Stella and I like to bicker at the breakfast table about the nature of evil. That’s what we were doing one morning as we watched Tessa Lena’s interview with Alexandra Latypova on the topic of… well, I won’t tell you. If I tell you it will suggest too narrow a scope for this essay. My main theme is not Covid, but power, evil, war, politics, and what it is going to take to heal.
Can't wait to read the essay. So far, I agree 100%. The I Ching says: "The best way to fight evil is making energetic progress in the good." The devil is God's footman, not his opponent.
In the meantime, here's a hypothesis I'd like to be challenged.
Most of the evil actions are perpetrated by people who believe they're doing the right thing ; and the source of evil actually lays in the structures of our societies.
This could explain the gulag in Soviet Union (people were sent there to "protect and save the system", in short) and this could explain the horrors of Covid in a capitalist system.
When people are in charge of ensuring investors will have a return on investment, and believe it's their priority, they will work on it:
If a company they run is in competition with other companies and they have to make the prices as low as they can in order not to lose a market (so as not to go bankrupt), such costs as protecting the environment, ensuring safety in the factories, giving correct wages for the workers etc. will be limited as much as possible, leading to pollution, accidents and poverty.
If people run an investment fund, the right thing for them to do is to maximize the return on investment of their investors, so as to attract new investors and keep their business working; they'll *need* to find a profitable sector to invest in and make sure the laws or the media will not interfere with their expected profit. This can apply to pharmaceutical companies, which is a sector worse investing in because of the huge profit it can make. But profit will collapse if regulators start blocking some products or if the public believes the products are not "safe and effective" or if there exist a cheaper alternative. Protecting the perspectives of profit may require corrupting a few people and the media, but that is for a good reason: ensuring there will be an attractive return on investment.
If they fail, a pyramid of companies might collapse (pharmaceutical companies, investment funds, banks, and then the whole capitalist system !) So they really have no choice...
This is a very short summary of how they can be led to commit mass crimes in order to fulfill a mission they believe is "righteous" and an absolute priority.
So a real victory would be to change the structures of society, in a way it won't *push* people to do evil things anymore...
I think there is a problem with using the word “evil”, and it’s at the core of this and any heated debate: to call someone or someone’s behavior evil is to Other them in such a fashion that nothing of value can be seen. I believe that moral judgments are not helpful when speaking of or to other people. It may be true that most people make such judgments, but moral judgments simply do not work and hence are not useful. Why? Well, let’s look at it more closely. What does calling someone or some behavior evil actually say or mean? It doesn’t tell us anything about the other person or behavior, because saying so and so, or such and such, is evil doesn’t depict anything. It suggests, yes, and one can imagine all sorts of things in response to hearing the word Evil, but fundamentally it speaks only of the person who uttered the words, of his or her own outrage and, yes, of moral superiority. It really says nothing at all about the other, it only announces the speaker’s own position or feelings. So how can this word be useful? A judgmental word like Evil does nothing to unite people or foster a greater understanding of others. It pushes people away and apart.
I believe we are all much more alike than we are different. And modern genetics bears this out, (if you trust the geneticists.) i also celebrate our differences, flaws and all, for they make us who we are as individuals. But I also believe that we all of us have the same set of emotions and feelings, and the same fundamental needs, and that it is a gross misunderstanding of another person to call them evil. You do not have to like another person to want to understand them and why they behave as they do, or to find this useful in communication. But calling that other person or group or behavior “evil” means you no longer wish to understand, you intend only to judge them and by such judgment exclude them from the rest of “more or less good” humanity.
I think the reason that the Covid tyranny seems so bad (besides simply being the worst & most immediate example for most of us in our lifetimes) is that we find it hard to explain or understand. And that the apparent evil has been done in the name of public health & well-being, so that there is quite a disconnect between the expressions of concern by public officials, and the reality.
It's only just starting to dawn on many people that the benevolence is in fact a sham - and it still confuses us, we who do not really get psychopathic behaviour.
