Duality

Ever since the publishing of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, fiction has always been fascinated with heroes and villains that have a certain nature of duality. It has been a common recurring element that heroes and villains in modern fiction are two sides of the same coin, with matching personalities, and similar goals.

Such examples include the Batman and the Joker. Both have undergone extremely bad days. Both have lost people they love. Both suffer from a sense of behavior and compulsion that one could describe as psychotic.

It is only in the manner which they treat such things are they different. The Batman is regaled as the hero, using whatever occurred in his past as motivation to aid the citizens of Gotham. The Joker, is reviled by the populace, using whatever occurred in his past as excuses to spread ironic suffering to the people of Gotham.

Another example would be Optimus Prime and Megatron. It was on the old Japanese editions of the Transformers that when the Autobot logo revolved, it would reveal the Decepticon logo. Furthermore, on their former lives on Cybertron, both Prime and Megatron were very respected leaders. Both Prime and Megatron only wanted the best for their fellow transformers.

However, it is how they try to approach their goals that makes them different. Prime wanted his Autobots to coexist peacefully with other races and to share a home alien to them with new, unique friends. Megatron wanted to destroy all life on a new planet in order to build a world all to him and his Decepticons. It would be fitting that both Prime and Megatron (in the old Japanese series) would be destroyed in the final, climactic episode, in a cancelling-out equation of sorts.

These things, are however, never seen in real life. There are always huge differences that set apart people. No matter how similar you say two people are, even twins, for that matter, the sense of duality is almost never present in real life.

That is because in real life, there's always a gray area. Life can never be seen as a two sided coin. Duality can only be conveniently found in the hands of an artist. And that, I guess, is to our blessing and convenience, because if there were any duality in life, well I'd guess we'd have long since destroyed each other.

I'll say that in order for people to coexist peacefully, we just have to accept that other people live too differently from ourselves for us to meddle in their lives. So much for duality then.