The Dichotomy of Good & Evil

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

On a recent flight that was delayed many hours, I sat staring out the window listening to a series of downloaded podcasts by Jordan Peterson. He manages to seem sure of himself while also contemplative; certainty mixed with a sense of possibly changing his mind. His is an appealing temperament, whether or not you agree with him.

Peterson, in a debate with Slavoj Zizek, said, “The light that you discover in your life is proportionate to the amount of darkness you are willing to forthrightly confront.” As if light and darkness were on opposite sides of a double pan scale. Maybe they are. “Every horrible thing done by human beings was done by human beings,” Peterson continues, “So it stands to reason that human beings are capable of horrible things, and you’re one of them.”

You are a human being capable of horrible things, and I am, and he is, too. We all have the capacity for evil only because we all have the capacity for good as well. It might be impossible to know one without the other, just as it is impossible to understand darkness without the day, or joy without sorrow, or sour without sweet.

Peterson’s debate with Zizek reminded me of a field trip my third grade class took to a cave. A guide, our teachers, and a couple of chaperones shepherded 60 kids through the…