There are only 2 explanations (not mutually exclusive) for the pandemonium:
1) that our leaders were well-intentioned but misguided, driven by some sort of mass hysteria or crowd pressure in a hyped-up emergency situation to act as they did, totally scrapping all the previous soundly-based pandemic guidance & planning, or
2) this was a grand plan master-minded by psychopaths who want to depopulate the world.
These are the 2 main stories we tell ourselves to make sense of it, though there are variations too, including simple greed and the desire to grab power.
The first story has become harder & harder to sustain, as the evidence of jab harm rolls in, along with evidence of lockdown harm with its economic & social damage.
Yes, public institutions are subject to massive inertia and only change course very slowly (though the curious exception has been the covid policies back in early 2020) - and politicians never admit to error if they can help it. But somehow, the concerted push to suppress, dismiss, hide, cover-up, and all backed by legal recourse (eg doctors being disciplined by regulatory boards, etc) is hard to explain without invoking some sort of truly sinister explanation. (Big Pharma has often had products, including vaccines, prove to be dangerous, and they have simply dealt with the fines & moved on.)
So that leaves Evil as the explanation.
The genocidal action of the colonial invaders can be explained by greed, the desire for conquest and riches. It's bad (in retrospect) - but we understand it.
Most of us conceptualise the Nazi Holocaust as "evil", without trying to make any further sense of it - we seem to have some sort of inbuilt understanding of "evil", and generally accept it as an explanation sufficient to itself.
Perhaps the Chinese who suffered and died in The Great Leap Forward also initially believed in the good intentions of their government. Until it was too late. But it is still hard to make sense of it without invoking "evil", especially as the consequences became more & more apparent.
What all of these (and the Covid actions) have in common, is a callous disregard for human life and welfare. Sometimes this is due to ignorance and distance from the suffering (which helps if you are not actually a psychopath). We can see this from our western perspective, contemplating the colonial exploitation of the New World (including slavery and genocide).
But with the Covid action, most of us trying to understand & deal with it are now in the position of the victims, not the perpetrators. Most of us have not benefitted from the massive transfer of wealth that occurred over the past 2 years. Most of us (and if not we, the enlightened few who are reading this, then our friends and families) believed that our governments & public health officials were genuinely trying to do a difficult job in a time of great emergency.
And maybe some of them were...
But now we are left confused by the refusal to acknowledge the emerging evidence of excess deaths all over the world, of damage to fertility, of other galloping health problems in all age groups. We don't quite know what to make of it, other than to see it as a massive orchestrated campaign of war against us, the people.
Beautiful, Charles— I agree that “we need to cultivate alternatives to war consciousness” and also we need to dissolve the causes of war within ourselves. 🤍
I’m excited to follow this series of essays. Wonderful to go all the way down the rabbit hole with you! Thank you for tackling this most profound and mysterious subject, Charles.
Charles, are you familiar with the book Political Ponerology, by Andrew Lobaczewski? Evil (organized psychopathy) is always with us, its ascension aided by denial of its existence. It can be managed and defanged, but only if it is detected and its harmful actions punished.
i urge charles and anyone else convinced of the ‘lab leak’ theory to revisit the work of those who are highlighting the shortcomings, and possibly the complete fraudulence, of the cell culture experiments that are at the core of modern virology (and the way we supposedly know that viruses exist).
additionally i invite everyone to read about the rosenau spanish flu experiments - the only instance i am aware of in which scientists have attempted to cause direct human - human infection. (un)surprisingly: “It seemed that what was acknowledged to be one of the most contagious of communicable diseases could not be transferred under experimental conditions.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/#!po=60.7527
if the 'no viruses' camp are indeed correct, i don’t think that changes the relevance of the message in this article. it can still be correct that the ultimate ’driver of the bus’ is our story of separation - (thanks charles, love your work, it inspires me daily). but wow, no viruses!? what a trip!
All of that I could deal with. Finding out it was all a cover so they can rape children & drink their blood in ritual…I can’t.
