to honor those b4 (h&m) me i bring you controversy

hello my dears, I've been thinking about things for a while on this site, now I love you all and admire many of you for your wondrous works and personalities, but this group lacks a little something... controversy which why I was rather fond of ddavidd and hellon ;)

so here's the deal, I know many of you read my works, some comment some simply read and some nominate, i know most love my nature/love/miscellaneous works, but i have noticed something that has actually made me quite happy. this something is that there is a certain poem I wrote a while back regarding Lucifer, being a good guy, and I couldn't help a moment of mearth at the response to my work, which was, absolutely nothing haha. this I quite enjoyed because as i sat and pondered the response I realized I had challenged several idealism's and made some people quite uncomfortable.

Now to explain a little about me and my beliefs, I do not believe in inherent evil or inherent good, nobody and nothing is good or evil by nature, everything is capable of both at all times, yet many fail to believe that entities such as "daemons" and "angels" two sides of the same coin really, can be both dark and light good and evil, yet this is in fact the case.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, be brutal, be honest, be wise in your responses and most importantly, have fun challenging both myself as well as yourself.

love you all.

Hello, Hazel.

I absolutely believe that life is rarely black and white, in any circumstance. I too believe that people are never entirely good or entirely evil. I do think some are closer to each extreme or more one-sided than others but, on the whole, you are right in my opinion. We are all capable of doing good and bad things. Unfortunately, one of our biggest problems is the fact that we are always looking for a simple answer - a right or wrong - because we refuse to believe a situation can be harder to get to grips with than that. But there is rarely ever a simple answer and, more often that not, the only one available to us is the best of two bad choices! That's why we label people 'good' or 'bad' - it simplifies things for us when, in fact, the complexity of the issue needs a good deal more understanding.
These are only my views and I do understand that others will have entirely different opinions.

Hello my friend :)

Thank you for your input, and it's lovely to see that there are some out there who actually see the whole greater picture rather than, as you stated, simplified labels.

I must admit, seeing the title of this thread made my palms sweat a bit because of controversies in the past haha, but this is not what I was expecting and I love to read others' beliefs, disbeliefs or reasoning why. We can all learn from one another in some way :)

I'd like to think I don't default to black and white, final sort of thinking that a person is born bad or is unable to redeem themselves. I agree it lies in our capacity for both sides of the coin. I believe a majority of it is choice and we can chose to make moral decisions or to make decisions based on greed, selfishness etc. That is only if we consciously consider the needs and emotions of others, if we care to and if we realize our interactions with others affect more than what we may see on the surface. We can also make the decision whether or not to face consequences. One might say a reasonable, responsible person is able to face ill consequences, no matter if that person had only pure intentions to begin with.

Mostly, about 99% of the time, I believe we have the power within us to understand our character and how we impact others. Perhaps that is due to mindfulness or self-awareness. I do think, though, there are times when we purposefully fail to see reality or the truth, and therefore put ourselves in danger of living a life that is not always honest or sincere.

One train of thought I have while writing this is that it boils down to coping skills. You could also bring up the timeless "nature vs nurture" debate. Part of me believes (or wants to hold on to this hope) that most of us are born in innocence until we are old enough to understand the weight of our actions. If we are not at peace and harmony with ourselves, our mind, and any sort of negative environment we were raised in, our thinking and how we see the world may be distorted.

Truthfully, I think people learn a lot based on what they see around them and experience. I believe a lot of prejudices are taught and if one is willing to challenge what they know or see firsthand, there can be change. But if they choose to hold certain harmful ideas or beliefs about others as a truth, the blame is on them to understand the severity and effect that sort of thinking can have.

The burden is on us to strive to be better people and not swallow ignorance for the sake of convenience.

I absolutely agree with you MA.
I for one believe more in nature than nurture ( from personal experience) to explain a little why that is, I've had a really hard childhood, I found myself in an orphanage at a very young age, then, at the age of four, i thought I found my Cinderella story when my step mother asked me if I wanted to live with them forever, and hey I can't judge myself for having said yes I mean, I remember still the feeling of having an empty stomach as a little kid and still haunts me to this day, I can go without anything BUT not food. so anyway, cut a long story short I said yes and before I knew a little undernourished orphan girl from zimbabwe (my heaven) found herself travelling to hell ( south africa) with the devil ( my step mother) and her daemon army ( step brother and father) and all was well till I was about five, then the rape, verbal, psychological and physical abuse started and continued till one day I had enough and I cursed god and the devil and told them both to sort do something to save me or I would kill myself and come find them and torture the shit out of them ( god and lucifer) to death. and sure as hell for some reason, maybe they were scared or maybe they thought I was the cutest little ignorant s*d in the universe and they decided to humour me by providing me with a job which ended up leading me to opening up to my bosses ( who hated me) about my story, and a month later, 6 days before my 18th birthday I packed my bags and left them, and vowed to never ever be like any of them, it gets a little extreme though at times, to the point where I'm SO anti-abuse that even patting my daughter on her bum to reprimand her feels like abuse to me and I bully myself about it. luckily her daddy reminds me I'm not that evil b**ch.

but yes, my point is that, i could have chosen to be the way I was taught by example, a hateful, abusive, racist, narcissistic, prideful, vengeful lying b*st*rd like my step family , but I chose to be true to me, find the teaching, the lesson in what happened to me and rise above it and learn to be a more loving, truthful, integral person, even if it means sometimes being ostracized by the people I care about.

So yes, perhaps some people do live by nurture, I've heard many stories where people in similar situations to what I grew up in became ten times more darker than the ones who taught them about darkness, but there are also many out there who use that darkness to strengthen their light which is their nature :)