Thanks for the thoughtful response @erh.germany
I tend to agree in regard to good being the duality of evil, however... I've heard the argument and I personally lean in the direction that "love is everything" even hate and evil can be considered a form of love though perhaps misguided, or twisted or lesser forms of such.
So, I'm open minded to the possibility that there is no good or evil, but there is love. I have been trying to distance myself from thinking I'm a good person though and just trying to be aware that I'm beyond all those labels and I can't even totally describe myself because I don't totally even know what or who I am... Heh.
Good point in regard to good and evil in natural examples like stars colliding or viruses.
It seems like a very subjective anthropomorphic type of thing.
It is true we can change our judgments, but it seems like that is much more rare and uncommon and than usually judgments are very solidified sorts of things.
I disagree a bit with what you said at the end because technically by both the modern and etymological definitions and the scientific understanding humans are animals and we are not separate from them.
We do appear to have much more intelligence in certain ways, but we are animals nonetheless. Animal essentially means "soul" or "spirit" and if aliens exist they would almost certainly be animals as well... Anything with a soul is an animal based on the definition of the words from my understanding.
But, yes in regard to conflict it's not all bad... Conflict can help us grow a lot. I think it's often about balance too much can be a problem and too little can, just the right amount! :)
yes, the lover and the hater are not very much apart from each other. People hate/oppose those people the most they find the greatest familiarities/overlaps with, is what I observe :) If you make the full circle, you end up with love.
It's a long path to be able to think of it as just labels. And not to dismiss them but to accept that we have, need and use them. But then to let go of them.
I am grateful that you say that you "try" to be aware that you are beyond labels and not that you already live by it. Is it or was it not a very strange, but at the same time funny experience to find that out?
Yes, judgements are solidified and sometimes they need to be, I think. Is it rare? I guess so. Let us work at this score :)
Oh yeah, true, too much conflict is like "Uargh!!" and to little like "yawn..."
I would agree and say that not only are we not separate from animals, but we are connected with everything earthly as well as otherworldly in a way for which it is difficult to find expressions except in art and poetry. However, and this is peculiar to us human beings, we do not find any other living being, apart from ourselves, that is so conscious of itself and suffers so severely from this consciousness of itself.
No fish that we have ever seen emerge from its habitat and play the harp, no bird that glides through the air ever invent a car, no dolphin climb Mount Everest. It may escape us because we don't speak dolphin, fish or bird and what inventions the animals have devised. We will not know if they have awarded Nobel Prizes among themselves or opened nightclubs. We simply anthropomorphise everything we see and observe, love and hate. Because we are so much human. That which we have in common with the animalistic we want to suppress, you can see it in everything that is suppressed as spontaneous sensations: angry screaming, maniacal crying, unrestrained laughter, nakedness, etc. This schizophrenia, the agony of suffering in the consciousness of oneself, is what distinguishes us from the animal, I think. What torments the soul is understood by every human being, is it not? But what soul actually is, no one can explain. The torment is one thing, because one feels strange, so often alone in this world. And yet there is a great joy, spontaneity, bliss, tending to be in younger still carefree people (though not the rule), that we can laugh at paradoxes immediately, this humour. The schizophrenic is the normal, because every human being can put himself into countless characters, otherwise we wouldn't even know what a character is, couldn't follow a play or a novel. This being torn between the individuality of the self and the group, I don't think animals as we see and observe them in the world have such split personalities.
Yes, in the sense of animated, ensouled, you could take that generic term and it wouldn't be wrong. But definitions are the only thing where we can create contrasts, so we need them and we say to ourselves "we humans" and not "we animals", simply because we are not :)