Out of darkness

Is it wrong to take a friend's trust and twist it into a weapon to beat them down or force them deeper into obscurity, their dreams dead before they have a chance to breathe their first lusty cry? Is it wrong to torture and torment someone to hasten them along the dark road of death into the next lifetime? Or are these simply examples of the Universe, the All, wanting to know how it feels to rend reality and fashion it into a darker shape?

Would we know night without the day, shadow without light, truth without dishonest, black without white, etc.? Do we need opposites in order to see the positive aspect of anything -- or do we choose the labels of good and bad based on our own selfish needs, wants, and desires? One could say that darkness is a friend and companion to someone with porphyria, that light and shadow have no meaning for the blind, that truth is a matter of perspective and slant, and that black and white are the absence and presence of all colors, except that white light is the presence of all colors and the color white the absence of pigment of any kind. Turn a jewel a certain way and all the flaws are visible, but turn it in another direction and it seems flawless. Which is truth and which the lie? Which the good and which the bad?

Hitler was seen by many as the saviour of the German people, the man who brought Germany from the brink of ruin and bankrutpcy after reparations required by the martial courts after losing in World War I. And there are those who see Hitler as a monster who exterminated millions of Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, and genetic and political undesirables. Turn the jewel in the light and you will see flaws or perfection, even though it is the same jewel.

It is the story of the frog and the scorpion, each a prisoner of its nature and neither able to free himself from its genetic coding. Do you fault the frog for using his amphibian capabilities in saving a fellow creature or the scorpion for reflexively stinging the frog in the midst of the flood and causing both their deaths? Fault one and you fault the other. Their futures, their paths, their lives are inextricably bound by circumstance and nature.

We seek perfection in all things, but we would be better served to see perfection in even the meanest and ugliest of creations, for one man's perfection is another man's foul creation. To all things under heaven there is a purpose and a use. Energy and power are neutral. It is we who place labels and judgment, forcing all creation into a preordered and preconceived mold to suit our tastes, our vision, our perspective, and no one is completely right or wrong. Life is life. Power is power. Energy is energy. And all are grist for the Universe's mill, a bit of grit killing an oyster who spins a coating of beauty to hide the nip of death. One without the other ceases to exist.