It has been generally accepted that models of enlightenment, are happy and calm and always at peace as are those with Downs syndrome. This politenment idea is impossible. The extremes must be known right? opposites create duality. In rage, our binary peace is extended potentially. I know ugliness and my art is the evidence.
I understand what you're saying. Light and dark are like mirrors, your potential for one is reflected in your potential for the other. I actually had a 3-day conversation on a different forum about exactly this not too long ago. What it boiled down to in the end for me, personally, was the following:
Within me exist all extremes. I know them all intimately well as do all who were born with my 'condition' I'm a raging bi-polar of the highest order. My capability for love and hate is exactly equal.
As a human living under a very progressive constitution I have the right to express all of these states also providing I do not harm others. But I choose to not take full advantage of that right.
Thing is, this old world is in a helluva fix. And I decided not too long ago that I would like a choice in how I affect it. I am MUCH aware of what a word or two can do to a mind. So I choose to be more careful with them. I choose to not really express everything I feel, but share that part which I think is most useful. I've gotten a lot of love I didn't deserve, and I want to pay my dues.
Not only that I want to admit when I screw up and make right, then move on but never forget.
So whether or not I am capable of extreme rage, that rage has only one place: It is MINE. MY fuel. My power. It's the thing I need at 3am when the job's not done and my mind needs to sharpen up, I tap into it. It now SERVES me.
So yes, I acknowledge that all extremes can and MUST exist inside one mind (...you need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star- Nietszche).
But a human being has full choice and responsibility for how he or she affects the world around them...
Contentment and true happiness I only want the day before I die, hopefully as a very old man. I want to be ALIVE right till the end, thanks...