"Without Contraries is no progression. Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence. From these contraries spring what what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."
From William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
Recently the thought occurred to me that I don't believe in the existence of Evil. Even more recently (about five seconds ago) it occurred to me that this is probably because Evil is something that I don't fully understand. I'm not Evil, therefore I don't believe it exists. I never really believed that there was some sort of Evil force or demon in the world that encouraged people to make bad decisions- it's just something that, as humans, we seem to be inherently good at.
I suppose I believe in what Blake terms "Energy" as the driving force behind people's actions. This Energy might be what makes us Evil ("active springing from energy"), and we fall prey to this Energy when we fail to make use of Reason. The legs in this painting, which originated in an earlier work, are representative of giving in to this Energy. They originally alluded to something resembling an illicit affair or new and risky experiences, and now appear often in my work to represent the ignorance of Reason and the triumph of Energy.
I think people give up too easily on Reason. Roe vs. Wade, torture, and the death penalty aside, I think we all have a general understanding of what is right and what is wrong, and I think it's a problem when people consciously choose the things that they know are wrong for them. Especially when it's done again and again, and even more especially when religion says Jesus will forgive them forty-seven times and they decide to go full steam ahead to round forty-eight.
At the end of Blake's Marriage, the angel in the poem decides to become a devil which, to me, suggests not that giving in to our Energy is more fun, but that giving in to our Energy isn't a bad thing; it's just a part of being human. I feel like the general attitude of the Christian society is that we should accept our faults, celebrate them even, in recognition that we will never live up to the perfection that is reserved only for God.
I don't want to celebrate being human. I don't think perfection is possible, but I don't understand why more people don't strive to be better regardless. People don't live with any guilt because if no one is perfect, why should you feel guilty if you're not perfect either?
I feel guilty all the time. And it's not just because of the mistakes that I make-- I can live with the consequences. As I said, I don't identify with Evil and I've never done anything that I really regret. But When I make a bad decision, it's the knowledge that I chose it, that I could have done the right thing but didn't, that eats away at me. I don't want to keep giving in to Energy because it's easier than using Reason. I don't want someone to forgive me, I just want to do the right thing.
I have extremely mixed feelings when it comes to Progression. Progression stems from good things like Reason and Love, but Progression most often stems from Energies like selfishness and greed. Progression in technology, Progression in business, Progression in knowledge; it seems to be taking us in places that are simultaneously helpful and dangerous. Walmart is cheap and helps out people who are struggling financially, but also hurts the US job market and supposedly doesn't live up to moral labor practices. Stem cell research is getting us closer to a cure for horrible diseases, but is a little too close to 'playing God.' What if we get to the point where babies are created in test tubes, genetic makeup selected by parents down to the fingerprint. Isn't that "God's" job? Do we really want ultimate power in the hands of humans, who are constantly relying on the Energy that leads them down the path of corruption and destruction?
