Episode 3 : What is Evil?

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Infinite Harmony Podcast. I’m your host Jackie Dragon. 

Welcome to the Infinite Players Club…

Today we’re going to be discussing one of my favorite aspects of the Infinite Player and its meaning as derived from Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse, as well as an idea of the nature of evil and what it means to live from the infinite perspective, and let me assure you, it doesn’t mean Voldemort or Skeletor, but is one of the more thought provoking philosophies on morality I’ve ever come across.

We’ve touched on Finite and Infinite games in this podcast, and all I can say is that all this will make more sense if you read the book,   so feel free to pause right now and go order the book from your favorite book dealer and come back when you’ve read the meager hundred or so pages of this impressive philosophy. But if you want to stick with us I’ll do my best to lay some context and cover the most basic idea behind the perspective as we head down the road of defining evil and living life as the infinite player.

Now I’ll start by saying that the first couple times I read Finite and Infinite games I somehow didn’t grok Carse’s definition of evil and its implications on every action and thought of my daily life. I don’t know if perhaps I just wasn’t ready for it, or if I didn’t really comprehend it, but it wasn’t until a study group, reading the book for the third time around, that the implications of his words really landed, and suddenly a solution to a fundamental problem with today’s world came into sharply into view.

How do we solve the problem of opposing views? The clash of different ideas? It seems that everywhere I look throughout human history war has been fought in one way or another over who has the right viewpoint. Now, I know often that ideology can be the red herring for the acquisition of land or power, that our morality can be used as a tool to persuade us into supporting a political party or nationalist agenda. In the United States, no one really thinks the war in Iraq was about weapons of mass destruction anymore, but nevertheless, often enough we are engaged in true diametric opposition of ideas or points of view that keep us from living in a world that fully embraces cooperation. What are two people to do, or two countries for that matter, when engaged in a conflict they    both believe they are right? How do we live in a culture that embraces and integrates opposing viewpoints? How do vaxxers and non-vaxxers live together in Harmony? How do pro-choice and pro-life demonstrators come into agreement? How do we solve the epistemological crisis of the 21st century that has us often at each other’s throats? How do we stop arguing at the dinner table, and going to war?

We start with the idea of evil. 

You know, the bad guy.

Whether in film, literature, or history, the allure of the heroic tale—the struggle against a malevolent force—seems to be an intrinsic part of human storytelling. No movie feels complete without a villain to overcome; no hero’s journey seems compelling if not set against some malevolent counterforce. Even in realms like video games or comics, the paradigm persists: the hero must confront and vanquish evil. This thematic dualism persists even as we've made sophisticated advancements in ethical philosophy, questioning the very premises of moral judgments. Political treatises, social critiques, and academic discourses might grapple with the complexities of good and bad, yet our popular culture, epitomized by the Hollywood machine, still thrives on the a good fight. We need our villains as much as our heroes, even if in more nuanced contexts, we understand that such clear delineations are often erroneous. What I’m saying is, we like having bad guys in our lives, it simplifies things.

Moreover, the perpetuation of this dichotomy also speaks to an enduring human trait: the willingness, even eagerness, to identify, confront, and even vanquish what we perceive as evil. You do it, I do it, everyone does it. We’ll except maybe the Buddhists, at least the one’s, you know, who just watch the flies on their face while they eat their morning porridge. Those guys are legit. The ethical quandaries of doing so have been the subject of much intellectual grappling. Social progress and ideological enlightenment have taught us the dangers of painting with a broad brush, of branding entire groups or ideologies as purely evil. Yet, the impulse remains. Hollywood might be selling it, but we are the eager consumers, buying into simplified versions of morality where the good guys triumph and the bad guys meet their demise. You may think of yourself as a nuanced thinker, resistant to judgment, and more empathetic than prior generations. However, it's likely that your mind still harbors the archetypes of absolute evil, universal touchstones of villainy against which all other forms of evil are measured.

