Once again, interesting ideas from my high school English class resurface in my life. Mr. Juan Christian, the teacher I learned by far the most from in high school, talked about how Western cultures often view life with a Manichaeist perspective.
Manichaeism: A dualistic philosophy dividing the world between good and evil principles
Good ol' Mr. Christian described this in contrast to Eastern philosophy of Yin and Yang, that define good as balance between two opposing sides.
Manichaeism struck in our biochemistry class (and a little in physiology)! Teachers and students alike, when teaching or trying to understand biochemical processes, tend to label molecules, organs and the like as:
This method of learning just failed miserably! The labels failed because in some situations the villains were the good guys! When we learned about the liver, for example, a professor speaking on one disease would describe the liver as greedy and taking all of the fat, when the next day another professor disease of the day was described it as a protector. As students, when we were learning cancer biology, did the exact same thing with different proteins, only to confuse ourselves more by creating these labels. In reality, nothing was good or evil, it just was imbalanced or improperly used.
Manichaeism: A dualistic philosophy dividing the world between good and evil principles
Good ol' Mr. Christian described this in contrast to Eastern philosophy of Yin and Yang, that define good as balance between two opposing sides.
Manichaeism struck in our biochemistry class (and a little in physiology)! Teachers and students alike, when teaching or trying to understand biochemical processes, tend to label molecules, organs and the like as:
good
or
EVIL
This method of learning just failed miserably! The labels failed because in some situations the villains were the good guys! When we learned about the liver, for example, a professor speaking on one disease would describe the liver as greedy and taking all of the fat, when the next day another professor disease of the day was described it as a protector. As students, when we were learning cancer biology, did the exact same thing with different proteins, only to confuse ourselves more by creating these labels. In reality, nothing was good or evil, it just was imbalanced or improperly used.
I think that this applies to so many things in life. Few things can be given such dichotomous labels. More often something we consider evil is something good when balanced or in the right context. Perhaps even viewing death as the villain of life is not the best perspective either.
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