Complexity in the Battle between Good and Evil

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We are at war—opposing forces of evil and virtue wreak havoc on the framework of civilized existence. This battle is both blatantly obvious and invisible; it rages through transmutation of dark energies, acting as a modern-day plague seeped into the bloodstream of humanity. Unmistakably, these are dire times; we live in an epoch of severely eroded morals and vast karmic detriment, intrinsically woven into the fabric of sentience, the world infested by malicious intent and apathy. Society is tending towards a highly-unfavorable equilibrium state, one marked by disconnection, dissolved values and environmental danger. This is my generalized hypothesis, a calculated worldview based on innumerous living experiences of profuse depravity, the accretion of which has imprinted on me the notion that people cannot be trusted. To be clear, this is not strictly my belief—it is a set of logical conclusions based on observational data, formulated into a foundational ideology meant to be meticulously tested, reworked, reframed and hopefully disputed.

Consider the problem of systematic complexity—a concept first introduced to me by Dr. Jordan Peterson who applied it to human organisms, described as the culmination of multifaceted psycho-social-situational challenges that result in functional breakdown, symptomatically revealed as mental health diagnoses and distasteful demeanor. Both internal and external environment have become so immeasurably complex that the associated existential pain has driven a massive portion of the global population into psychic illness, behavioral maladaptation, nihilism or suicidal tendency. Optimism serves its place, certainly, and its not always helpful to point out manifestations of immorality; however, my intuition states that urgency is necessary, that civilization is nearing if not already past the point of irreversible, crippling affliction that will reverberate with haunting ramifications into centuries to come. If an individual or collective believes themselves able to effect any positive change that decelerates this daunting ordeal, they inherit a pressing ethical obligation to do so.

The complexity problem as described by Peterson is a rampant, proliferated issue apparent on macro- and micro-scales within contemporary culture, exemplified through both personality and communal structure, analogously yet through opposing channels. The rise of so-called personality disorders is evident—psychological dissidence morphed into misalignment and predatory action, creating destructive persons purely concerned with a self-centered view of reality. This population subset appears to the non-suspecting eye as well-adjusted, caring, even altruistic; in actuality, their brains were wired through childhood turbulence to consider only their own livelihood, especially at the expense of others’. They lack empathy—a critical ingredient in bringing forth large-scale difference. Their outer portrayal is in total disarray with their twisted inner agenda, the convolution of an unsafe upbringing and the need to survive. They harness clever protective mechanisms, developed at a young age, which become overtly hazardous in maturation.

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Unfortunately, these tricky, complicated configurations of psychiatric marvel are near-impossible to detect without entering the personal sphere of those who house them. The summation of effect from all presently operating narcissistic personalities play an abyssal role on the whole of society, akin to a cancerous lobe on the collective consciousness that mutates and spreads as it continues to go unchecked, unnoticed, and improperly diagnosed. Due to their manipulative nature, the treatment of such individuals is of great difficulty—they are masters of abdicating responsibility, proficient in assigning guilt and suffering onto those who challenge them. To confront this dilemma is, however, of paramount importance in the sustained vibrancy of humanity. These are sick people—they need not be discarded or eradicated—a notion far off from my cry for movement. Instead, transformation is crucial, utilizing novel treatment modalities to shatter thick shackles of past conditioning, breaking into the core of goodness that resides in all peers of earthly design.¹

Complexity—more aptly, chaos—has a corresponding role in the macrocosm of society, presenting in social issues such as climate change, artificial intelligence, corporate greed and war, facets of a sick world that ultimately stem from accumulated individual behavior. The entanglement of chaos may be likened to a process in fluid dynamics known as the turbulent cascade of energy, where an eddy-inducing source of fluid movement spawns a rippling impact and spread of turbulent motions, breaking down into smaller scales of rotation until reaching its micro-finality, the Kolmogorov length, which indicates the transfer of dwindled vorticity into heat. In this analogy, the largest scale of visible chaos is the perpetual emergence of societal consequence—death tolls, degrees of raised global temperature, unregulated availability of powerful algorithms, mass hysteria—alarming products of universal malaise and complacency. These higher-level repercussions are decomposed into lesser nodes of the overall systemic architecture, conglomerating into organizations, groups and sectors before further diminishing into individualized distribution. This hierarchy of flowing chaos illustrates the subtle connectivity of compartmentalized disorder, the direction of flow here being reversed from the original depiction, placing localized free-will as the root-cause of social disaster.

