Good Versus Evil: A cliche or a reality?

Good and Evil. Light and Dark. All throughout books, throughout movies, throughout just about any form of media in the world, the "good guys" and the "bad guys" face off in an epic showdown to decide the fate of the world. Most stories of any kind that are written today involve a fairly clear cut good and bad, where the victory of one side is the exact opposite of what the outcome would have been if the other side had won. But is this the way in the real world? Usually, the world is not completely black and white. There are some gray areas in life, where the outcome of one side winning is the same as if the other side had won. The real contest is to discover where these areas are and how to make the right decisions.

Most media buys into the cliched version of good and evil- the heroes have to accomplish an impossible task against all odds, and, if not, the whole world will fall into chaos and suffering. In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo has to destroy the One Ring, or Sauron will rise to power again and enslave Middle Earth; In Star Wars, Luke Skywalker has to defeat the Emperor to bring balance to the Force, otherwise the Empire will remain in power and the Rebels are doomed; Batman has to stop the Joker because many people will be killed, and on and on. It is fairly easy to tell who the good guys and who the bad guys are in these situations, but maybe not as easy in reality.

Is a revolution to overthrow an incompetent ruler justified when the new rulers use the exact same techniques as the previous ruler to maintain order? Is someone who saves a child from a burning building doing a good deed if they set the fire in the first place? Numerous times police shootings get caught up in this scenario. The police do their job and have to take a drastic measure to keep others safe, but all of the people who love to stir up trouble cry foul and say that the police should be charged for hurting the criminal. They did a wrong to do a right. Wars are also another gray area. Each side usually has their own agenda for coming into the war, but the reasons may be to gain more resources or one side said that the other sides ruler smelled funny. The reasons are not always the cut and dry, "They are evil; We are good, so let's stop them before the world ends." Each group may say that they are doing good and that the other side is evil, therefore needing to be stopped, but both sides may threaten to cross the treacherous bridge between right and wrong.

One of the best examples of toeing the line while trying to deliver justice and do what is right occurs in The Dark Knight. One of the key themes in the movie is how much you can do to accomplish what is right before you begin to become what you are trying to stop. There seems to be a limit where good becomes evil and everything becomes very hazy, with both sides coming together. To find the Joker, Batman has to use high-tech satellites and spy cameras to search Gotham City, violating the privacy of everyone in the city and certainly breaking a few laws. But it was all done to catch a killer. Anything done in the name of good can be done in the name of evil I suppose. Sounds very cliched, but is often true, especially in the real world.

While there may not be any true right or wrong in the world, there are some decisions that are more right or more wrong than others. Saving someone from dying is usually a good decision to make in any scenario, with trying to kill the person is usually the wrong choice to make in a situation. The only problem is that the world is not completely black or completely white, but has different tones and meanings. So, yes, good versus evil is a cliche, but is still a very enjoyable one at that. If all of life's problems could be solved by throwing a ring into a volcano, the world would be a much easier place to live. But nothing is ever that simple, making the world we live in the world it is.