Good & Evil - Is Now Just Plain Bad Writing.

It’s not about right and wrong. It’s about power, and who is aloud to have it.” That is a meme spoken from the latest Disney Star Wars offering. And it signals a long overdo rethinking of traditional male notions of morality, such as right and wrong, or the eastern ideas of “balance” between “yen” and “yang.” The problem with these ideas is they argue from discredited framework of gender binaries; right and wrong, yen and yang, male and female, truth and lies.

Such ideas may have seemed reasonable in the dark ages. But for today’s modern world, involving modern audiences, having to deal with modern problems of imperceptible micro aggressions, covert injustices, and sub-concuss racism; such antiquated story structures are no longer relevant. Worse, traditional notions of “good” and “evil” could even be triggering, leading to emotional trauma and hours of on-line therapy with social media influencers. I mean really? Won’t someone think of the children!

But The Acolyte promises to be the first of its kind. A media franchise that will popularizes the well research concept of power dynamics. While traditional “good vs evil” story telling engages in circular logic around one’s actions defining one’s worth. Power dynamics argues that injustices are the result of imbalanced power dynamics. Bad people will do bad things when given power, while good people who lack power are always victimized. Good and evil argues that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” We now know that the opposite is true, through the corruption of power. And absolute power absolutely brings out the corruptors. The corruption of power is something all of us experiences every day, from our crappy work places to the gender non-specific changing rooms at the Y. Those who do not have power, deserve more, while those with too much power, deserve less.

This is the ideology used by employment divisions and universities in order to tackle gender uniformity and racial inclusion hiring practices. But rather than this ideology held in secret by women’s studies professors and HR managers. This is an ideology that deserves wider exposure. Especially if that means pushing aside older and outdated ideologies that are based on so called human values and behaviors. The forces of good no longer have to work hard and sacrifice in order to combat the forces of evil. They just need to stop being racists, sexists, homophobic, binary, flawed humans that deep down, we all know that we are not.