There are no bad guys.

Last night I took my daughter, who is ten, to see Captain Marvel.

We both quite enjoyed it. Without giving too much away I can reveal that the familiar ‘good vs evil’ plot-line was developed into a slightly post-modern ‘sometimes the people you think are the good guys, turn out to be the bad guys’ plot line - in an eerily Scooby-Doo-esque way.

This is a problem: we grow up with the ‘good vs evil’ narrative etched through pretty much every story we encounter – but in real life there are no bad guys. ‘Evil’ is invariably a side-effect of well-meaning individuals trying to do the right thing, at scale. Meanwhile, raised on these fairytales, we spend our time fabricating a delusion in which ‘we’ are somehow better than ‘them’ – and this leads to all kinds of difficulties.

I'm haunted by a story told by an ex-CIA agent. She said ‘I was interviewing a terrorist and he said “You don’t get it, do you? You make these movies like Star Wars, where a band of plucky rebels lay down their lives to fight against the military might of the evil empire – well that’s us! That’s our story!”

Why is organising the world into good people and bad people such a central part of our lives – of our sense of self? I can feel a part of you pushing back – even across the digital space that separates us – I can feel you reacting ‘I don’t do that!’. Look closer.

In real life, the only battle between good and evil is the one we play out in our minds. We cast other people in 'bad guy' roles as it suits us, and other people do that to us in return. We rally our gang. They rally theirs. But the good & evil narrative is destructive; we must move beyond it. When you think you know who the bad guys are - go and talk to them.

The real battle is not between good and evil, but between convention & progress, between conformity & difference. There are those who fight to preserve the existing order, and those who fight for progress. Both see themselves as righteous.