Good and Evil: The Two Jokers in Plato’s Deck of Cards

Plato said that for most people life is a dark cave with flickering images of higher Ideas passing before them. They take these images to be the real world. Plato’s Ideas are the cards of life that fill it with meanings. There are two Jokers in this deck that orient these meanings. There is the Good, to which the meanings ultimately lead, the light at the end of the tunnel. And there is Evil, the darkness of the tunnel itself. Arthur Fleck, a.k.a. Joker, had a dark childhood of poverty and abuse. In response, he first tried to find relief by telling jokes and lifting spirits. In the end, frustrated by rejection from the supposedly good, already happy people, he decided that the joke was on them, not him, and made sure that they knew it.