This isn't a flaw in our collective character; rather, a testament to the evolutionary utility of moral clarity, however simplified. The human mind evolved to make quick judgments about friend and foe as a survival mechanism. Even as we've moved beyond the savannah and into complex, pluralistic societies, these instincts remain. They shape our politics, our justice systems, and yes, our entertainment. The intriguing question, then, is how do we reconcile this primal urge for a narrative of good versus evil with the intellectual and ethical nuance that we've come to value? Can we indulge in the catharsis of seeing evil vanquished on screen while applying a more sophisticated moral calculus to the real world? Or is it time to re-define evil? Today on The Infinite Harmony Podcast

Evil—the ultimate moral polarity, a word that carries the weight of centuries of philosophical debate and ethical soul-searching. We'd like to think there are things upon which we can all agree, moral absolutes, if you will. Murder, for instance, is often considered an irredeemable act, the embodiment of evil in many ethical systems. Yet, here we encounter the intricate paradoxes that make morality such a fascinating, albeit confounding, realm of human thought. In times of war, the absolute prohibition against murder becomes, well, relative. It's suspended, excused, and even lauded as a necessary means for the "greater good" of the nation or the tribe or the ideology. Here, then, is the quintessence of moral complexity: we proclaim killing to be evil, and yet often propose killing as the solution to prevent more killing. What kind of moral calculus allows for such ethical acrobatics?

This is where science and philosophy part ways in their methods of inquiry. While science has mastered the art of reductionism—breaking down complex systems into their most fundamental components to better understand the nature of reality—it has reached a plateau of infinite complexity, where the deeper it delves, the more unfathomable the questions become. Yet science rarely applies these reductionist tools to matters of morality, which often remain the purview of philosophy. Philosophers have grappled with ethical conundrums, employing rigorous logical tools to dissect the nature of good and evil, right and wrong. And like science, philosophy, too, often finds itself in a labyrinth of complexity, where each proposed solution uncovers deeper layers of problems to be considered. Each philosopher who joins the conversation adds nuances that sometimes illuminate but often further obfuscate our quest for moral clarity. The pursuit of the "ultimate truth of evil" thus remains a tantalizing but ever-elusive goal.    Like I said, “evil” is relative, and it’s hard to agree on a definition. One man’s Jihad is another man’s terrorist. One human’s war is another human’s quest for righteousness. Just look at the two wars we’re in now. Two sides, both think themselves in the right, and who suffers? The innocent. The citizens of Palastine and Ukraine, of Israel and Russia.

So what is evil? Well, it’s the Harkonenn’s for sure, and definitely Sauron…

It's a construct of morality, a term laden with cultural, religious, and individual subjectivities. The absence of a reductive science of morality means that we are often left grappling with ethical relativism. While this may appear unsatisfying to those in search of moral absolutes, it also opens up a space for intellectual humility. It requires us to accept that our own understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, is contingent, shaped by a multitude of factors from our upbringing to our social and historical context. And even as we strive for ethical universals—principles that would apply across times and cultures—we must do so with the recognition that the terrain we tread is fraught with complexities and contradictions.

Now, Carse doesn’t necessarily give us an answer on how to solve the paradox of opposing viewpoints, but his definition of evil gives us pause on taking up the mantle of righteousness, and in fact, paradoxically, his definition of evil, brings into question the idea that evil exists at all.

Carse defines evil first by saying “Evil is the termination of infinite play. It is infinite play coming to an end in unheard silence.”

To understand what he means, we must first lay the premise of the Infinite Game. Welcome, my dear player. Time to break down the infinite game.

So, what is “Infinite Play?” For those who haven’t read the book, he distinguishes between actions of the Finite and Infinite players by referencing the idea of games. Finite games have a clear beginning and ending, they have rules, they have players with rolls and titles, and are played for the purpose of winning. If the game is won, it comes to an end, hence, finite. Some games we play with no expectation of winning, but perhaps for rank or title.

