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I recently saw "No Country For Old Men".
It was superlative, transcendent. You could watch it as a post-modern shoot'em-up, a morality tale, a fable about the nature of good and evil.
The underlying message confirmed something that I had longed feared: evil prevails. Evil will always prevail. The innocent (or nearly innocent) are at the mercy of forces they can never understand and rarely appreciate. Evil can wait in dark corners, wait for years till the time is right. An innocent man need only zig when he should have zagged and the minions of evil will fall upon him like a skid of bricks.
The peacekeepers of this world have it little better. A life of constant vigilance drains a person of strength and will. And standing a post all of one's life, ever-seeking the forces of evil leads only to disillusionment and sometimes worse. There are just too few good men to stand that wall like Horatio at the gate.
Evil is always a step ahead, one order of magnitude beyond the forces of good. Some evil can not be understood yet the peacekeepers will puzzle over it, creating even more frustration. Evil exists in myriad forms, behind a 1000 faces. Evil need exist only for a millisecond for it to impact our lives. A good man must be good all his life, never wandering far from the path of righteousness.
Eternally standing guard wears a man down. It can lead to apathy or (worse) to become what one has beheld and seize the reins of evil and embrace its ways.
Evil abides and we are all but powerless to stop it.
It was superlative, transcendent. You could watch it as a post-modern shoot'em-up, a morality tale, a fable about the nature of good and evil.
The underlying message confirmed something that I had longed feared: evil prevails. Evil will always prevail. The innocent (or nearly innocent) are at the mercy of forces they can never understand and rarely appreciate. Evil can wait in dark corners, wait for years till the time is right. An innocent man need only zig when he should have zagged and the minions of evil will fall upon him like a skid of bricks.
The peacekeepers of this world have it little better. A life of constant vigilance drains a person of strength and will. And standing a post all of one's life, ever-seeking the forces of evil leads only to disillusionment and sometimes worse. There are just too few good men to stand that wall like Horatio at the gate.
Evil is always a step ahead, one order of magnitude beyond the forces of good. Some evil can not be understood yet the peacekeepers will puzzle over it, creating even more frustration. Evil exists in myriad forms, behind a 1000 faces. Evil need exist only for a millisecond for it to impact our lives. A good man must be good all his life, never wandering far from the path of righteousness.
Eternally standing guard wears a man down. It can lead to apathy or (worse) to become what one has beheld and seize the reins of evil and embrace its ways.
Evil abides and we are all but powerless to stop it.