Devil’s Advocate
To play the Devil’s Advocate is to continue the concept of true opposite, to believe that this is true then there must also be its any-truth, its lie in the world, forever against it, a battle that will never end and can never be won. Such an exhausting stance to settle upon; for every right there must be a wrong, for every good a counter-opposed evil, light must battle constantly over dark, the rational mind must vanquish the emotional, hot or cold, bitter or sweet, fat or acid, salt or fresh, deciduous or coniferous, diamond or graphite. Oh, wait? We live in a world with both - both and every variation in between, before, beyond. What must that mean? There is no absolute truth? Ridiculous! Acceleration, my darling, will always bring you to ground if you jump off a cliff. That is absolutely true. Moles must be eradicated from the garden. Moles are essential to the health of soil and plants and the dispersal of nutrients and seeds. Earthworms are excellent for the garden. Earthworms are destroying North American forests. Which is right? Which is wrong? Good or evil? The phrase “Devil’s advocate” came to us from sullied birth to sully still - “Far from being the whitewasher of the wicked, the [Devil’s advocate] is the blackener of the good.” [Fowler*] They were meant to make life difficult - “we can’t just call anybody a saint”, “are we sure they were really that good”? “Virtuous”? “Self-sacrificing”? Etc. etc. etc. Because, of course, we don't just commend or encourage or support anybody willy-nilly. That would lead to slacking and skullduggery. Conversation, promotional of the ideal way, is always to cement one in the right and one in the wrong. Hence mind over matter. And the consequent enslavement of emotion by reason. To our detriment! Salt, fat, acid, heat, even sometimes something sweet. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth. A forest, always at its best when it's not a monoculture. The sun and the moon. The planet awash with water salt and fresh, each essential for the ecosystem’s survival and countless lives dependent on it. Arid and riparian. Seasons of sunshine and snow, beauty and replenishment for the ground and growing. Elevation above and below sea level. Carbon in its each and every form, as essential to the planet as it is to us, to be in varied form, not one against the other, but, one with the other and the other, and other, all together. Complete. ___________________________________ Ftnt *From Online Etymology Dictionary