Black and White

In this world of ours, is there such a thing called right and wrong? Black and white? Good and evil? Has our image of evil been so tainted and corrupted by news media and propaganda that we view anything foreign as evil? Or is everything so relative that it'd be pointless to try and argue that it depends on the perspective? See, my opinion lies somewhere between the two, surprise, a gray area.

Like I said, I recently finished Watchmen, which really got me thinking about this issue, but being that my audience still haven't read it (Austin, Nina, Tep, whoever), I won't illustrate my example with it. But here's my point. Anything good or bad depends on the perspective of the person viewing it - it's all relative. This is why I don't think the Crusaders were evil, per se. We can agree that it was idiotic of them to persecute and wage war over religious values, but they had their supporters, did they not? They had the support of likeminded religious individuals who probably justified their moral crusade as righteous. "The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions," indeed.

Nothing is good or evil. Only varying degrees of evil. Hitler's regime was pretty horrible, but you couldn't call his reign equivalent to a Satan milkshake. His Afrika Korps, led by the honorable Field Marshall Erwin Rommel fought with distinction and was never suspected of any wrongdoing on the battlefield. So he was really evil, but his Afrika Korps weren't.

Our world today presents the concept of good and evil to the ignorant chimp masses, presumably to mollify their desires to rally hatred behind something. People like to be unified in their hatreds, to know that it's not illogical and to know they're part of a common group with a common goal. The rules of sociology apply - we must obey the rules of the game.

I really have no idea where I'm going with this. I'll be more coherent tomorrow when the topic isn't quite as abstract.