A substantive problem has been identified—what can we do? I hold true in my heart that people of strong moral standing exist; in fact, I know they do as I fortuitously embrace the companionship of various good people in my life. Banded in unification, integrally-oriented citizens wield an immense influence of power, crafting a cohesive stronghold of potential outward metamorphosis. Instilled in me at a young age was the idea that every action must be met with an equal and opposite reaction—just as wrong is committed by those willfully ignorant or inherently malevolent, the righteous gavel of justice swings in catalyzed retribution, generating a pendulum-like trajectory that, in theory, equalizes the playing field of good and evil. Simultaneously, the laws of thermodynamics state that entropy—a metric of disorder within a system—is always increasing. It is difficult to reconcile these two ideas within the sphere of social dynamics—the first applies only at the exact moment of action—beyond that, some portion of transferable energy will likely be shed as heat, inferring non-elastic reactivity, imperfect, allowing the lost energy of totalized interactions to culminate into unhinged anarchy.²

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What drove me to write this essay was a recent interpersonal encounter that disturbed me deeply, involving my ex-landlord and -neighbor. For roughly a month, while living in a basement suite with minimal sonic-isolation from the upstairs residence, I dealt with intermittent disgust, anger and helplessness while being subjected to horribly sad noises coming from multiple dogs. The turmoil was incessant—my cognizance often obsessive, motivating me to take ample recordings of the situation as an attempt to eventually do something about it. In my mind, I became these dogs’ one chance at true salvation; bounded by ethical conviction, I was convinced that even a small chance of assisting these innocent, trapped animals was worth introducing a level of personal discomfort or risk. At some point this story reached its impasse—I could wait no longer—I enacted drastic reform in my own life in hopes of doing similarly for my canine dependents. After departing the toxic space, I filed an official report with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), supplying all relevant contextual details and my neatly organized collection of indicting proof, spurring an in-depth investigation that ultimately exposed wrongdoing which would otherwise have been left to fester and grow.³

How can certain individuals become so disconnected from their ethical roots that they could harm an animal, knowingly if not willingly, and in getting caught, still believe themselves to be the victim under persecution? This attitude screams to me as unchecked dark-personality type, for only a completely self-absorbed person could inflict or witness such a distressing cacophony yet feel and do nothing with respect to a moral code of guiding behavior. There is deviltry amongst us, devouring the light of everything in its wake while derailed from the tracks of basic decency. After years of compounding low-level trauma and relational dysfunction, many exist severed from their fundamental essence, compelled to action through dense layers of psychic decrepitude, their sense of valuation warped and faulty. To be of virtuous reputation is to act with moral adequacy at all times, particularly while alone, the cutting-edge litmus-test of character. I fear that too many of my worldly peers are invariably masked, wearing a faux-essence of caring, empathetic citizen yet rotting inside, constantly scheming, plotting, lurking in the shadows, camouflaged with precision yet undeniably a social menace.

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Perhaps these analyses are too harsh—I typically believe that compassion is the ultimate answer; however, as I am further exposed to the malignant underbelly of humanity, I have come to question that mindset. Unconditional outward compassion seems to be a self-protective tactic in a world riddled with putrefied idiosyncrasies—it sooths the jagged edges of the cultural identity, the heterogeneous display of widely-ranging iniquities, offering whispered, falsified promises that ‘they are sick, they do not know better’ while every squared-inch of your body screeches unforgivable sin. Is society better-off without certain people? Can that be denied? This is the underlying basis of imprisonment yet clearly the justice system operates at an unacceptable efficiency, based on the ubiquity of bad actors and vilified entities freely roaming the streets, doling out harm as they please. On these matters I am torn—we are all created as an image of our randomly allocated youthful nurturance, worthy of a second-chance; however, some are unwilling to undertake the process of profound change, unable to admit their injurious proclivities.

