Brilliant Good

Perhaps is was 80's fantasy flicks... a horned and painted Tim Curry with his honeyed words and that seductive, dancing black dress.

Or maybe it was Al Pacino. I swear that man has an uncanny ability to get me to root for the bad guy...

It's possible it wasn't the awesome bad guys, but the sucky good guys. One too many over dramatic, under developed, uninteresting heroes of little substance and even less plausibility.

Maybe it isn't even the movies. Could be a settling postmodernism. What about increased information transparency and the corruption it reveals? Maybe its the crumbling idealism of the boomers, or the musical taste of the Xers.

Whatever the cause, its pretty easy to see that cynicism is clever and cool and that evil is smart and sexy. On the other side of the spectrum, those who are loyal are dopey, those who are giving are weak, and those who are optimistic are dumb.

I happen to disagree.

Before I go on, let me qualify my disagreement. I don't think that the world is falling apart, or that this is the despair of the modern age, or any of that other, "These are the people ruining everything," mumbo jumbo. Quite the contrary. I think the world is pretty amazing, that we have incredible challenges but even more amazing resources with which to overcome them.

I just think that the cynics and romaticizers of evil are wrong.

Being jaded is boring, and evil is dumb.

Here is the song and dance. True good is the most brilliant act that can be accomplished, as it requires the well being of all things to be brought into alignment. Hope is dynamic because it catalyzes constructive action.