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"GOOD
AND EVIL: A PRINCIPLE OF POLARITY"
by Paul Von Ward
The laws of modern science offer
no explanations why history and current events always include good
(constructive) and bad (destructive) human behavior. Some claim that bad
behavior results from our genetic heritage, a result of humans not having
evolved enough. Many of today's statistics would suggest we haven't
evolved at all. Some people assume that an evil force leads inherently
good humans astray; only their religious beliefs can overcome them.
Can metascience (a combination of 21st century science and traditional
wisdom) offer us any better insight into the whys and wherefores of
positive versus negative behavior? I would like to suggest combining new
concepts from quantum mechanics and the millennia-old Hermetic Principles
may be helpful.
[The subject of good and evil relates to the Principle of Polarity, one of
seven Hermetic Principles.1 They comprise a basis for scientific study
allegedly given to humans by an advanced being (AB) more than 6,000 BP. He
is known by various names, including Thoth or Seth in Egypt, Manu in
India, Hermes in Greece, and the Serpent of the Adam and Eve story in
Genesis. They account for complexity in the universe and in humans not
explained by the four laws of physics and other modern scientific
principles.2]
The Principle of Polarity
The articulators of this principle believed that every facet of the
universe exists with two poles. As a coin has two sides, any temperature
can be seen as lower or higher. An "up" can exist only with a
"down," as a positive charge can only exist in relation to a
negative one. The same principle applies beyond the physical plane.
An IQ score one calls high may be considered as lower by others. My strong
sexual expression may be relatively weak on another's scale. Expressing
love by one may be seen as meddling by another. Thus, we have no
absolutes; all things exist on a gradient from one pole to another. If
this seems to make everything relative, remember that many people think it
is "good" to kill a person in an electric chair, but
"bad" to help a terminally ill person commit suicide.
While the content or the energy form may change, the dynamics remain the
same. Let's temporarily try to leave value judgments aside and consider
behaviors as the expression of positive or negative energies. When one of
a pair of photons is forced to spin in one direction, the other turns in
the opposite. And when one person increases the force on another to behave
a certain way, the other spins in the opposite direction. In families, as
well as in society at large, excessive control leads to excessive
rebellion.
The Yin/Yang symbol has a dot of white in the black area and a dot of
white in the black area to illustrate that anything which is more one kind
than the other still has something of the other in it. Within each of us
the shadows mirror the lights.
The Principle of Polarity has other characteristics that apply to this
discussion: The creation of one pole brings into existence the other. (A
flow of electric current generates a magnetic field and vice versa.) One
pole's power requires an equal force in the other. (The behavior of a
"Miss Goody Two-shoes" stimulates mischief by boys.) The phase
shift from one to the other can be instantaneous. (Exquisite pleasure very
easily crosses the threshold to pain, as laughter can quickly dissolve
into tears.)
Balancing Energies/Behaviors
Any system over time manifests an impulse to equal vectors (a measure of
strength and direction) for each polarity. For example, extremist Puritans
had to act out the compensating impure energies within themselves. Their
chosen outlet was to conduct witch hunts. The cause of witch hunts, or
pogroms against Jews or any other group, lies not in the behavior of the
victims, but in the unrecognized destructive energies of those who
consider themselves totally good.
The form or content of polarized social behaviors may vary, but energy
equivalence is always the result. The extent to which the 60s and 70s
contained excessive amounts of an open, giving energy (whether time, love,
sex, or social forgiveness), equal energy in the 80s and 90s was devoted
to protection and acquisition (whether property, financial success, or
social judgments).3 This is why extremes in any area always cause the arc
of the reverse pendulum swing to be large.
Those who would lead in relationships or in nations must understand that,
as in physics where an action begets an equal reaction, attempts to
control are always reciprocated by movement toward freedom. You can't have
one without the other.
Gandhi and King could not have mobilized so many people if the energy of
oppression had not been so great. As the degree of government interference
in individual lives increases, the energy of resistance builds up.
Suspicion by a lover of a partner creates the need to assert that one's
independence. One extreme leads to another in either case.
All this means that the more we repress the normal dissipating/destructive
energies within ourselves, by only allowing the expression of
conserving/constructive charges, the greater the likelihood of subsequent
antisocial, "evil" behavior.
Striving for Flexible Equilibrium
The spiral of progress, whether for an individual or a whole society,
depends on continual shifting between the positive and negative poles.
Testing one's range of emotional energy and learning from experience
requires this freedom to shift from one side of a point to the other.
Since we can never have one polarity without the other, we must identify
the optimum range for creativity and growth, and keep ourselves within
those changing limits.
It's like getting forward progress from the two polarities of a sailboat.
You can get too close-hauled (taut sails) and flounder dead into the wind
or you can fall away (loosen sails) too much where the wind pushes you
sideways. Navigating in that continually fluctuating medium path is the
only way to get progress from the polarities of the water below and the
wind above. Such is the challenge of navigating between the energy
polarities good and evil.
Reducing Social Violence
The United States' current political and religious approach to
"evil" is 90 degrees off course to deal with our rates of
criminal violence, school shootings, hate-based crime, road rage, and all
forms of self-abuse. Adding to our already excessive number of laws,
developing new controls, adopting so-called "zero tolerance"
policies in schools, conducting the "war on drugs" (which is
really a war against people), and preaching commandments and other
"thou shalt nots" all have the impact of increasing the negative
energy charge in their targets.
Energetically, the reason proponents are so emotionally attached to such
draconian measures is that acting on them permits a release of their own
negative energy. (Child abusers and child punishers differ only in
degree.) By creating more jobs for makers and enforcers of laws and
regulations, we have given some people filled with internal destructive
energy an official way to dissipate it. (Many in these professions
correspond to the Catholic Inquisitors or Nazi SS agents in times past.)
The answer is to find ways for everyone to release his or her negative
emotional charges before they build up to the point of behavior that
violates others. In the most common terms, all it takes are creative
outlets for everyone to work off steam before the internal pressure is
blamed on someone else.(4)
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1. Three Initiates. The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of
Ancient Egypt and Greece (The Yogi Publication Society: Chicago, 1912)
2. Von Ward, Paul. Solarian Legacy: Metascience & A New Renaissance.
(Inner Eye Books, Livermore, CA, 1998)
3. Of course the liberating behaviors in the 60s and 70s were in reaction
to the exercise of power and the force of authority in the 40s and 50s.
4. Two good outlets for me are mountain-bike riding and reading a
tension-filled thriller, plus writing critical essays.
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(Paul Von Ward is a cosmologist emphasizing the fields of prehistory,
frontier science, and consciousness studies. Visit his web site
www.vonward.com for samples from his work on The Emerging New Human Story.
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