[lit-ideas] Re: "Why the Bad Must Always Attack the Good"


Le 25 juin 05, à 13:03, Eric Yost a écrit :

"God's Song (That's Why I Love Mankind)

Cain slew Abel and Seth knew not why
For if the children of Israel were supposed
  to multiply
Then why must any of the children die?

_____

Philo Judaeus, the great Alexandrian syncretist, wrote a fine piece on
this called, if I remember correctly, "Why the Bad Must Always Attack
the Good."

Cain gives God a poor offering and Abel doesn't so Cain must attack him.
Archimedes doesn't want to stop thinking about geometry so the
drunken Roman soldier kills him. Mozart activates Salieri.

The universe seems configured so that if you create something
beautiful, something arises to disfigure it. If you create a beautiful
garden with a fountain and rose arbors, some cretin has to buy a parcel
of land next to it and use it to store rusting car bodies.

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot." Yes, but why? Precisely
because it was a paradise. The existence of the paradise pulled the
parking lot into existence.

Anyone else notice this phenomena at work in the universe?


M.C. Not really. For without wanting to plunge into the fetid miasmas of Relativism, I must admit that I often have a pretty hard time telling the distance between the good and the bad. Mozart good, Salieri bad : really? I kind of like Salieri, actually.

Might good and bad be - to *some* extent at any rate - a matter of perspective?

        Best, Mike

        



Michael Chase
(goya@xxxxxxxxxxx)
CNRS UPR 76
7, rue Guy Moquet
Villejuif 94801
France

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