The concept of good and evil as a cosmic balance of the universe as a world building thing has always wigged me out since before I could even put my finger on what.

So much of it, when improperly done (ie, good vastly outweighing the bad, evil must be eradicated entirely) is just... The thinnest veneer of a plot device that makes it so hard to develop any good sense of nuance or even real understanding. It reeks of propaganda, and self righteous at that, even when in universe it's a hard proven fact. And it's always the bad/evil being unnatural, inherently wrong, the mere existence irredeemable.

Even when there's a bit more thought put into it, something like 'there is evil in every heart, but we must learn to understand it, and accept it, so we are not overcome' still has, like, that black and white binary to it, like sure there's shades of grey, but it's still... Based around the morals of the creator? It's an entirely objective concept, this good and evil.

Even today, cultures and religions around the world can have wildly varying ideas on what are virtues and what are cardinal sins that'll get you punished forever (even the words there are from one religion that famously cannot agree within itself). In the past global values were even more extreme as people learned more about the world over thousands of years (ye olde sexism is a big example).

Yes, it might not be true of reality, but even in fiction I still find works that explore the concept of a world order that incorporates good and evil physically or spiritually just... Off. Like that one terry pratchet quite from death I am going to quote very loosely - 'grind this universe down to its very building blocks, and show me one speck of justice. One atom of mercy'. The response is 'but people - we have to believe in these things! We need to believe in something!'.

Of course people need to believe in it. We do. We need justice and mercy and love and kindness. But to make those human concepts integral to the universe itself - magic forces of good and light and purity, and evil and darkness and corruption... It always sort of falls through.

But I'd also love to play with that. I'd love to explore other ways a fantasy world could work that could be misinterpreted by its denizens and good and evil. Something that has atoms or motes or fairy dust to make up its being. Decay and repair, perhaps. Warmth and cold. Light and dark as more than the presence or absence of radiation. The dark as a radiation of its own.

To say something is evil for its mere physical existence, I find that very hard to believe.