slight insanity in my mood. I imagine it wasn’t much different for the New England Transcendentalists, confronting the horrifying on-going reality of slavery. There’s a disconnect there, and it is hard to deal with.
Of course if the problem were an easy one, it would not really be a problem, would it? If you were to remain at an earlier, easier, stage of development, there would be no conflict to be resolved. You would believe in good v. evil or you wouldn’t, but you wouldn’t see both prongs of the dilemma.
Yes, that’s it exactly. Many Union men accused the Transcendentalists of escapism. Many abolitionists, particularly.
Perhaps they accused themselves, no less. But of course, more common it was for emancipation to override their theoretical belief in the non-existence of evil. After all, if evil does not exist, how can you rejoice in the overcoming of an ancient evil? And if evil does exist, what can you do but perpetually re-enlist in crusades to overcome its latest-discovered manifestation, or to declare, tacitly, that you’ve done all the fighting you’re going to do in one lifetime?
Particularly if you care to see that battling the evil usually results in transforming it rather than eliminating it. That is, evil doesn’t go away, nor even necessarily abate; it goes into other forms.
But this is an ancient trap, and we are working hard to free you – to free us (for of course, being inextricably part of each other, we share your fate) – from just that conviction that half the world’s energies need to be battled and trounced and removed from the scene so that only light will exist, and no dark; only up and no down; only yin and not yang, or yang and not yin, depending upon your tastes.
It’s squaring the circle.
Refocus, breathe, hold your center. If this were easy, everyone would see it.
Yes, I said I’m aware that there is something not sound in what I’m feeling, but that doesn’t make the feeling go away.
Why would you want it to? It is only when you face things that you have a chance to resolve them.
Well, I’m listening.
How many of your friends are firmly convinced that various ills are being deliberately caused by this or that human agency? The named culprits vary according to narrative, but it usually amounts to, “They are doing this to us, and only those of us who are brave enough to look at the evidence can see it.”
Oh yes. But I’m not inclined to mock their certainties; I just can’t share them, particularly in that the quality of certainty is common, but the object of the certainty is mutually contradictory.
We weren’t mocking anybody or anything. We are pointing out what exists, which is a different thing. People’s certainties are often wrong in their specifics, but still, certainty always proceeds from something; it isn’t as simple as, “People have a need to believe ins something clear and definite.”
That’s sort of the point, isn’t it? What we see as evil exists, and it doesn’t cease to exist because we say, “All is always well.”
No, and that is the point.
I beg your pardon?
A point of view becomes more comprehensive by inclusion, not by exclusion. How hared would it be to construct an absolutely watertight view of the world, if you merely lop off anything that doesn’t fit? If Paul Brunton didn’t know of the evil in the world around him – if Seth didn’t, or Edgar Cayce, or Jane Roberts – how could their resulting clarity be anything but deeply flawed? It is by seeing what is, but seeing it in a new light, that you advance, not by adopting one stance and rejecting anything that contradicts it.
So we are forced to, “What looks like evil isn’t evil really; we aren’t seeing it straight.” But
Yes, “but.” You are inclined to say, “but it doesn’t feel that way.” No, of course it doesn’t. If it did – when it does – the problem is resolved. The problem, after all, is a conflict of consequences. It always is.
“Consequences”? that doesn’t feel like it was quite the right word.
Call it, then, a conflict of postulates, or a conflict of viewpoints, whatever. If you think one thing and feel another, or if two ways of thinking contradict each other, or two currents of contradictory feeling coexist and roil the waters, there is your momentary freedom from invisible construct.
Hmm. The conflict makes visible to us what is otherwise invisible.
It is what Richard Bach was so good at doing. “Here, look at this in connection with this. See how it puts things in a different light?”
In effect, you are saying it is just the snags in the current that are valuable to us.
Potentially valuable. Or you can let them puncture your inner tubes and leave you swimming for shore.
So I suppose you’re saying, “Don’t be in any hurry to resolve dilemmas or contradictory evidence.”
We are indeed. Evil does exist, no question, in a world where you (in the form of your cultural and genetic ancestors) ate the apple. But evil is only somewhat real, in a world that is itself only somewhat real, as you realize as you struggle out of that trance; hence, cannot be what it seems to be, nor mean what it seems to mean.
And some people will see this as mere playing with words, and some will sense that there’s truth in it, but only sense it and not see it clearly, and some will see it plainly enough that it is obvious.
Yes, only each of you will be occupying any of these positions, depending upon the time of day. Sometimes one position will be obviously true, other times, another. The fluctuation is not in reality but in your consciousness, of course.
Is this why I have spent so many hours of my life reading detective fiction (though not particularly caring about the crime) and spy stories, and reading and now watching so many accounts of contemporary insanity?
There would be no advantage to you or to anyone, to have you spend your time in a daydream of things being all sweetness and light. But neither would it be worthwhile for you to escape into conspiratorial certainty. Both exist; life is somewhat sweetness and light, if you can see it; life does encompass conspiracies and crimes, if you’re willing to see them. But it isn’t ever either/or, but both. And, more than “both,” it is “neither/nor.” If you aren’t hanging on tenterhooks between comfortable but incompatible certainties, you’re not looking deeply enough. And the greater your insight, the more profound the problems that will appear to your sight.
Call this “A slight insanity,” maybe?
We smile. You’d soon overuse it. Maybe “A conflict of viewpoints,” or “A conflict of postulates.”
Maybe. All right, thanks for this. It was pretty unexpected, and led into deeper waters.
Not intellectually, emotionally.
Yes, I guess that’s so.
New territory every time you come to it. But it means, at least, that you aren’t stuck. You didn’t come to the same old place and play the same old tapes.
No, not with you nudging me. All right, thanks for all this.