You’re an extremely smart guy…you must’ve heard the terms adrenochrome & Frazzledrip, right?
I love your work but I feel you ARE very cautious. Not afraid…cautious.
Clearly these particular atrocities against babies & kids cannot just be dismissed as tin foil hat nonsense anymore?
Fritz Springmeier has very powerful books on the Illuminati. And Jessie Czebotar is a defector who was groomed to be a Mother of Darkness for their end times agenda.
Luciferianism truly does run: the money, the airwaves, the Vatican, NY, DC, education, healthcare.
It has infiltrated every aspect of our lives down to our food supply & our sham voting.
I am neither a cynic nor skeptic: I’m a frustrated & thwarted mystic/social justice being.
Both right & left wings are anchored on a diseased & dying bird.
I would’ve never believed any of it if I wasn’t personally targeted & hazed by this faction relentlessly from 2018 until now.
The Kardashians alone: genuine evil in action. Mean girls with extreme money & cruelty.
I feel they get hijacked.
Evil hops bodies.
I know that sounds science fiction-y…but I’ve seen it.
I tend to lean with your wife on this one.
They know exactly what they are doing.
There’s an element to this that is simply not human.
You cannot reason with a demon.
There ARE benevolent counterforces as well…or we’d have been cooked long ago.
Do we all have a Sith & a Jedi within us? Sure.
That said? George Lucas probably raped, killed and drank a few people’s blood to get where he is.
The Secret part of the Secret Societies is blood & sex magic.
ON CHILDREN.
So victory against THAT…is a must. It’s not negotiable.
But it’s more a victory of transparency over secrecy, action over outrage, and exposing these heinous baby rape/murder practices: to end them.
It really is another kind of holocaust. Less boots on the ground & more inner consciousness transmutation.
But it will require fighting.
It will.
SO we who prefer peace and the greater good have to look at ALL aspects of life: including shining a light on the darkness.
Whether we like it or not.
I know I’ve suffered immensely thinking that while some kid is getting trafficked or raped twenty or more times a day, Trump was blithely golfing or petulantly tweeting. And Biden is no better. He’s absolutely Illuminati puppetry at its most absurd.
It’s long past a time we could pretend that left vs right were remotely relevant. That’s just another distraction farce.
The study of human evil is valuable. One of the best volumes on the matter is “people of the lie: the hope for healing human evil” by M. Scott Peck. The case examples he uses to prove his working hypothesis are disturbing, but important to read if you haven’t witnessed “every day evil” for yourself. It is much more subtle, and thus, is something we all must examine within ourselves if you believe that evil is a trait that is formed out of generational conditioning (epigenetics) and can then evolve to less obvious distinctions.
Charles, I thank God for you; this topic has never seemed more ripe for exploration. My friends and I frequently question the nature and locus of evil: is it a state of mind; is it the purview of psychopaths; is it off planet; is it biblical; is it generational; is it rare, is it banal, is it even real? We ask because we want to understand what kind of forces we are up against that would set in motion so much suffering. I greatly appreciate the wise and diverse comments here and feel lucky to be in such a thoughtful, intelligent huddle. Thank you also Charles for your talk with Zach Bush on Farmers’ Foot Print and your dedication to permaculture. People like you and Zach make me proud and pleased to be alive despite and because of these seemingly dark times. In herbal medicine I believe a plant remedy grows near to where the poison does also. I wonder how this might factor into a discussion about evil. Sending love to everyone.
This was very well written and you made many of your ideas and sentiments accessible. One thing I wanted to ask about was this statement: “And I am 99% a pacifist.” What do you mean by pacifist? How are you defining this term? How can you be certain of this estimate?
In trying to figure out what you meant, I reflected this toward myself and the yoga idea of ahimsa which is non-harming and non-violence. While it feels humbling and idealistic to view my actions as non-harmful or mostly non-harmful, it is unrealistic for me to estimate myself as a 99% pacifist. Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth talks about how accepting the reality that we must kill and harm to live (plant and animal products), is taking responsibility for my needs to live, needs which not only connect me to my reality but my spiritual essence. I must destroy to survive and I am dependent upon earth’s produce to do so.
