"Existentially Intelligent" posting about Narcissist Values wherever we see them
The matter of the survival of us human species
"Rational," well yes, something that relates to proportion which after all is a matter of proportion? And so, perspective. Informed perspective then requires volitional attention, and that's where we create the world.
The old good-bad dichotomy now coming to fruition in a new good-bad dichotomy? A further synthesis in the polarity? What's truly meaningful, even if not demonstrably true in an easy fashion. How about, the notion of survival of our human species, and what it means to be human? Our basic narcissism.
Some, such as 18th century English poet John Milton wrote about how evil and good are intertwined in this world.
Milton is most known for his poem Paradise Lost in which he tells the story of Adam and Eve in Paradise, their meeting the serpent, her eating the apple and so on, in a novel-length epic poem, the first such in English.
“Assuredly we bring not innocence into the world, we bring impurity much rather: that which purifies us is trial, and trial is by what is contrary…. They are not skillful considerers of human things who imagine to remove sin by removing the matter of sin. For … it is a huge heap increasing under the very act of diminishing…. Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably…. It was from out of the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into this world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is, of knowing good by evil.”
― Areopagitica