Hi Guitarman.

My lady who is a huge wheel of time fan, upon learning that you read the last chapter before getting to it, instructed me to smack you, so consider yourself smack'd!

Beware! spoilage ahoy!

Actually Guitarman the reason that Rand doesn't destroy the dark one is revealed earlier in memory of light. I'll say that reading the  last chapter probably wasn't a good way to get the ending, sinse Rand's battle with the Dark one carries on throughout a large part of the book, indeed Memory of Light is more like an extended climax to the hole series than one novel.
Nope, I'm not going to tell you why, but suffice it to say there is a dam good reason.

My lady appologises for smacking you and says "enjoy the series" and also that things improve much more after crossroads of twilight, indeed I'd agree with her too, knife of dreams is where the end starts to pick up again and things really start moving after the somewhat slumpy bit in books 6-10. The conclusion is great, and the last three books rock, indeed I give Sanderson much credit in carrying on the momentum started by jordan in Knife of dreams.

@cae, as a correction, Knife of dreams is %100 Jordan. This is why I don't agree with people who say Sanderson brought the series back single handed. yes, it improved under sanderson but those improvements were already underway with jordan, and how much is Sanderson's influence and how much jordan's is a huge mess of authorial responsability confusion which nobody can work out in a satisfactory way, so it isn'tcorrect to give creddit to either particularly.

Beware! large ranty spoilage of spoiling ahoy!

As regards WoT theology, the idea I always got was not that the creator and dark one were opposites, but that the dark one was an opposite of the one power which was life, while the creator saw the position for this opposition. This was why most people who talked of "the light" ie, children of the light were barking up the wrong tree and represented as rather nuts.

So the creator created the wheel and ket it spinning, but the wheel itself was only one on a much larger wheel that the creator was responsable for. Under that larger wheel, just as time turns and ages come and go etc, there has to be a cycle of dark one escaping and then being put back, rather like the Hindu idea of creation and destruction in cycle or the cosmological big crunch. Of course, this makes the entire series a bit pointless and cyclic, but this is exactly why the future Rand sees without the dark one is one which can't progress and has no conflict.
Actually balance wise, I'd argue in the series, being as the Dark one most of the time is crippled by his minians bickering (Moredin says as much in Memory of light), balance is a theme Jordan was trying for, albeit usually his duality is as you said more male/female or order and chaos, indeed in the way that characters progress when banding together and not taking paths of either ultra order or individualistic anarchy, and in the way that trust in Jordan land is at a premium, it seems this is where he was going all the time, especially and most blatantly in terms of Gender politics.
Also note that just because something is cyclic isn't to say that it is infinite either, or that it must go through all variations. We already know in Jordan land that alternative realities exist, indeed it's those very realities that become the major battleground for the dark one and rand and which of those realities is closest to the stable cycle of the pattern.
So no, the dark one does not have to ultimately win, even though realities exist where he does so for the pattern to continue and be semi eternal, if not infinite.

I also wouldn't put too much store by anything ishamael says, sinse firstly he's a nutjob, and secondly Jordan had not worked out how all the cosmology worked, for example his implication that the dark one was lord of the grave and therefore got dominion over anyone who died anyway, as per rand's vision of his mother being tortured in Eye of the world.

The worrying thing for me with jordan in terms of his cosmology is his implication that what caused the release of the dark one in the first place was the attempt for men and women to use the same power. This, combined with all that semi freudian men fight, women surrender nonsense we see in the series, not to mention quite a bit of standardised ways he writes female characters suggest a very rigid gender view which is born out in the cosmology, indeed if looked at in that sense WoT is actually an anti feminist novel sinse it claims male and female equality is not just harmful, but actually causes the world to shatter and the forces of nastiness to get free from their prison and stop the age of legends in it's tracks.

Well that does seem to be true for WoT, though it isn't so much that there is no good without evil i think so much as that there needs to be a degree of tention between opposite forces in order for progress to happen and for the world to work correctly. This is why I tend to believe Jordan was thinking more in terms of the dark one being part of the over all pattern of the wheelitself.

