
My students from China taught me this Chinese proverb or idiom: "Wu ji bi fan":
"Things will develop in the opposite direction when they become extreme."
This statement applies to a Thomas Berger novel Meeting Evil in which the protagonist, a repressed ninny who tries to follow the rules, succumbs to his evil side. One of Berger's more tautly written novels.
I may want to teach this novel in my critical thinking class. There are compelling lessons on the Jungian Shadow, the alter ego, the Id and the Super Ego, the morality of conviction vs. the morality of convention (think Kafka who said we must reproduce the truth inside of us or perish), the Last Man as articulated by Nietzsche, wish-fulfillment fantasies
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