ANALYSIS OF GOOD AND EVIL

     At a practical level, most people would say good people are those
that cooperate with us in our goals, and bad people are those that
oppose us in our goals.

     At the level of a game, good people then are those that are on our
side, and bad people are those that are on the other side.

     Most people have the forebearance to recognize that others may be
opposed to a specific goal and yet be people of good will and good
intentions.  In a football game for example, one hardly supposes that
one side really considers the other side 'bad people' outside of the
arena of the game.

     The same is true in society at large, people can oppose each other
in political issues and respect each others intentions and good will.
 
     This presupposes the existence of a higher game, such as "greatest
good for the greatest number", and most recognize that people can have
differences of opinions about how to best approach that goal, and thus
become opposed to each other at the practical level of play, without
considering that the opposing party is a 'bad' person.

     Games also tend to have well agreed upon rules of play, sworn to be
upheld by all players, and thus both sides of the game will consider
bad, any person that tries to CHEAT, that is win by breaking the rules.

     At a higher level one might suppose that even cheating in a game
would not be possible unless all had agreed to its possibility as part
of the rules of the game, so from that perspective even cheaters are
merely playing according to the rules of breaking the rules.

     The same can be argued for those who try to come into a game and
disrupt it or destroy the playing field.  They too are generally
considered really bad by those who wish to play the game, but again it
can be surmised that even party poopers had to be given access and
permission to crash the game, before they could do so, so even they are
merely playing by a higher set of rules.

     At a very high level you will find conflicts between the upper most
goals of the game.  For example there will be those who are trying to do
the greatest good for the greatest number, and those who are trying to
do the greatest good for themselves at the expense of every one else.

     Those who make agreements intending to not keep them, those who try
to consume more than they produce, those that try to take other's
production against their will, so they don't have to produce themselves,
are generally considered criminal and bad people.
 
     One has to discriminate between 'criminal' which is a technical
term and thus is a fact of the matter, and 'bad' which is a statement of
desirability which remains a matter of opinion.

     One can imagine a game wherein the above behavior is actually
sportsman game playing: even in nature, animals eat each other, kill
young to make space for more breeding, steal each other's nests etc, and
its all very up and up.

     But in human circles and the game of building civilizations such
rapcious behavior is highly frowned upon.  Of course that depends on
what time in history you are looking at.
 
     Thus it might seem that the definition of good and bad is arbitray,
being defined relative to the name of the game and its rules.  Set a
goal, define rules, then good people seek the goal and obey the rules
and bad people don't.

     This runs into the trouble that basically all goals are arbitrary,
or if not arbitrary, then possible of such wide diversity, that it is
quite possible that players in one game might be seen as cruel cowards
in another.  Thus judging people in one gmme by the goals and rules of
another is foolish.
 
     It is however tempting to postulate that ALL games and goals and
rules are formulated out of the basic fundamental nature of the beings
which play them, which nature is identical across all beings.

     The specific manifestations of this common nature may be sweepingly
different, but when viewed from the viewpoint of that common nature, all
beings would be able to see the commonality and aesthetic sense in any
particular game.

     Thus if a being were to arise that actually did not hold this
nature in common with everyone else, it would be considered odd at best,
utterly alien at worst, and probably evil too boot, as it would grate
with, if not outright oppose, any and all games and goals of those
sharing the common nature.
 
     Part of the problem of good and evil is that the assignment of evil
by good to another, tends to be a sign of good's no responsibility for
the other's nature and presence in the game.  "I didn't invite you into
this game, I have no idea where you came from, and if I could I would
destroy you utterly, and turn back time, and have you never have been."
 
     When good gets down to this state of irresponsibility for evil, it
tends to forget that most evil is merely other good playing its own
game, and is only evil relative to the game the first good are playing.

     Good will then tends to mis mockup the evil as someone who is
truely fundamentally different and opposed to themselves, someone who
does not share the common nature of all, and thus good stoops to using
its own conception of evil against the evil in order to destroy it.
This of course will alarm the other person, who does not understand the
misperception of the good attacking it, and will thus consider the good
person evil too, and respond in like kind.  Thus you get a kind of war
out of nothing, based on hallucinations of significances, namely
unprovoked evil.
 
