Why Must There Be A Bad Guy?

Seems as if our species loves conflict. Somebody has to wear the white hat and someone else has to wear the black hat. The ‘us-or-them’ mentality fuels our politics, religions, economies and health care.

We eat it up. The animosity against another for some concocted reason spurred on by flawed history and tilted values make for nightly news.

Our propensity for being malevolent makes great movies and video with an enormous of malicious, hostile, evil-minded, baleful, evil-intentioned, venomous, evil, malign, malignant, rancorous, vicious, vindictive, and vengeful folks.

Where did we learn this stuff?

We all kind of started in the same place. Some little multi-cellular organism crawled out of the water and next thing you know we all be walking around.

If we all thought of each other as a brother or a sister we would be benevolent and kind, big-hearted, good-natured, benign, compassionate, caring, altruistic, humanitarian, philanthropic, generous, magnanimous, munificent, unselfish, and just plan nice to each other.

It is understandable if someone steals our food because they are hungry and have none that we respond protecting our surplus. It is understandable if someone attempts to steal our significant other we respond in emotional confusion.

Perhaps we must have this conflict to survive?

Many tangible dualities (such as light and dark, fire and water, expanding and contracting) are thought of as physical manifestations of the duality symbolized by yin and yang.

In Chinese philosophy, yin and yang describe how seemingly opposite or contrary forces may actually be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.

Duality is found in many belief systems, but Yin and Yang are parts of Oneness that is also equated with the Tao.

A term has been coined dualistic-monism or dialectical monism. Yin and yang can be thought of as complementary (rather than opposing forces) forces that interact to form a dynamic system in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts.

Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. The yin yang shows a balance between two opposites with a portion of the opposite element in each section.

In Taoist metaphysics, distinctions between good and bad, along with other dichotomous moral judgments, are perceptual, not real; so, the duality of yin and yang is an indivisible whole.

There are many other philosophies that study the general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Some are called religions.

So if conflict with another is our mantra then sports and politics and wars seem to be our destiny. Though we repel in fear of violence we revel in hate.

Whatever the reason we can find something in someone else that disturbs us so our prejudices begin. Maybe they look different than us? Maybe they dress different than us? Maybe they speak different than us? Maybe they worship a different God?

Way back when if a stranger approached who wasn’t keen there was some suspicion. What did this person want?

So this fear has grown to atomic annihilation threats while we feed our misguided and ill-informed ideologies with graphic violence to stoke our anger against what we don’t know.

Who is the bad guy here?