While I see myself as acting non-violent, I accept violence as a part of nature (i.e. watching a gazelle get killed by a lion for food). As a human, I understand I have a choice in how I choose to act violently (participating in the meat industry). Does the existence of violence in human behavior make it natural as well?
Something else that made this comment stand out for me was you had just written a blog about your experience with Sacred Sons and learned that you enjoy fighting. I get the type of non-violent fighting you meant (such as your political activism), but in the instance in which you sparred with someone, did you consider that violence, all be it controlled and consensual? I suppose how one defines violence makes a difference.
Additionally, Americans make decisions everyday that keep us detached from how our behaviors may be harmful to others. Can I ensure that every aspect of the creation of this iPhone didn’t harm anyone or that the farmers who work at the farms where I get my food are making fair wages? How does shopping at Amazon contribute to ecological efforts of waste with all of the plastic and boxes involved in shipping? Am I absolved from harm when the taxes that I pay to the government buys guns that are placed in the hands of soldiers to kill humans? The reality is many of our actions inadvertently cause harm. I can do my best to remain vigilant but 99% feels a little high. What are your thoughts?
Charles, I am honored that my interview with Sasha inspired a bickering session about the nature of evil. :) Jokes aside, thank you. Thought-provoking as always.
Another masterpiece Charles, keep them coming please Word Warrior!
While evil cannot be denied and it is observably perpetuated by a limited number of human beings, I prefer to use the term ignorance.
To inflict 'evil' upon someone is a reflection that the perpetrator is disconnected from their true, authentic core and are projecting their pain and trauma upon others.
The solution is to become more conscious, which will result in wiser, more intelligent behaviours.
The search for evil foes to vanquish is an endless pursuit because it is everywhere. Those who wish to find it need only to look into a mirror -- it is within all of us, awaiting opportunities to emerge. That's the basis of the timeless expression that power corrupts, and biblical tales of universal sin. We try to counter that with training, and with the construction of societies to establish and enforce acceptable limits. That requires constant vigilance and discipline. When society succumbs to those impulses and becomes collectively evil, then we must try to develop new societies to defeat the destructive one that afflicts us. Short of that, we're each on our own, and life will devolve to survival of the fittest. The fittest will begin organizing new societies out of the rubble. The war continues. Life goes on.
Can't wait to read the essay. So far, I agree 100%. The I Ching says: "The best way to fight evil is making energetic progress in the good." The devil is God's footman, not his opponent.
I'm looking forward to reading you.
In the meantime, here's a hypothesis I'd like to be challenged.
Most of the evil actions are perpetrated by people who believe they're doing the right thing ; and the source of evil actually lays in the structures of our societies.
This could explain the gulag in Soviet Union (people were sent there to "protect and save the system", in short) and this could explain the horrors of Covid in a capitalist system.
When people are in charge of ensuring investors will have a return on investment, and believe it's their priority, they will work on it:
If a company they run is in competition with other companies and they have to make the prices as low as they can in order not to lose a market (so as not to go bankrupt), such costs as protecting the environment, ensuring safety in the factories, giving correct wages for the workers etc. will be limited as much as possible, leading to pollution, accidents and poverty.
If people run an investment fund, the right thing for them to do is to maximize the return on investment of their investors, so as to attract new investors and keep their business working; they'll *need* to find a profitable sector to invest in and make sure the laws or the media will not interfere with their expected profit. This can apply to pharmaceutical companies, which is a sector worse investing in because of the huge profit it can make. But profit will collapse if regulators start blocking some products or if the public believes the products are not "safe and effective" or if there exist a cheaper alternative. Protecting the perspectives of profit may require corrupting a few people and the media, but that is for a good reason: ensuring there will be an attractive return on investment.
If they fail, a pyramid of companies might collapse (pharmaceutical companies, investment funds, banks, and then the whole capitalist system !) So they really have no choice...
