The Dark One has to touch the world...

[Dagon Thyne]

The truths that Rand learned in his confrontation with the Dark One, that both good and evil are required to make a person whole, and that the world without a DO would be just as bad as a world without the Light. 

 

I believe that this proves that the Creator and the Dark One are in reality the same being.  They are two halves of the same whole.  They are nature itself.  Tranquility and Chaos......Creation and Destruction. 

 

The DarK One prison being broken is not only unaboidable, but necessary.  Just like the world Rand saw while facing the DO, if evil is left out of the world for too long, people lose part of themselves, and the world loses meaning.  The Darkness is needed to give meaning to the Light.

 

 

[Aiyen kin Leary]

A lot of people have been posting similar opinions lately, especially after "the Dark One was not the enemy.  He never had been." (Rand's revelation at the end of AMOL).  However, doesn't this kind of turn good and evil on their heads?  Evil is specifically that which should not be, that which leads to a bad world.  If the DO is nessessary to make a person whole, that would make him good!  Maybe not warm fuzzy good, maybe more a good like war or surgery (both of which have horrific costs, but can sometimes be nessessary), but still good.  And Shai'tan is anything except good.  It sounds to me more like RJ was trying to make a point about the value of free will then the value of evil. 

 

Just out of curiousity, how much do we know about how much of that was RJ and how much BS?  The part about "to choose is our fate" is in the epilogue, which was written by RJ, so it sounds like he had at least some of that idea planned.

[mrtumnas]

 If the DO is nessessary to make a person whole, that would make him good!  Maybe not warm fuzzy good, maybe more a good like war or surgery (both of which have horrific costs, but can sometimes be nessessary), but still good.  And Shai'tan is anything except good.  It sounds to me more like RJ was trying to make a point about the value of free will then the value of evil. 

 

 

  I wouldn't phrase it quite like that...the DO doesn't make people whole, the ability to choose is what makes people whole. 

 

  Someone else pointed out on another thread that he is the "Dark One", not the "Evil One", and I thought that was a good way of putting it. I don't think we can really call him "good" or "evil", if he is a force of nature, since he has no moral obligation to be anything other than what he "is". This isn't a Sauron or even Satan who started out as a benevolent god and "fell". So yeah, I agree totally that RJs point was that freewill was necessary for good to exist in the world.

[Barid Bel Medar]

The concept that the DO was necessary and shouldn't be killed is RJ. 

 

The vision thing with Rand and his world without the DO being like a reverse 13x13 was Brandon's creation. (All of the DO v Rand creations were Brandon)

 

I think the idea got confused with that scenario with Rand v the DO. The basic concept is good, the execution of the whole scene made it very confusing. 

[Occams whiskey bottle]

The Darkness is needed to give meaning to the Light.

 

People have been asking how the world would not be better without evil, but that quote sums it up perfectly. We are all capable of doing good and evil, and it is something that we have to decide between all the time. If a person is having a heart attack we can choose to help them, steal from them, or ignore them. Many people will ignore them for one reason or another, maybe because they don't know how to help, or perhaps they're too busy, while only a few will steal or actually help. Those decisions decide who the heroes and villains will be.

 

On the other hand, a world where everyone does the right thing may not be as awesome as everyone thinks. Imagine you're on a long trip across country, and fatigue is weighing you down, so you decide to pull off the side of the road, turn your hazards on, and grab a few minutes of sleep. You rest for only a few seconds before people begin pulling over in droves, rapping on your window to see if you need help. Their attempts at doing good as a result keep you from resting. In this scenario you would prefer if everyone just left you alone.

 

There is the right thing to do, the wrong thing to do, and a very large gray area in between where most of our decisions lie, so if you eliminate the right or wrong decisions then you affect the gray area in between. We need to be free to choose, or we're not free. If Rand killed the Dark One then he would be limiting humanities choices.

[Leopoled Boothe]

I agree that the DO and Creator are two halves of a larger whole, similar to the way that Saidin and Saidar are two opposing halves of Teh One Power.  The Creator is a "light force" that pulls the threads of the pattern, human lives, toward more peaceful actions while the DO is a "dark force" that pulls them toward darker actions such as violence, war, deception etc.  The kicker is that these dark actions are not necessarily evil and is some situations are the right choice.  It is up the the individual to choose which force to give in to in any given situation.  I do not agree that it was necessary for the DO to touch the world.  In fact, I think the DO was performing his function quite well until someone went and bored a hole into his space and gave him access to a part of the pattern where he never belonged.  I think of the DO like the gas lines in your house.  As long as it stays in the gas lines it serves a very good purpose but if you bore into those lines it will poison the air and become quite destructive.

[Leopoled Boothe]

The concept that the DO was necessary and shouldn't be killed is RJ. 

 

The vision thing with Rand and his world without the DO being like a reverse 13x13 was Brandon's creation. (All of the DO v Rand creations were Brandon)

 

I think the idea got confused with that scenario with Rand v the DO. The basic concept is good, the execution of the whole scene made it very confusing. 

 

Maybe to some, but that is exactly what I took away from the world without a DO scenario.  My understanding is that RJ intended for Rand and the DO to sit there and have a conversation or philosophical argument.  I don't agree with everything that Brandon did but I thought the visions were a wise addition as I can't see how the ultimate conflict between Rand and the DO playing out as a purely verbal conflict could have been satisfying.  Personally, I didn't think the visions muddied the water that much, thought I guess some people do tend to read too much into them.

[Barid Bel Medar]

I didn't care to much about that scene. I already knew the premise behind the idea - it was clear that was RJ's intention long before aMoL if you read the interviews. Honestly, I just glossed over it as a hyperbolic scene to create dramatic tension and enjoyed it for what it was. I agree that a philosophical discussion wouldn't have been as exciting, so I was happy enough with it. 

 

However, it isn't so much reading too much into it rather than not reading into it at all. The battles were meant to be metaphorical (a more dramatic version of the philosophical discussion). 

 

Many would have taken it at literal face value, and you can't really blame people for it. 

 

This is not about Brandon doing it bad - I was not saying it was a poor choice. Just that it wasn't clear (evidently, since there are so many confused people). 

[ratswot]

The truths that Rand learned in his confrontation with the Dark One, that both good and evil are required to make a person whole, and that the world without a DO would be just as bad as a world without the Light. 

 

Is "free will" really that important? Would a world with no violence, hunger, poverty etc, be worse than a world like what Rand saw?