Good v Evil (?)

Something has been ruminating in my mind over the last few weeks and months and I THINK I have it ready to share now in at least a "strawman" or draft form. The thoughts I have been having, seek to go to the root of what will open our hearts and minds to evil things however we may define them and what will possibly counteract those things.

I have come to a rather simple (but I hope not simplistic) thought that at the root of all things that I consider negative or "toxic" forces in my life are four mental states: FEAR, HATE, ANGER, and DESPAIR. If I examine what the root cause of negative things happening in my life are, they are all reducible to these four "horsemen of the apocalypse" as it were. Fear of one thing or another is by far the most important of all of these in the world even in a historic sense. If one considers the amount of evil that has happened in the world because of this one factor, one is astonished. Even some of the others (hate and anger) can in some ways be thought of as "progeny" of fear. So if one wants to change things one REALLY needs to recognize fear as the "gateway" drug of evil and try one's best to live a life of "No Fear" as the old bumper stickers used to proclaim.

Now if one examines what can be done to counteract these forces that play a role in our lives one sees at once that the counteracting POSITIVE forces are TRUST, LOVE and HOPE (yes unfortunately there aren't conveniently four to help our artificial ideas of symmetry).

We are at a time of the year of making resolutions. What if we decided to recognize the seven forces that play such an important part in our lives and to adjust them so that we achieve a POSITIVE balance in all we do. Would that be something we could live by for the rest of the year? I for one am going to try.