Josh TrentIdentity Transformation Architect and award winning Host of the Wellness + Wisdom Podcast—a decade-strong show with over 750 episodes and 15M downloads.

Unity of Opposites: Escaping Good vs. Evil Cycles #shorts

27 Jul 2026 · 1 min

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In this short philosophical reflection, the speaker invokes Epictetus to illustrate the relativistic nature of moral judgments: a jihadist perceives his violent act as good, while the victim sees it as evil. He introduces the concept of "heuristic escalation," arguing that attempts to label one side as good inevitably summon the opposite side, creating a balancing dynamic that challenges prideful certainty. Drawing on personal experience working with individuals involved in extreme crimes—ranging from rape to murder—the speaker rejects binary good/evil classifications, warning that such labels trap people in emotional drama. Instead, he advocates observing the underlying objectives of each side, viewing conflicts as a "dance" where understanding both perspectives can teach lessons that allow one to transcend cycles of condemnation.

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Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher, said it really nicely. He said, "The guy who's the jihadist, who wants to go and kill things for the sake of Allah," the extremist, if you will, "he's doing what he thinks is good." Mm-hmm. Where somebody who's now had their life taken, they think he's doing something evil. Which is it? If you subordinate to one anthropomorphic deification, One is good, and if you subordinate to another one, it's evil. I can't make that decision, but I know by the law of heuristic escalation that they're paired and they're simultaneous. And the more you try to make one good, the more the other one comes in to balance you, to teach you to come off your pride thinking you know. Mm-hmm. So I'd rather go in. I've had the opportunity to work with people from every imaginable thing, from the rapes and the murders and the killings and you name it. I don't come from the idea that they're good or evil. I find that that locks people in and creates all kinds of emotional drama. And I just like to see it as, what is the ultimate objective going on here? Look at the dance. What is the other side of the equation? So I tell people, if you try to make something evil and try to protect something from it, whatever you condemn, you breed, attract, and become to teach you the lesson to transcend it.