The Meaning of Good and Evil by Misha

Good and Evil are emerging as the two sides in this season. Dogan spells out as much when talking to Sayid about each man having such a "scale", with Good on one side and Evil on the other. For everything else that Lost has been, for all the other dualities explored throughout the series (Fate vs. Free Will, WHH vs. ALT) it seems too simplistic that it all boils down to Good and Evil.

I think the writers are playing with and challenging those as concepts. What does it mean to be "Good"? or "Evil"? We can see both sides doing good and bad things. Sure, nobody on Jacob's side kills quite like Smokey does, but certainly Jacob's side has killed, and does kill. It seems murder (execution?) isn't something in itself that differentiates the two sides.

How about empathy - something typically thought of as a good, selfless thing? MIB shows empathy for "all those lives [that Jacob] wasted" when talking with Sawyer. Jacob shows empathy and understanding too. It's not a quality that one side has over the other.

Maybe "Good" and "Evil" are being shown to be: caring for the collective vs. caring for the individual. Perhaps the two sides are only differentiated in that Jacob is focused on a collective good, while MIB is focused on the individual's good. And from within those two perspectives, each side does both good and bad things.