     One might guess that it is unreasonable to presuppose the existence
of two different kinds of beings in existence.  Thus one needs to come
back to the common nature of all beings to resolve such conflicts.  It
is the duality that one perceives that leads to this conflict, and it is
the unity that is perceived that starts to heal it again.

     In present time, there are an awful lot of people who are
misperceiving evil where it does not exist, responding in like kind, and
thus soliciting a response of like kind in return.

     There are also a lot of good people in the world who have given up
to their hallucination of evil and become what they feared most.  This
is a valence shift born of utter overwhelm, apathy and total (designed)
irresponsibility.
 
     A person will mockup a Nemesis One for himself, decide to fight it,
lose to it, become it, and then you have a real asshole on your hands,
dramatizing it on everyone else for the rest of time.
 
     So although one might reasonably say that all people are basically
'good', one also has to take note of this propensity to knowingly design
irresponsibility and overwhelm into one's own life.

     Goodness of Authorship superceeds the goodness of charactership.

     Good Authorship includes evil and error in its stories.

     Most people, at the level of goodness that they understand, would
find it very hard to consider such design 'good'.  They are still very
bent on destroying evil, and will have no responsibility for its
existance, whether real or imagined.  They certainly don't want to take
responsibility for it if it is real, for what 'good' would create real
evil?  And they don't want to take responsibility for it, if it is
imagined, for that makes a fool out of them.
 
     It's the humor in the fool that is the way out and which motivates
and justifies the original creation of apparent evil.  They might end up
being the fool, but its a very bright and intelligent fool, the Imp Soul
engaging in astounding imperial stupidity of grand and excalibur design.

     As to whether God values the civilization or the volcano more, it
is pretty well answered in the above analysis.  Electra once wrote in
"Locked Dichotomies" that Gods value playing more than winning or
losing.  Both winning and losing are a loss of the *GAME* to the God.

     The human values winning, mainly because he doesn't want to have to
play and winning is often seen as a way to end the game at least for a
while (for example until he gets hungry again.)

     If good had no evil to fight, would good create evil to fight?
Does good *WANT* evil to fight?

     For the human, no, of course not.

     For the God, yes.

     The goodness of the human is a subset of the goodness of the God.
 
     Adore defines Divinity as all powerful self responsible good.  It
is that *SELF RESPONSIBLE* impulse towards ludicrous demise and majestic
practical jokes, humor in other words, that separates the God from the
human.  The human *IS* the God after he has jumped into the grand
design.

     Within the grand design, the space time game stream, there are
created identities of good and evil.  Good fights evil, and would never
create evil itself.  If good had no evil to fight, good certainly would
*NEVER* create evil to fight, but would instead while away its time
planting and picking daiseys.  If good were to ever create evil for its
own amusement, it would quickly regret it and come to consider itself
evil for having done so.

     To the degree that a being enters into the grand design and becomes
the good identity, he becomes interiorized and stuck into the beingness
that it defines, which includes everything it must do and suffer as a
consequence.

     To the degree that the being can become the author again of both
good and evil, it can exteriorize from the story, and begin to *REWRITE*
the story rather than just live it out.

     The force beind the exteriorization is humor, it is the humor that
blows him out of his head, his story, his universe, as it was humor
that originally brought him in.

     "High halycyon is bemused relief on the verge of time." -Adore

     Notice however that as Author, the impulse is not to write evil out
of existence, but to make the conflict more serious, but more balanced,
more humorous and to last longer, thus prolonging the ludicrous demise.

     The ultimate dischord and resolve are the primary motivation to
the Author.
 
     The good doesn't want either, they just want daiseys, and not a
hard time getting there.

     And good certainly doesn't want to bear the brunt of the humor
of the fool.

     Homer

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Homer Wilson Smith     The paths of lovers    Art Matrix - Lightlink
(607) 277-0959               cross in         Internet Access, Ithaca NY
homer@lightlink.com     the line of duty.     http://www.lightlink.com