Light Side, or Dark? That is The Question

PolarBear wrote: I believe everyone truly deep down has ideals and has some kind of moral compass. However, I think people who are hurt, angry, jealous, etc. lose sight of these ideals, and end up hurting others. I realize that may seem simplistic, but that is what I've come to believe.

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Good and evil

It's like how it's been stated many times people have many different veiw points on the matter. As a Jedi it's open to interpretation.

What is right and what is wrong?
Your right and wrong comes from many things. Culture, religion, upbringing, and situations. As Jedi I believe it's important to fallow the teachings. And most of knowledge and not ignorance.

What is my veiw point?
My veiw point is the Darkside is everything bad. However, it does have its place. For example: anger. Anger is bad ?? but it's how we react to that that gives us a positive outcome. For example you could punch someone vs being mindful of your emotions and explaining your fustration in a positive way. Such as I really don't like when you... because...]

Humans use dichotomies to break things down into understandable chunks. Its all one thing.

Agreed Kyle, many of our ideas of what is good / evil is influenced by our environment and culture. I still do believe, however, that we are given a moral compass within our soul (or whatever you want to refer to it). And that indeed, the darkside does represent the decay of the soul itself through anger, jealously, pride, and ignorance. We must light up our own darkness, by feeding the light in ourselves, lest our light goes out. As corny as that sounds.

You have a good point Adam. However, I would argue that there is a reason to break things down into chunks. It is necessary to separate things and ideas, such as good and evil, with the purpose of growing our soul / spirit / self. Not to say that you were implying that breaking things down into chunks wasn't necessary to begin with, as your comment did not imply that.

The issue with good and bad is that something can be both good to one person and bad to another.
Evil seems to still be evil even if its considered good by one and bad by another. Is compassion the only thing to counter evil?

Adder wrote: The issue with good and bad is that something can be both good to one person and bad to another.
Evil seems to still be evil even if its considered good by one and bad by another. Is compassion the only thing to counter evil?

Yes and No, like all things it has to be approach with care and restraint, the constant struggle between the commonly understood "good" when pursued even with compassion can lead to unspeakable evil. Countering evil first takes an understanding of the actions that become evil and countering them. People will always have bad or evil thoughts, heck, I do all the time. We are all no angels, if we don't cross that line ourselves once in a bit we never really get our bearings or reset our compasses, so to speak.

Just 2 cents, Much love,
Kobos

Thoughts and actions are really different things though, obviously. An evil thought by my definition can only be one that is bad for oneself, otherwise its just imagining doing evil... rather than an actual evil thought. I dunno if that is me being pedantic or semantic!?

Actually I don't think an evil thought even really exists by that definition; because I think a person needs to take responsibility for their own actions and if they want to hurt themselves than whether its good or bad it's their decision and whether they call it good or bad becomes redundant, but if its bad for them then its better called a self sacrifice IMO. But its all just words I guess...

And I agree evil (and by extension also compassion) can be both good and bad, but wondering what is the difference then in evil and compassion... and that those things must assert some more useful meaning than individual subjective perspective (good/bad/undecided) - perhaps begging the statement to clarify 'to whom'? If it's to oneself then it's easier I guess, but if it's to others then it takes a bit more work.

I'd venture as far as to say that both compassion and evil (action) 'require' that extra work to be cognisant of the impact as part of making the decision to act upon them in that way. In which case I tend to classify them as much more objectively solid concepts; grounded and deliberate, measured for effect. The effect being what defines it, rather then the intention.
My thinking then being that someone imagining being evil is probably imagining the experience of result generated from the action, and considers that is good for them.... ie self-centered thinking. Rather then genuinely being able to understand the extent of suffering, unless they have no capacity for empathy in which case we get the psychopathy etc.
:pinch:
I don't think its fair on the fiction to bundle Dark with that, but it might be most apt when considering the wider doctrinal implications of the fiction.

PolarBear - No argument from me. You have to learn that before you can unlearn it.