The infinite game has but one true premise, which is that everyone gets to keep on playing, all the time. Within the infinite game are many finite games, yet there is but one infinite game, which of course, though Carse explicitly never says this directly, is the game of humanity. 

The finite player is sometimes characterized by being unaware that they are playing a game at all. To them, the finite game is real, and there is a sense of limitation. So we’re not talking about a game of football, where at the end of the game everyone takes off their helmet and goes out for a beer, in fact, that’s the infinite perspective. See, the infinite player is aware that football is just a game, that they are not just a football player, they’re a dad, a carpenter, a philosopher, a friend… and by taking on these rolls they are not limited by them. The infinite player can take off the hat of any roll in life and look at it objectively as play. The finite player sees life as a game that must be won. Their rolls are serious. They’re proud to be an American, or a Muslim, and oppose the enemy when necessary as a matter of life or death. The infinite player can also be American and Muslim, but paradoxically they see these rolls as just that, rolls, voluntary and by agreement. Infinite players are free to change rolls, or to take their masks off at any point and have a spontaneous conversation about the game itself.

Spontaneity is an important tool of the infinite player. Infinite play is always spontaneous. There is no written speech designed to coerce an audience into a viewpoint, or a machine built with one function. To carse, a mechanistic view of anything creates a finite reality and limits what has yet to arise out of the vast web of agents engaging cooperatively in complex systems and creating spontaneity. To be spontaneous is to truly play. In other words, the infinite player begins every day without expecting an outcome. Flat tire? Fun! Spilled my coffee on my pants? Hey, it’s a new look! My partner dumped me? Time to go meet new people! I have cancer? What a life it has been! Everything in the life of the infinite player is a nod to the playfulness of existence, and the honoring that everyone around them has choice.

Carse says “We are playful when we engage others at the level of choice, when there is no telling in advance how our relationship with them will come out… when, in fact, no one has an outcome to be imposed on the relationship, apart from the decision to continue it.” He compares playfulness to seriousness. To be serious he says, is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibly, and its here we see the many layers of the finite and the infinite unravel. You see, for the infinite player, possibility and surprise are paramount, for the finite player there is almost always a specified conclusion. In concrete terms that specified conclusion is to win, but in abstract terms, the finite player engages in almost everything with the end already in mind. They work for money, or to acquire power and titles, to control the course of a future whose outcome is favorable to them. Infinite players on the other hand, live for surprise and spontaneity, a future unknown. This idea becomes important when analyzing the definition of evil.n    

We’ll break these ideas down in throughout this podcast, looking at the depth and breadth of life through the many lenses of the finite and infinite, but for now, let’s return to his words on Evil. Evil is the termination of infinite play, coming to an end in unheard silence. The silence is not the silence of the player’s voice, but the loss of the listener for that voice. In other words it is when we stop listening, which is another way of saying, we’ve decided someone is wrong or not worth listening to. 

So evil begins as the simple act of deciding someone is not worth listening to, their voice no longer recognized as part of our reality. Think of how often this happens in our lives, how often we tune out the hordes of opinions and voices coming to us. For a person of science, how quickly is the idea of a flat earth tuned out, ignored, not considered for even a second,  or that a God in heaven is simply impossible. How many religious fundamentalists have you met that deny evolution or the caluclated age of the earth. How many (insert opposing political party name here) simply deny reality despite being presented with irreputable facts? Its challenging in the modern era to look upon any aspect of our society and universally consider it wrong. It seems that everything falls on the spectrum of left or right and by God if my political party agrees with it then so do I…

