Evil

Adolf Hitler was a human. Joseph Stalin was a human. Ruthless leaders and cruel generals who mandate the repression, abuse, and deaths of countless others are humans. Thieves, murderers, serial killers, all throughout history, they have all been humans.

You are a human. I am a human.

Evil is glamorized. It is cut out from the rest of us, and considered "something else". In the realms of our mind, it is exiled to the dungeons and shunned from afar. We place it there because we fear touching it, like we would fear disgusting vermin or a venomous beast. We fear associating with it, or seen next to it, lest we be thought to be friends with this wretched evil. "No, we must not be seen as evil", we think. "We cannot be thought of as evil, lest we be thrown into the dungeons of their own minds as well". And so we fear evil. Fear is the dungeon, evil the outcast, and I am... "well, at least I'm not that".

Seen by whom? By "them". "Them, the world". "The people around me". "I don't want them to shun me". "I want them to like me."

"Besides, I'm not evil", says I. "I don't know why these horrible people do the things they do. What do I know about it?" "And why EVER would I want to get involved with the evil? Oh no... if I try to understand those people, maybe I will actually empathize with them, and maybe justify them, and be seen as evil just like them! Oh no, I don't want that, no. I don't know how evil works and I don't want to know. Someone else will know how to do that better, yes. Someone else."

While we keep what we think of as evil exiled in the dungeons of our fears, we cannot understand it. And while we do not understand it, we cannot engage with it, nor resolve it - in our mind nor in the world. Whether we localize evil in ruthless dictators, cruel generals, corrupt businessmen, callous politicians, petty thieves, deserting lovers, appalling parents, obnoxious coworkers, disloyal friends, rude strangers... do you notice we so often place the evil in humans? The humans they are, the humans we are? Can you trace their actions back to a source within them - a thought, an emotion, a fear, an anger - that you can relate to in your self?

Try. Seek a common source from which spring the actions you so detest. Only then can come understanding. Only then can you see.