Hey Baby-Yo
Yin-yang theories I read on the forum all sound interesting. Locke and Walt's game talk by the beach is bound to come up here and there, considering not a single dialogue or scene goes wasted with Lost
I agree with you that a binary will eventually be set up between Locke and Ben in the eyes of the Others, and a 'moral judgement' of good/bad often turns valuable when power shifts are of concern.
Nevertheless, I find the whole narrative of Lost working against the universality of categorical moral judgements, especially that of good/bad, or good/evil. For instance, interesting that a
torturer is one of (almost) every viewer's fav characters by now- in fact, in a recent poll on the forum, many of us considered Sayyid as totally trust-worthy in a life & death situation. Why? I think that's partly because we've been initiated with the depths of his character and given the circumstances of surviving on the island, categorical moral judgements proved themselves to be useless and superficial. Even before he showed remorse for his former deeds and even though not all the Losties know his past and his regrets about it, Sayyid never ceased gaining trust.. and popularity
Maybe the subtleties of the original yin-yang idea could be helpful here- that each side embraces a part of its opposite, and the opposition is not necessarily one of good/bad, good/evil.. Rather an on-going dialectical strife of opposing forces, creation and destruction, war and peace, change and stillness.. all those changes that Nature expresses without ever breaking the circle (the yin-yang sign), all in all, totally harmony, things working out themselves...sort of thing, if this makes any sense..
I kind of think that yin-yang idea is also interesting for Ben and Richard's relation.