To choose or not to choose?
Hubby, as a programmer, sees life as black and white, yes and no, zeros and ones. Absolutes. I'm more of a greyscale person myself. Whilst I respect Hubby's opinion, I completely disagree with it. :o) (Which is one of the things that I love about our relationship - there are things on which we have strong opposing views. We have been known to have debates lasting several hours and more. When we've lost our voices and run out of supporting evidence, we agree to disagree and move on ... but I digress.)
Life is not black and white. To say that it is, for me, is akin to believing in Good and Evil. Of course, I understand good-with-a-small-g and evil-with-a-small-e, right and wrong as it were (although in many circumstances, even those concepts can be very subjective - one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter ... but I digress, again).
But the abstract ideas of Good and Evil are interesting. I would recommend, to anyone who hasn't already done so, to read "Good Omens" by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - a cracking good read and quite thought provoking behind the gags.
Without giving too much away, there is an angel and a demon who have been on earth for centuries, gone native as it were, and have become friends. The point is made that humans can dream up such awful things, worse than Hell could ever devise, and yet display such selfess compassion. Within each one of us we have the whole scale. I'm not suggesting we're all capable of demonstrating such evil horrors as we see all too often on the news but I believe that we all possess the potential (you don't agree? - take a look at this).
We all share the same genetic make-up as Ghandi, Hitler, Martin Luther King, Torquemada, Mother Teresa, Jack the Ripper, Florence Nightingale. It is the choices we make that ultimately make us who we are.
I don't believe in demons and angels but I do believe in potential and the power of choice.
Happy Journeys
posted by Rhea at 1/10/2005 11:23:00 pm
2 Comments:
Hi, I’m the Hubby
Choice, a wonderful word.
Dictionary.com Defines as: These act, power, or right of choosing.
This Definition tells me: manual action or in my terminology – “User Intervention Required”.
Everything in life has the ability to be broken down to simple choices, as a result of these choices you have more choices that become available, there completing my “Black and White” view on life. <--- I’m so simply really hehe…
Morals clearly play a very heavy role in our choices, you have the choice to have Tea or Coffee in the morning, you have the choice to take the Bus or Tube in the morning and so on, these choices can be broken down further, if I take the Bus I will be late therefore I must take the tube – however your choice is still there…
With regards to the wife’s subject matter here, the whole Good and Evil theory – I can see her point of view and I think it links in perfectly with my Black and White lifestyle.
My point here is: life is full of simple controllable choices, those choices are dictated by your morals and life experiences, if your taught to think guns are “Evil” your choice to buy one clearly would be a no, on the other hand, growing up as a farmers son/daughter with a rifle lying around the house (or indeed the gun cabinet!) is no different than the tv remote being around the house.
I think “Good” and “Evil” a lot of the time is just personal perception (apart from the real evil things like killing/hurting people, etc…), heavily ruled by your life’s experiences. But the point here is to say, basically we’re all the same. I am no different to the wife in basic design and we have that choice throughout our life to do what we think is good and right for each situation – how others reflect on that decision cannot be controlled by us (clearly).
To end, as I can talk about this all day!:
Ultimately, you have the choice to be good or you can be evil – At the end of the day, Education is the key.
Take care all.
The Hubby.
Well, when I realised who had written the previous comment, I braced myself for some 'strong opposing views' - but not this time - and you know what? You're both right!
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