The best things in life and the worst things in life

The April 26 Frazz comic:

Caulfield: A few weeks ago, you were all but howling at the full moon.
Frazz: Beautiful! Enormous, razor sharp and bright enough to hold its own against the rising sun across a vast, cloudless sky.
Caulfield: So you remember it.
Frazz: Of course! A moon like that is one of the best things in life.
Caulfield: Do you remember a week ago?
Frazz: I guess I don't.
Caulfield: It was inky and overcast, and there wouldn't have been a visible moon anyway. The complete opposite of the best thing in life, if you catch my drift.
Frazz: You're overthinking this.
Caulfield: Ergo: The worst things in life aren't as bad as the best things are good.
Frazz: I like the way you overthink.

The interesting thing is Caulfield has essentially proven that the worst things in life are way worse than the best things in life are good.

There are people in the world who, like Frazz think the beauty of nature is one of the best things in life.

If you find one of these people, ideally at a moment where they haven't just opined on the best things in life, and ask them about the worst things in life, they will, rightfully, come up with something like war atrocities. (Or, if they don't will likely agree that war atrocities are far worse than whatever they just thought of. Unless, of course, there's something worse than war atrocities that I'm not thinking of.)

War atrocities are, by far, many many many orders of magnitude worse than the beauty of nature is good.

(If anyone disagrees, here's a thought experiment: would you rather never be subjected to war atrocities and never experience the beauty of nature? Or would you rather be subjected to war atrocities for the rest of your natural life as the price of admission for experiencing the beauty of nature?)


In fact, Caulfield has just demonstrated that the bad things in life aren't even on the same scale as the good things in life. The absence of a beautiful moon isn't a war atrocity, it's simply nondescript. The absence of war atrocities isn't beautiful, it's simply nondescript.

There's a saying that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. Maybe that logic applies to other things in life as well.