But there is one event in the 20th century that almost everyone can agree epitomizes what we would call evil; the Nazi genocide of the Jews. I use this example because Carse does, and because the actions of the Nazis in world war II are almost universally condemned thoughout the world. I say almost because unfortunately there are outliers, but the atrocities of the third reich have become the precedent in human behavior we hope is behind us for good. Carse would agree. He says “The Nazis did not compete with the Jews for a title, but demanded recognition of a title without competition. This could be achieved however, only by silencing the Jews, only by hearing nothing from them. They were to die in silence, along with their culture, with out anyone noticing, not even those who managed the instruments of death.” To be clear, we’re not talking about the individual deaths, for as atrocious and unforgivable as they were. We’re talking about the death of “Jew”. The idea and history and culture of a Jew. To the infinite player, the individual death is part of infinite play. They do not play for their own life, they live for their own play and the play of others. Finite players on the other hand play for immortality, not in literal terms but abstract terms. Just walk through a graveyard and read the headstones or look in the history books. Everyone wishes to be remembered for what they accomplished, to live on beyond their life in the body. To the finite player, this is a form of immortality. Now some might also argue that medical science is literally searching for immortality. For the finite player even death itself is an opponent that must be defeated. We see this often at the end of life when some fight tooth and nail to live just another year, spending tens of thousands of dollars and giving away moments lived to win back the time of life. So where finite players play to live, infinite players live to play.

So as we said, most can agree the Nazis were evil. As infinite players we see that they are evil because they attempted to silence not just a jew. But all Jews. Had they succeeded, the death of a culture would have been a deafening loss to all of existence. We humans have done well to remember the atrocities of World War II,  but here’s the thing, they weren’t the first. Consider our conversation on the colonization of the Americas.  As we discussed in episode 2, western civilization has engaged in silencing culture for as long as it has existed and this colonization of countries and cultures by the Europeans is an equally universal evil. 

Author Wade Davis, in his book “One River” highlights the insidious nature of cultural loss, likening it to the extinction of the light of a constellation, one star at a time. With each lost language or eroded tradition, humanity at large loses a unique way of interacting with, and making sense of the world. He argues that these are not quaint customs or expendable belief systems but represent irreplaceable realms of human thought, complex cosmologies that have evolved over millennia. For Davis, this is not merely an academic concern; it's a tragedy that impoverishes us all. The loss of languages, especially, is akin to the loss of a unique prism through which to understand the complexities of human existence; when a language dies, an entire way of understanding reality dies with it.

  The tragedy of the silencing of a culture is the loss of its voice and what it brings to humanity. The unique expressions of every culture on Earth manifests in not only in language, but in art, textiles, wisdoms and stories.  With the conquest of the Americas, from the Yukon to Patagonia, was the death of hundreds if not thousands of cultures that we will never know. Like a species now extinct, carse says “the treasury of histories and myths, the culture’s own ways of living in harmony with the spontaneities of the natural environment; all but very few of those tongues have been silenced, their cultures forever lost to those of us who stand ignorantly in their place.”

Now, we know that history is written by the powerful, and as Howard Zinn would say, history is important because without the knowledge of history, the powerful can dictate our past, can write the rules as if they’ve been that way for all time. They can paint fellow man as the enemy. Carse says that history itself is not finite, that even the actions of the past can be interpreted infinitely, because each person who looks upon the past is gifted their own perspective and voice, and because the history of each culture is a beautiful interpretation of the human experience. Carse says “Evil arises in the honored belief that history can be tidied up, brought to a sensible conclusion.” What he means by this is that ideology itself can be evil, a silencing force of civilizations that rise through power. He uses the examples of religion and economics, specifically religions whom insist that the only possible conclusion for the human experience is the conversion of all beings to the one true religion and the silencing of all other possibilities of faith, or the radicalization of economics to free markets or its opposite, the classless society. The use of ideologies throughout time to convince masses of people to rally around a common enemy, to stop listening to the enemy and fight to the last breath to eliminate the evil that is the opposition.

This, is where Carse illuminates the paradox of Evil. This has been one of the most powerful golden threads of understanding my humble mind has discovered.  

Ready?

He says “Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil.” 

I’ll say that again.

The contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. Everything we’ve talked about, even the Nazis, believed they were illuminated to the truth of the good. When the Spanish overran the Aztecs and Incas of the Americas, the presumption was that the natives were less than human, that their indigenous culture were a savage and godless culture and that the great civilization of Spain and word of the Catholic God would save the savages from damnation and better the world. Millions of indigenous humans, and two of the richest cultures of the world were silenced and almost wiped entirely from the planet. Their past rings in echos through myth and legend through those who survived. We know the names of their old gods and greatest cities, but their future was lost to an unheard silence in the name of good. Look around, in every direction are explanations for what is right, whether it is related to our religion, our country, our diet, what is healthy for us individually or a society, what genders are acceptable, where we can or can’t park our car. We are surrounded by oppositions for the right to call ourselves good and declare others evil. We are surrounded by contradictions. You get what I’m sayin here? That feeling in you? The one that wants to change other people because you think they’re wrong? That is the seed of evil. Sit with that for a minute… well, I mean’t pause it for a minute cuz, you know, it’d be kind of stupid to just do a minute of air silence…

How does the infinite player escape the likelihood of evil when it is seemingly everywhere. To Carse, we can’t. He says that the infinite player understands that escaping the likelihood of evil is impossible. And what he says next is a statement I’ve never heard articulated so profoundly. Despite my study of many esoteric texts and philosophies, it was this paragraph in Finite and Infinite games that changed my perspective on morality and judgement forever, and to be honest, was one of the most challenging statements I’ve ever heard. Carse says Infinite Players “do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere.”

Like we said, the very act of attempting to eliminate the evil in others, to silence their opinion, or cease to listen to their point of view, is the very act of evil itself. Imagine for a moment if you will a road, and on either side of the road are two opposing points of view, picketing and chanting for themselves and against the other. The topic doesn’t matter. Abortion, Gay rights, Communism, Unions. To carse, the act of attempting to silence the other, that’s evil. When we are so blinded by our righteousness that no other solution exists but our own, that’s evil.

Now, I’ve had many conversations about this topic with my peers and it the argument against it’s validity inevitably comes down to our reaction against what we perceive as oppression. What happens in the moment when violence is acted upon us and we must react, or we actually find ourselves in a kill or be killed situation. Are we committing evil by silencing another’s desire to end our lives or make us suffer? Were the Aztecs evil by fighting back against the Spaniards, or America for intervening in World War II?

This is the paradox of evil and a question that cannot be answered. All I can say is that you know what’s right for you when the time comes, and learning how to do what’s right, we’ll get to that. But consider nature. The wolf surely is not evil in its hunting of the deer, nor the hawk who prays on the rabbit. I once heard a story by a man who dedicated his life to helping endangered species repopulate and had spent a great deal of time observing the relationship between the threatened Canadian lynx and it’s primary prey, the snowshoe hare. To him, the relationship between the two was not one of fear and conquest, but of love. In his observations, he saw a deep reverence for the connection between predator and prey, in the eyes of the lynx he saw understanding and love. The population of both species were intricately linked, and the lynx was intuitively aware to take only what it needed and would even feed on smaller prey when the hare population was low. 

So perhaps it is less about our actions and more about our intentions. To envision and act for a world that we perceive to be better or more enlightened is as natural an act as any. To stand for our beliefs is an expression of our gifts to the universe. As we've talked about, our ideas are an emergent property of everything that has led to us, and it is our duty to express those ideas. But the moment we make an enemy, we become enemy ourselves. The moment we declare all that is not our belief, as evil, we have enacted evil upon the world. Now imagine that same road, but instead of activists on either side of the road, you see those with opposing views standing together, walking down the road, discussing their points of view without ever ceasing to listen to each other, to integrate the perspective of the other into our own, and work to find a common history they can agree upon, and a common future to move toward. When it comes to evil, the infinite player looks inward at all the impulses to declare their fellow players evil and attempts to eliminate those impulses. The infinite player is always listening to their fellow players, always considering their existence and perspectives as valid, as a part of their history and story, regardless of their perspectives. If this seems a little utopian, its because at the moment the rules of our world don’t seem to warrant this kind of play. Which brings up another axiom of the Infinite Player.

