One of the most alluring parts of human nature is the spectrum of good and evil, order and chaos, sainthood and the devil. Upon greeting a friend, he or she has the ability to build me up or tear me to shreds and I the same to them. And this ability resets every moment: one day we may have a tendency towards honesty and kindness, another we may be filled with vengeance and spite. It is a miracle that most of us manage to hold it together most of the time, that not all of us break down in the middle of work or a tram or a restaurant possessed by madness.

A few years ago one of my friends asked my group, Do you think people are good or evil? A few of us seemed adamant we were fundamentally good but were tainted by the world, others cheerfully announced we were damned from birth and a few, including me, thought somewhere in between.

But upon reflection, I think the question is not whether people are good or evil, but how far along the spectrum you currently are, because your circumstances may change and send you flying down the other way without your permission. You may think you are evil, but look where Jean Valjean ended up in Les Miserables – redeemed. Or you may think you are good, but was Satan not once an angel of God? Are not the gentlest, kindest people still capable of deceit, torture and rape?

We are simultaneously monsters and angels and sometimes one emerges victorious over the other. And yet we still remain the same being – a beautiful, terrifying enigma.

From The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

“But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.”