What would you do if everything were as “perfect” as you imagine the world is supposed to be? How do you know that all the bad things that happen aren’t just normal and that world where everything is in order is just a dream?
If everything fell into place: people never got divorced, cars never broke down in the middle of the interstate, dads cared for their children and stuck around their whole lives, no one committed murder or suicide, no one bullied anyone, a four year old doesn’t get terminal cancer, no one takes what isn’t theirs, manufacturers made food with the public health and well-being as their foremost concern, no one deceives you towards their own advantage… if all these things and more (the countless other atrocities) went away, could you really say our world is still our world? Is it beyond human nature? Maybe life is not about achieving order and control and complete peace. Maybe it’s simply impossible. Maybe no matter what we try, people will always have something really shitty happen to them. Someone will die young, or get disabled. Someone will be molested or raped. Someone will feel undermined and insignificant to his or her parents. On and on.
Maybe a backdrop of tragedy is what defines our race; we overcome most of it and define ourselves by the scars left behind. We become so-called better people, stronger people.
Wouldn’t we be too bored without tragedy?
excellent post.
ReplyDeletea reformed and orthodox Jewish/Christian perspective can lend the notion that even these "evil" things are an act of God as a test to his people.
a Taoist would impose that Yin cannot exist without Yang and vice-versa.
a Hindu would say that all is the manifold expressions of the Brahmin [or manifold expression of God] as IT plays out its cosmic drama in the universe with itself.
the common realization in all of these is the ability to escape the innerworkings of the game itself and just see it all as a necessary organism that one needs only to try to release control over.