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Choosing the lesser of two evils. Be wary of either/or propositions. The positive aspect is that this is an auspicious time to reconsider the choices; there are probably more than two options.
Sometimes, however, choosing the lesser of two evils is the best choice. For example, suppose there are two leading presidential candidates, and one is very, very, very dark grey while the other is medium to light grey. You could attempt to keep your conscience clean by choosing a third-party candidate who has no chance of winning but whom you think is nearly pure white. That’s a serious mistake, as it is a far greater moral urgency to prevent the very, very, very dark grey candidate from seizing power. In such a scenario, it is better to choose the lesser of the two evils who can actually win. And in case you don’t know, it’s been statistically proven that people who kept saying “republicrats, there’s no difference between the two parties” and virtuously voted for Ralph Nader in 2000 elected George W. Bush who brought us the war in Iraq instead of the not-quite-pure-enough for them, environmentalist Al Gore. It’s also been proven that people who voted for the green candidate in 2016 caused Hillary Clinton to lose the electoral college to Donald Trump. By voting green, they brought us orange.
It is selfish to want to preserve your purity and virtue by not being realistic about the nature of certain choices. As Taoist sage Deng Ming Dao says, “Never underestimate the value of a partial solution.” We don’t live in a world that always gives us a perfect alternative to choose. If you’re unwilling to use a product if it damages the environment in some way, you wouldn’t be reading this — you’d be in the woods trying to sharpen your stone axe.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is the right choice when perfection is the enemy of the good. Even if the good is grey-scaled and mediocre, it’s still better than a dark alternative.