I consider my own path—I have certainly done wrong; I have made mistakes that wounded loved ones and placed significant stress on the aiding structures of society. Always in my heart, however, was a burning desire to do and be better, to optimize my productive output and alchemize past transgressions into spiritual gold, into an outpouring of love and light that permeates darkness and diffuses through the hearts of those around me. A seemingly logical conclusion is to become a role model amidst a growing sea of moral confusion, demonstrable passion for goodness and honesty that forms of beacon of transmitted hope and glowing wonder. The concept of black-and-white morality is antiquated idealism; indisputably, the countless angles of contextual layering must be accounted for in all judgements. However, there are cases of human programming that cannot be ignored or permitted—as denizens of a dynamically interconnected system, we all must be inclined to undergo action in the face of agitation, to conjure fearlessness in the eyes of vicious perversion, and to sacrifice for the sake of the rational whole.⁴

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1. The treatment of cluster-B personality disorders is a uniquely challenging prospect that requires heightened efforts of research, outreach and compassion. Detection is critical, necessitating the willingness of subjects and thus the realization that they are indeed sick, a difficult aspect considering the inherent drive to lie, cheat and manipulate present in such individuals.

2. The notion that every action is met with an equal and opposite reaction is actually Newton’s 3rd law of motion, one of three governing rules that apply to bodies in motion. What it infers is that when two objects collide (e.g., pool balls) the force inflicted by ball #1 on ball #2 is equal in magnitude and exactly opposite in direction to the force inflicted by ball #2 on ball #1, at the precise moment of collision. Applying this concept to human actions is, of course, a lot less straightforward and is something I am still contemplating. Conservation laws are also relevant here—the fact that quantities such as mass, momentum and energy are conserved within a system. In an elastic collision, the momentum (mass x velocity) of the moving objects in their pre-collision state is equal to the momentum of the same objects in their post-collision state, meaning that the kinetic energy of the objects remains in that form before and after collision. Generally, collisions are non-elastic, meaning that some portion of the kinetic energy is transformed into heat or sound at the moment of reaction. The analogy put forth here is that every “evil” action may indeed be met with an opposing force of “goodness,” but there will always be some energy lost into a sidelined process as a result. Magnify this effect by billions of actionable humans and there is a significant build-up of shed chaotic energy, fitting will into the notion of irreversible entropy increase as stated by the 2nd law of thermodynamics.

3. Through this process, I inevitably made an enemy, something I am admittedly trying to avoid at this stage in my life. However, this is a small price relative to the liberation of helpless creatures, living beings who do no harm to humans and ask only in return that they be treated with decency and love. To be placed in such a situation is not a straightforward thing—one’s own wellbeing should remain as the primary priority and civilized society ought not to ask for martyrdom at the hope of innocents’ salvation. At the same time, if one is able to do something, they probably should, for their own sake if anything—personally speaking, my conscience would eat me alive were I to leave that place without bringing forward the pressing issue. I am prudently curious towards how others feel, in general, about putting themselves at risk in an effort to help others, when given the opportunity to do so.

4. Upon completion of this article, I find myself reflecting on the inherent complexity of my own life. Up until only recently, my life was brimming with chaos, uncertainty and suffering. Complexity was often my nemesis—complex drug combinations, a vastly dense and complicated inner world that was largely unbearable to reside in, life stressors going unsolved in myriad ways, highly-intricate and nuanced relationships—complexity was a constant within a dynamic landscape, an anchor that resisted all efforts to craft a better life. In the present, however, I have come to embrace complexity, to harness it as a force of productivity and potentialized altruism. Perhaps complexity itself is not the problem; rather, our interactions with it are what decide whether it is a detriment or a super-power.