The Line

It is no secret that one of my favorite shows is Heroes. Last night had enough twists and turns to make your head spin and next week will be even more of a roller coaster ride. There was a line in the upcoming previews that really got me thinking. It said "the line between good and evil will be crossed." If you think about that statement then the line between good and evil must not be as easy to see as one would think.

One of the commandments is "Thou shalt not kill" yet there were seventeen planned assassination attempts against Hitler. Hitler was clearly a madman and caused untold horror and death in his reign of terror. One would have to ask if the attempts to kill him weren't justified. If he had been killed in one of those attempts how many lives would have been saved?

Another commandment says "Thou shalt not bear false witness" yet there are times when the truth could be more damaging then telling a lie. If you have someone for example who has a very low esteem yet tried really hard to pull themselves together to look good yet the outfit or makeup really doesn't work should you say so or tell them they look good? Do you want to risk their self esteem taking a nose dive from which it won't recover or do you tell the little white lie that would make them feel good about themselves? It isn't an easy choice to make.

Good and evil exist and one of the things about evil is that is often mimics good so that it is difficult to tell which is which. Bigotry uses real fears to bolster itself and appear to be good. We saw that in World War II with the Japanese where everyone of Japanese heritage immediately became the enemy. We see it now with Arab people. They are the new "enemy." Yes we have fanatics like Osama Bin Laden however not everyone who follows the Muslim beliefs supports him. The truth is that he and his followers are in the minority.

Next weeks Heroes will be an interesting exercise in good and evil. We have one character who believes in good and is trying to help protect the others in an alliance with a character who is evil yet one would hope that he doesn't realize who his ally really is. One would hope that the good is just being blinded by the evil and not really going over to the dark side. I can hear people sighing now about "geeks." Yes we do discuss good and evil, the force and the dark side, and the yin and yang.