The rules of an infinite game must change in the course of play. The rules are changed when the players of an infinite game agree that the play is imperiled by a finite outcome, that is, by the victory of some players and the defeat of others. The rules of an infinite game are changed to prevent anyone from winning the game, and to bring as many persons as possible into play.

Sound familiar? Like the abolishment of slavery? Like the marches of women’s suffrage? Like the liberation from the iron grip of a tyrant's rule to etch the indelible ink of independence—each of these moments reverberates like a thunderclap across the temporal landscape. On the surface, one might argue that we've merely transitioned from one set of confinements to another, that we've moved from one finite game with its rigid rules to another construct with its own limitations. But delve deeper, and you'll find that the spirit animating these monumental shifts is not one of finitude, but of infinite possibilities. As infinite players, we are moving toward everyone’s freedom, the freedom to think, feel, experss, and be. Even if we don’t agree with them.

These were not merely changes of state but seismic shifts in human consciousness, born of the electrifying realization that the game itself—a game often designed to perpetuate inequity, to favor a select few while subjugating the many—was not an immutable law of nature, but a construct ripe for deconstruction. These moments acknowledged the deeply embedded scaffolds of power and privilege, laid bare their foundations, and with a clarion call of collective agency, declared: "The rules are rigged, and the time has come to rewrite them!" It is the triumph of recognizing that the walls hemming us in are not built of unbreakable stone but are mere edifices of convention, awaiting the sledgehammers of enlightenment and courage.

To awaken this potential for transformation, this capacity for change, we must master yet another aspect of the game. We must abandon the desire for power, and find the conviction and resolve brought about by strength. This is a golden thread that will appear again and again.

Power is that which we exercise over another, often associated with the titled, meaning the finite players who have already won something, a title, say, a king, or a congresswoman, a police officer or an army. Those around the powerful are expected to yield to their power and conform to their will. They are expected to be quiet. Infinite players play not to be powerful, but to be strong, to have strength. Power refers to the freedom persons have within the limits of a particular finite game, a powerful person I is free to live life unafraid of the tax man, or the law, or the idea of poverty.  As the infinite player my strength gives me freedom within limitations. In other words as Case says “ I am not strong because I can force others to do what I wish as as a result of my play with them, but because I can allow them to what they wish in the course of my play with them. 

My strength comes from having the capacity to let you… be you.

This is how we develop the capacity to live in a world where others are free to live their lives regardless of how we feel about them. We become strong. In strength we become better listeners, we hold more space in our hearts to allow a truly free human expression to take place. In the modern world of social media and YouTube political pundits, controversial podcasts and opinions everywhere, this is extremely difficult. It is extremely difficult to sit back and watch those whom we might perceive as “destroying the fabric of American values” or “polluting the planet without a care in the world” without wanting to change their beliefs or silence them and make them incapable of acting upon their beliefs. It takes strength to love others despite their anger or ignorance. It takes strength to lay yourself upon the cross and suffer until death and still love your fellow man. This is the legacy of the master Jesus. He taught us the will of strength over the exercising of power. The  Pontious Pilot Exercises power. The Master Jesus Taught us strength.  For those of you who have been thinking this whole time, “yeah, this is nice and all, but what about the illuminati and their quest for power, you know the lizards man… they don’t care about morality and viewpoint they just want power!” 

I don’t know… wait for superman?

Look, I know, this is hard. I mean, really hard. Even if I give up my desire to change others, what about everyone else who wants to change me? Christians and Muslims, though born of the same origin, Democrats and Republicans, though living in the same country, seem hell bent on opposing each other… and yeah, there’s going to be some opposition. But can we allow everyone’s voice to be heard and expressed. Can we love our fellow humans despite our differences. Can we make choices that allow everyone else to make the choices they want to make.