@Guitarman, to be fare to Jordan he generally has things work out when men and women work together, there is a huge bit in Winter's heart which you might not have reached yet that illustrates this. The bit I tend to think was a little silly was the implication that men and women drawing the same power was what caused the dark one to break free, as though desiring men and women to have the same source of power or life style was a bad thing.
I've also noticed in Jordan a general tendency to have female characters bicker very much and generally run around ineffectively, indeedI read some fascinating stuff by Helen Lowe, a poet and Author on her blog where she concluded that for all most people see Jordan as a feminist writer she felt he was exactly the opposite, her blog is here

As to mistrust, yes, that gets on my whick as well, indeed it sort of amuses me that the dark one's minians are so ineffective due to the fact they spend more time backstabbing each other, particularly sinse unlike the politics in game of thrones where, to coin the phrase "you win or you die" in Jordan land it seems "You win and must continue to replay games against defeated opponents who might or might not like you but who utterly refused to die even when they fail the ultimate master of evilness who really should kill them horribly but has more fun returning them to bimble around as miner characters!"  (usually doing laundry, what is it with Jordan and women doing laundry!).

However, I can say Knife of dreams is where lots of things pick up, including many plots.

My lady would also heartily approve of you sinse Min and Mwarane are two of her favourite characters, though she's also a fan of Ninaeve, particularly sinse she is tiny herself and gets rather sick of books with tall, commanding statuesque women.
We've also had very amusing arguements about what Aja my lady would be if she were Ais sidai, and indeed what Aja I'd end up as if the Asherman had Ajas.
I've said categorically my lady is a green, but she insists she's closer to the yellow, though to my mind she's not that officious, (most of the yellows are so dedicated they're rather snippy which is not my lady's personality at all).
Likewise if the Ashaman had Ajas I'd probably be somewhere between the brown or green myself.

Min is probably my favourite lady, mostly because she's the only one who Rand has anything that's vaguely like a real relationship with as opposed to the usual Jordan kiss kiss, slap slap, you've been sleeping with someone else no I haven't but I won'ttell you or deny it I'll just sneak around and act all offended and avoid you sinse surely that will allay your suspicions type of relationship that most couples in the series have, then again I would say that sinse my lady is rather like Min in personality herself.

Actually I tended to prefer the female characters to the male ones, though I was less keen on ellane, then again Mat certainly had his amusing moments.

Btw, I am not sure if you saw the wheel of time abridged that I posted a while ago, if not Find it here
It's a very hilarious take on the books of the series right up to crossroads of twilight that I originally found on a WoT forum and rescued due to the wayback machinn, and actually captures the spirit of the series, all the sneaking and misstrust and endless politics remarkably well, and in a very hilarious manner.

@Drumbs61, I don't disagree with the amount of political in fighting in the series, just that in reality politics was far more brutal especially in times of absolute monarchy.
Take Thomas Cranmer. henry the eighths chief adviser, a position he got to by basically backstabbing his rival and prooving allegations against him, however he made one fatal mistake, arranging the mariage of Henry to Anne of Cleeves, a reputedly rather fat, less than pleasant looking lady who the king definitely didn't like.
Needless to say his majesty was not amused, and Cranmer basically was exiled from court. No, he didn't then start a rebellion, he didn't then wander around hoping to find some miner characters, his name was mud as far as Henry went and he stayed far away sinse others who offended the king were more likely to end up having very nasty stuff happen.

This is where I find Martin's politics far more believable than Jordans, sinse in Martin offend those in power and clonk! that's it. In Jordan, it doesn' matter how brutal those in power are (and several monarchies are pretty brutal),  very few people have anything perminantly bad happen, indeed to say the series is all about the dark! one it's amazing how many people are pretty ambiguous characters, most of the forsaken are just petty (with a few exceptions), and the same goes for at least most of the main cast (rand certainly isn't exactly heroic, or even pleasant most of the time, indeed he's a right git).

So, while I don't disagree with you on the infighting and selfishness, I suspect in reality it would be far more brutal and less polite than Jordan's representation.

For the reccord I will say this is where my lady and I do disagree with each other, she finds Jordan's rather safer world where character rarely if ever exit the series far preferable to martins where everyone walks around on a knife edge, nobody is safe and characters you like or don't like get killed off on a regular basis.
I personally hold the opposite view particularly as regards politics and relationships (sinse most people who are together don't tend to mistrust each other that much), indeed midway through WoT there are actually so many characters I rather wish some of them got the chop just to thin things down and make the story more easy to follow .