The question of a cosmic war between 'good' and 'evil' has been central to the Judaeo- Christian (and other Abrahamic) religion. — Jack Cummins

Scholars think it actually came there via Zoroastrianism and its supercharged dualism.

What is the significance of seeing opposites as complementary? How useful or 'true' are such conceptions and what significance does it make in how life is lived? — Jack Cummins

Binary thinking is simplistic and convenient, so it's no surprise that humans often rely on it. By reducing everything to either-or categories, it prevents deeper perception and makes it harder to engage with complexity, paradox, or nuance.

Father Richard Rohr is a well-known critic of binary thinking.

The two alternatives are always exclusionary, usually in an angry way: things are either totally right or totally wrong, with me or against me, male or female, Democrat or Republican, Christian or pagan, on and on and on. The binary mind provides quick security and false comfort, but never wisdom. It thinks it is smart because it counters your idea with an opposing idea. There is usually not much room for a “reconciling third.” I see this in myself almost every day.

It may be that the question of the war between good and evil, or the picture of a wider scheme of opposites was a complex dialogue in ancient thinking. Jung describes the Greek concept of enantiodromia, in which opposites reverse when the the extreme of one opposite is reached.

The concept of a continuum is in contrast to that of binary opposites. I am not sure that many consider the importance of the interplay between the two perspectives as an important area for philosophy. It may have particular relevance of the concept of gender, where some propose a continuum as opposed to a simple division of male and female as categories.

The essentialist ideas of gender are because predominant and, with regard to good and evil, the dualistic picture can be seen as essentialist. There may be a popularity of dualistic thinking for simplistic thinking and avoiding 'grey' areas of uncertainty, but the problematic 'middle' will always remain. It is about that which doesn't fit into the black and white categories, and even of the problem 'boxes' and labelling in classification. Categories may be limited as 'Yes/No' thinking, as opposed to descriptive analysis in understanding.

The binary picture of opposites is contrasted by the Taoist picture, which sees opposites as complementary. — Jack Cummins

From a system thinking point of view, you can unpack this by recognising that metaphysics is groping after both the dichotomy that founds difference itself, and then also the hierarchy of growth that can arise out of such a symmetry-breaking and provide a further time-like directionality to the whole she-bang.

So two steps. First break the symmetry in complementary fashion. The most general such fashion in systems thinking would be the rather neutral divide of the break between the local and the global. The parts and the whole.

Then if you have the opposites of the local and global, you can see that is itself already the start of hierarchical directionality. Every level of order can lead to a higher level of order which is more globalised or generalise. And the trick there is that it is also more localised or particularised. Complexity grows in a world where all the component parts are becoming every more individuated and specialised.

In human society, we become socially and economically a more complex system – a globalised planet – by managing to integrate across a larger range of people doing specialised things.

So "good" and "evil" don't really speak to the logic of the dichotomy as there is an implied directionality involved. You are supposed to be moving up the hierarchy of creation by way of personal growth. The aim is to achieve maximum personal freedom within an equally maximal space of collective equality and responsibility.

A social scientist would put that as the directional goal of maximising social capital. The more advanced the hierarchical order, the richer the system is in this regard.

But also, the social scientist could identify the underlying dichotomy. Instead of the rather inflammatory terms of good~evil, the better neutral pairing – which allows both halves of the complementary relation to be valued – is to call it the organising dichotomy of competition~cooperation. A society thrives when it sees both sides of this particular equation being maximised in co-creation fashion.

So traditional religions try to capture this kind of systems truth in their language. And the more growth oriented societies focus on the hierarchical direction things ought to be going in, a more static society would focus instead on the complementary balance which is the dichotomy that keeps everything the most stable.

The moral is that everyone is groping after a systems understanding of reality. But this gets murky when people don't quite see how dichotomies and hierarchies are two separate steps towards the final story.

And even the final story becomes itself just a fresh level for a next step in the emerging hierarchical order. As for instance whether you think a society ought to be prioritising growth or stability. Which of these goals is the greater good or evil?

