How do you know it was TNG and not the thousands of hours of playing Call of Duty that killed your PS3?
Zoroastrianism started the whole dual good god/bad god myth based on the insight of duality which has continued with later Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Most world religions that have ever existed have to do with the transcendence of duality. That's one thing that bothers me about this episode, is that it takes for granted a universal Judeo-Christian view of all religion, when that's really a deviant tradition.
No, what I was saying is that most religions are not that way. It's when religions become ethical in nature that they focus on good vs. evil, and it started -- as far as anyone can tell -- with Zoroastianism. It continued with the western religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. East of Persia, religions have to do with putting you in accord with the world as it is. Good and evil may be recognized, but they're both two aspects of the same thing, they both come from the same mystery source, and, for that matter, they are both subjective.
Perhaps there is a good version of Ardra, but she's actually another incarnation of the same deity. The goddess in many parts of the world is both creator and destroyer. The goddess represents the creative principle of the world, imminent divinity (God is in all things) as opposed to the god, who often represents transcendent divinity (God is somewhere else, and you're duty it to relate to God). It's possible Ardra is the negative aspect of the goddess, who could be represented as the planet itself. (That would have been an interesting argument for Picard to try to rebut: "You don't understand, Picard, she isn't entitled to the planet -- she is the planet!")However, as presented in "Devil's Due," the Ventaxian myth of Ardra makes no mention of a good rival who opposes her.
No worries.
Sorry, I read what you wrote as, "transcendence to duality" and not, as you actually wrote, "transcendence of duality." Apologies!
Just call it Stardate Revisited parts 9 and 10. Second, to me it seems that Lay and Burnett have exhausted all their worthwhile footage from their interviews and are now scraping the barrel. The first part focussing on the writers was on par with season 3. But the second part was just poor. There was no narrative, no structure, just soundbites from the cast that sometimes had nothing and most of the time very little to do with season 4. Stewart talking about George Hearn in Sweeney Todd, Spiner's baseball comparisons, Sirtis still going on about her hair. Wheaton going off on a hockey tangent, Dorn talking about going to get a haircut. Half of the time I was wondering what the fuck these people were talking about. Also every sentence spoken was intercut with scenes from the show so that the stories seemed even more disjointed.
