I’m just interested in what people think about it.
I’m not going to editorialise. Yet I should say that over recent years, with the covid stuff, and now the Ukraine stuff (and whatever bollox is going to happen next), I’ve witnessed a large number of people turning to religion.
For the record, I’m agnostic, yet the ‘evil thang’ (in a spiritual sense) has always been a difficult one to address.
I’ve no doubt whatsoever that ‘evil’ has recently been unleashed on the world (I think I’ve stated that here before).
I suppose I’m stumbling to the question: what is evil?
I’m not sure evil as such even exists. Even the craziest of leader loves someone or something. Evil doesn’t follow that.
I’ve long believed that we’re viewed as cattle, for milking and occasional slaughter. The need to process us faster has been decided. A farmer isn’t evil when he takes his stock to the knackers yard. Just business.
There’s the constant circling dance of Yin and Yang. Viewed philosophically enough, that can seem to negate the idea of manichean ‘evil’. Yet we persist in this strong sense that it’s real nonetheless. Abiding mystery…
Cattle to slaughter, at an abstract level, is no more evil than a cheetah hunting a gazelle. But the people who design the processes for carrying this out efficiently and cheaply, to maximise profit, are facilitating evil. The PR agencies that insisted smoking cigarettes was not dangerous were facilitating evil. When Bernays hired some glamorous gals to be filmed smoking cigarettes, in order to spread the habit among women, he was facilitating evil. When Piers Morgan castigated vaccine refusers and suggested curtailing our freedom he was facilitating evil. When an agent provocateur deliberately leads protesters into the line of fire of police snipers she or he is facilitating evil. The snipers? Oh they’re just doing their jobs… of propping up the order-givers who foster evil.
Individual acts of cruelty, in the aggregate, are evil. Thoughtlessly tramping on ants is destroying life and destroying life is evil. Selling methamphetamine to teenagers is evil. Serving alcohol in a branch of Wetherspoons is not really any different but is legal.
A desire path forms when people cut across a piece of land in a consistent way. Ruts form on a track when carts follow the tracks of the previous carts. Our karma is created and recreated with each rebirth. Not reincarnation, but the continuity between the me that typed the first paragraph in this little rant, and the me that is typing this one. A very very similar me, but not the same one. But if I consistently facilitate evil then I make a path that is easy to follow, by force of habit, thoughtlessly, mechanically, regardless of always having the choice not to do so.
That’s how evil becomes a force larger than any of us.
Just a momentary slowing of the process by which a response manifests as a reaction can let me consciously choose between, for example, retaliation or harmlessness. Doesn’t make the choice an easy one, especially if I’m habituated to striking back, but it is a fundamental skill cultivated by Hindus, Jains, Sufis, Buddhists, Orthodox Christians, and others. I recommend it.
Oh, and I came across this recently (courtesy of Rhis, BTL Off-Guardian, who was commentating on a link by another poster). I’ve put it up on my own blog because so much goes down the memory hole thesedays…
