We seem to be on the "same page" here.  How ironic that  I was quoting Nietzche from "Beyond Good and Evil" at the very same time that you were posting this!  I love your article.  I haven't read it in it's entirety yet, but will, as soon as I log off iThou.  And I believe, from what I've read so far,  that it is very fitting for all of us here, right now.

Thank You, Jasmine. 

 -- PEACE 

Thanks Jasmine...Very interesting article.

I copied and pasted a sentence  from the article which speaks volumes to me. If you can make your own patch as loving and as kind as can be and we all did that what an even more amazing world it would be.

"I think if we are looking at how to benefit all beings, we start with how do we not commit evil ourselves, rather than vowing to eliminate all evil from the face of the earth"

 (and congratulations! on your graduation!)  I love this phrase: "The truth to live is just to live."  I have had to have this discussion with my children recently, and my answer has been similar.  I have said to them in response to "what is our reason for living" (if it ends like this)?  My answer has been that everything I've ever experienced teaches me that life itself is its own reason.  And this is not a cop-out or obfuscation.  It is an amazingly liberating piece of information.  It doesn't deny death or evil or sadness--nor all the flipsides of these. In this context, your article speaks the truth (to me) about the subtle differences and interactions between good and evil.  And in this context, the mandate to protect life, or do good works, becomes joyful and obvious.  

And, although I enjoyed the article, I would be very interested in your own conclusions that you expressed in your paper!

Weems

www.edgechange.com

...I suddenly remembered the wonderful comment I read by Norman Mailer (I think I'm paraphrasing it correctly): God is either all powerful or all good.  He cannot be both at once.  I suspect he just stumbles along doing the best he can, like the rest of us.

Weems

www.edgechange.com

 And Weems, your last comment reminds me (yet again) of the song lyrics:

d.  

"And like all committed artists, they will do their thing, critics be damned.” - Roy Blount Jr.

"Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding about ourselves"  - Carl Jung

Anjela, Your comments makes sense to me:

Congratulations Jasmine ~

"I think if we are looking at how to benefit all beings, we start with how do we not commit evil ourselves, rather than vowing to eliminate all evil from the face of the earth"

Like Weems I too would be curious to hear what you wrote and what your conclusions were.

I myself took somewhat a buddhist point of view, and argued that evil and good are just human mental concepts and we have certain standards of how things "should" be that have been programed in us. I used my father's passing as an example and how everyone took it so differently in my family and how to me, it was a huge lesson and neither good nor evil. But simply (I'm using "simply" as freely as I can) a chance to grow and learn.

I also mentioned that people need to take responsibility for the harm they cause others rather than blaming it on some external force. The concepts of evil and good are internal and most religious groups are blaming God on certain terror that occurs or blaming the devil for "causing" them to do some evil acts. It's time we take responsibility of our own actions and realize we are all connected and everything we do influences and has an affect on others... I used this quote, which helps respond to the others you have posted: 

"By oneself is evil left undone; by oneself, indeed, is one purified. Purity and impurity depend on oneself. No one purifies another." (Dhammapada, chapter 12, verse 165). 

It all starts with each and every one of us...

What if a demon is really just a bad mood?

If we embraced the positive and negative then what.

Evil spelled backwards is Live.

At different stages of life things are less intense.

For a 16 year old stuff might be flying across the room merely because phenomena of that sort happens around 16 year old women.  At age 28 or so after the "dark knight of the soul" things calm down for some people.  (Maybe everyone).

What if God is everyone and everything.  What if "the God About whom naught can be said" is totally beyond polarity -- no opposite.  Everywhere equally present. 

Few second scan of the article brings back my thought Cheney/Bush/Rumsfeld/Rove and who knows who else thought up 911 from start to finish to gain absolute control and power (the only way the unelected could remain in office and cover up so much; thermite alone and building 7 falling prove it was an inside job--quite evil).  What humans do is Evil. 

If we see God as context for all that is then free will and bad choices can happen.  If we let corporate greed which is evil rule us (becoming an illgal corrupt government of by and for corporations)  then murder to innocents happen.  But I agree if I can change myself maybe that will influence the world to be more positive.  (That is the only revolution You are the world as Jiddu Krishnamurte said so eloquently).

One seeks the highest and the best and sometimes finds it.  Be it and find others like that.

You are, in my estimation, without a doubt  so right! Not that terrorism is ever right but in this case I do see it as self inflicted. An excuse to execute the revenge upon innocent beings by Bush on behalf of his father. A 14 year old could have caught Bin Laden~

 Bush Did Not React to Security Briefing

Fahrenheit 9/11: "Perhaps [President Bush] just should have read the security briefing that was given to him on August 6th, 2001, which said that Osama Bin Laden was planning to attack America by hijacking airplanes.   But maybe he wasn't worried about the terrorist threat because the title of the report was too vague.

Commission Report, pp. 260-262: At the time, Bush says he considered the CIA's August 6th Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” to be “historical in nature,” although the “two CIA analysts involved in preparing this briefing article believed it represented an opportunity to communicate their view that the threat of a Bin Ladin attack in the United States remained both current and serious ” (emphasis added). Bush “did not recall discussing the August 6 report with the Attorney General or whether Rice had done so… The following day's SEIB repeated the title of this PDB… Late in the month, a foreign service reported that Abu Zubaydah was considering mounting terrorist attacks in the United States… We have found no indication of any further discussion before September 11 among the President and his top advisors of the possibility of a threat of an al Qaeda attack in the United States… [CIA director] Tenet does not recall any discussions with the President of the domestic threat” between August 17 when Tenet visited Bush in Crawford, and September 10.

V. The Timing of the Saudi Flights

Fahrenheit 9/11 : “At least six private jets and nearly two dozen commercial planes carried the Saudis and the bin Ladens out of the U.S. after September 13th. In all, 142 Saudis, including 24 members of the bin Laden family, were allowed to leave the country.”