I’ll leave you with an idea by the thinker Forrest Landry who wrote a book called The Effective Choice. In this book he meticulously lays out a foundation for thinking and being leading to what he calls the effective choice through a series of aphorisms which he defines as short and precise statements of essential principles. Now Landry explicitly states that these aphorisms are precise and that any dilution or re-interpretation of these aphorisms will lead to a distortion of the intended meaning, so we’ll do our best here to talk about his work without distortion by keeping the aphorisms intact.

So what does it mean to make an effective choice? We can surmise before diving into Landry’s work that when making a choice we know that in order for it to be effective it must produce the desired result, but we must also consider the responsibility behind a choice is understanding who and what it affects. Obviously the most important choices we make as a nation or culture at this point can affect everyone and everything on the planet. So how do we make a choice that is good for the whole planet? How do I choose what is good for everyone, if I know that the choice may negatively impact someone. How do I buy anything knowing its likely that someone or somewhere is getting exploited. Well, I’d like to read the beginning of Landry’s aphorisms on the path of right action.

“1) It is always possible to choose in a manner that is win-win for all involved, including oneself, at all levels of being. It is always worthwhile to search for the best possible choice. There is never a circumstance in which it is not possible to choose in a win-win manner”

“2) A win win choice applied to one situation is adjacent to the win-win choice for each succeeding situation. Choosing the best choice always enables one to continue to choose well. Win-win choices are mutually self-supporting. As such, optimal choices are contiguous with one another, forming the path of right actions. The path is the perfect possible sequence of one’s own personal and unique choices.”

“3) The degree to which it seems that one cannot make choices to maximal benefit of all involved, including oneself, at all levels of being, is the measure of one’s deviation from the path of right action. In circumstances where it seems that a situation requires a win-lose choice, the selection of the best choice for all involved will be the one leading in a direction of the path of right action, allowing the eventual convergence with one’s own absolute path.”

As we can see, the paradox of evil, which is that desire in us to change others, can be governed by the path of right action. 

Embedded in this conversation is the question of the nature of the universe. From all angles, we as humans experience profoundly deep connections to each other and all things, and we experience the deepest suffering. Is there an inherent irony to the universe that we must suffer to live, or is it that suffering itself is just one of the beauties of existence. Is there a malicious God who is wrathful that condemns us to eternal suffering if we do not follow the rules, or is suffering as natural as the eventual wilting of even the most beautiful of flowers. All whom we love will die, and all who love us will experience our death. This grief is inevitable and in being inevitable, we must accept it’s purpose in our lives. We must assume that everything is exactly as it was intended. I mean, how could it truly be any other way? And from that perspective, why would we want to silence any expression of the universe?  The Infinite Player can dance with the universe, inspire it with our words and ideas, we can make great things that will influence others to be better people, both for us, and for themselves. We can engage in the genius of our own expressions, and the only ask of the universe is that we give everyone else the same freedom. The freedom to make the effective choice for themselves. Ridding our hearts of the impulse of evil, liberates us from war, and allows us to live a life seated in pure creativity. We become creative collaborators, open to all possibilities, acting as infinite listeners for what is to come, and synthesizing our ideas with those around us, becoming emergent properties of the next phase shift of humanity, a humanity that can make an effective choice, a humanity that can truly become a civilization. 

Thank you for listening everyone. If you’re interested in supporting this podcast, or our work, you can become a donating member of the church of infinite harmony. You can donate any amount you want, once a month or as often as you want. Feel free to take a look at our website, infiniteharmony.org to learn more about us. We have a forum on the website where you can post question for discussion that I’m happy to chime in on. So far no one’s found it, so don’t be shy. These ideas are meant to be discussed, and evolved. So check out our website, become a donating member, or post a question. 

See you next time… Peace.