What is the significance of seeing opposites as complementary? How useful or 'true' are such conceptions and what significance does it make in how life is lived? I would argue that the idea of good and evil as aspects of a larger whole is a fuller picture and one which allows for a less aggressive approach to 'otherness'. I see it as relevant to so much conflict in the world. What do you think? — Jack Cummins

I think if it like two football teams. They’re playing in opposition to each other, but they’re both playing the same game by the same rules.

There being two football teams playing seems to be what happens in cultural wars, whether it is over religion or gender issues. As for 'the same rules', that is where it gets complicated because the war of opposites leads to different agendas and starting points for creation of rules, including moral guidelines.

In terms of systems thinking, directionality is important and hierarchies. The only way in which directionality could be seen in metaphysics would be about ideas of the higher and lower, as a an upward directionality. This was seen in many spiritual perspectives, as in ideas of heaven, hell, the higher self and, spiritual hierarchies.

However, taking it from a social science perspective, the one aspect which emerges is the role of authority and power within hierarchies. In particular, ideas of good and evil, as with all ideas, of the powerful elite are enforced through law, policy and the manufacturing of news.

Thinking about hierarchies, enables a useful contrast between ideas of the metaphysics of a divine order and the way in which those in powerful positions have a critical role in acceptance of ideas.

What is the significance of seeing opposites as complementary? How useful or 'true' are such conceptions and what significance does it make in how life is lived? I would argue that the idea of good and evil as aspects of a larger whole is a fuller picture and one which allows for a less aggressive approach to 'otherness'. I see it as relevant to so much conflict in the world. What do you think? — Jack Cummins

Putting conflict aside, and putting aside the binary definitions, narratives: to address good and evil, one has to first look to their essence: what ARE they? And why would a rigorous thinker like Wittgenstein hold, in Culture and Value, that "What is Good is Divine too. That, strangely enough, sums up my ethics"? (This from one who carried Tolstoy's Gospels in Brief wherever he went, for a time).

Whatever one inquires about at the basic level, one is always committed to being-in-the-world and the bottom line for analysis. Ethics (and aesthetics) is variable only, as Max Scheler put it (Formalism in Ethics and Non Formal Ethics in Value), in purpose, intentions, use, because these are themselves variable, the entanglements we all have in society and culture make them so, not because the good itself is variable. An analytic of the Good suspends all contingencies in order to move to an analytic (where binary thinking emerges, for all analytic thinking is categorical, because language itself is categorical) of the good as such, and here the Good gets very weird. What IS it? Something Good is different from mere states of affairs. Moore said called the essence of the ethical a "non natural property (though he said a lot of other things far less enlightened. And they say Principia Ethica was derivative. I'll leave it at that). Analyze an ethical issue, and you will find the Good and the Bad there, staring back at you; if not, it is not an ethical issue. 'Value' is the foundational word here. Wittgenstein knew that value/ethics/aesthetics could not be reduced to facts and language possibilities, for once the reduction was complete, there remained this very mysterious dimension that "we bring into" the world. The Good and the Bad, in this level of thinking, can only be "observed" apriori.

If Satan was not created perfect, then that is God's fault. One God, one religion; otherwise, God even failed to convey his message to His creation as well, which is not acceptable from a God who is perfect. Therefore, the question of why the creation is like this is a central question. So, either God is imperfect, or the mighty person who is in charge of everything is not known.

There being two football teams playing seems to be what happens in cultural wars, whether it is over religion or gender issues. As for 'the same rules', that is where it gets complicated because the war of opposites leads to different agendas and starting points for creation of rules, including moral guidelines. — Jack Cummins

This is from Verse Two of Gia-Fu Fengs translation of the Tao Te Ching -

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness.
All can know good as good only because there is evil.

Therefore having and not having arise together.
Difficult and easy complement each other.
Long and short contrast each other:
High and low rest upon each other;
Voice and sound harmonize each other;
Front and back follow one another.

Difficult and easy are playing the same game. Front and back are playing the same game. Maybe it would be clearer if I said it’s people playing the game. Distinctions are a game people play.