Lessons from the Batman movie "The Dark Knight"

I recently saw the Batman movie "The Dark Knight". It had the biggest box office opening ever. The synopsis is there is a madman who proves that all of us have evil inside us and if it is given a nudge, it will come out and make us do wrong things. He proves to Batman that one should not be righteous and feel smug that he is better than criminals just because he did not commit crimes. Under the wrong (right) circumstances, even the best of the best will become worst of the worst. Batman decides to take the fall and not reveal to the masses that the madman was right. He thinks the masses cannot "handle the truth". The sound byte is " Sometimes people do not need the truth, they want their faith rewarded".

Here I think that Batman is not the savior, in shielding the people from the truth, he is doing them the biggest disservice. He is choosing to not learn from the lesson he was just taught. In spiritual terms, life presents to you the same lessons again and again until you learn from them. By choosing to not learn from it, he will make the people of Gotham go through lot of pain again and again.

This is very poignant. This is the very reason the fight between good and evil goes on. The "good" side is self righteous and not willing to concede that the "evil" side has a point. It thinks if it concedes, it will become like one of "them". The "evil" side wants respect from the "good" side and if does not get it, it becomes more of what it is. The same hold true for the "good" side. It wants to get respect from the "evil" side.

The key to life is not being "good" or being "evil" but in balance. You have to know what you are standing for, but not forget that there are always two sides of a coin. There is another perspective which is "equally valid" and by acknowledging it, you do not negate your values.