This is a very short summary of how they can be led to commit mass crimes in order to fulfill a mission they believe is "righteous" and an absolute priority.
So a real victory would be to change the structures of society, in a way it won't *push* people to do evil things anymore...
hey everyone, my apologies for mistakenly setting the post to comments from paid subscribers only. It was an error.
I think there is a problem with using the word “evil”, and it’s at the core of this and any heated debate: to call someone or someone’s behavior evil is to Other them in such a fashion that nothing of value can be seen. I believe that moral judgments are not helpful when speaking of or to other people. It may be true that most people make such judgments, but moral judgments simply do not work and hence are not useful. Why? Well, let’s look at it more closely. What does calling someone or some behavior evil actually say or mean? It doesn’t tell us anything about the other person or behavior, because saying so and so, or such and such, is evil doesn’t depict anything. It suggests, yes, and one can imagine all sorts of things in response to hearing the word Evil, but fundamentally it speaks only of the person who uttered the words, of his or her own outrage and, yes, of moral superiority. It really says nothing at all about the other, it only announces the speaker’s own position or feelings. So how can this word be useful? A judgmental word like Evil does nothing to unite people or foster a greater understanding of others. It pushes people away and apart.
I believe we are all much more alike than we are different. And modern genetics bears this out, (if you trust the geneticists.) i also celebrate our differences, flaws and all, for they make us who we are as individuals. But I also believe that we all of us have the same set of emotions and feelings, and the same fundamental needs, and that it is a gross misunderstanding of another person to call them evil. You do not have to like another person to want to understand them and why they behave as they do, or to find this useful in communication. But calling that other person or group or behavior “evil” means you no longer wish to understand, you intend only to judge them and by such judgment exclude them from the rest of “more or less good” humanity.
I think the reason that the Covid tyranny seems so bad (besides simply being the worst & most immediate example for most of us in our lifetimes) is that we find it hard to explain or understand. And that the apparent evil has been done in the name of public health & well-being, so that there is quite a disconnect between the expressions of concern by public officials, and the reality.
It's only just starting to dawn on many people that the benevolence is in fact a sham - and it still confuses us, we who do not really get psychopathic behaviour.
There are only 2 explanations (not mutually exclusive) for the pandemonium:
1) that our leaders were well-intentioned but misguided, driven by some sort of mass hysteria or crowd pressure in a hyped-up emergency situation to act as they did, totally scrapping all the previous soundly-based pandemic guidance & planning, or
2) this was a grand plan master-minded by psychopaths who want to depopulate the world.
These are the 2 main stories we tell ourselves to make sense of it, though there are variations too, including simple greed and the desire to grab power.
The first story has become harder & harder to sustain, as the evidence of jab harm rolls in, along with evidence of lockdown harm with its economic & social damage.
Yes, public institutions are subject to massive inertia and only change course very slowly (though the curious exception has been the covid policies back in early 2020) - and politicians never admit to error if they can help it. But somehow, the concerted push to suppress, dismiss, hide, cover-up, and all backed by legal recourse (eg doctors being disciplined by regulatory boards, etc) is hard to explain without invoking some sort of truly sinister explanation. (Big Pharma has often had products, including vaccines, prove to be dangerous, and they have simply dealt with the fines & moved on.)
So that leaves Evil as the explanation.
The genocidal action of the colonial invaders can be explained by greed, the desire for conquest and riches. It's bad (in retrospect) - but we understand it.
Most of us conceptualise the Nazi Holocaust as "evil", without trying to make any further sense of it - we seem to have some sort of inbuilt understanding of "evil", and generally accept it as an explanation sufficient to itself.
Perhaps the Chinese who suffered and died in The Great Leap Forward also initially believed in the good intentions of their government. Until it was too late. But it is still hard to make sense of it without invoking "evil", especially as the consequences became more & more apparent.
What all of these (and the Covid actions) have in common, is a callous disregard for human life and welfare. Sometimes this is due to ignorance and distance from the suffering (which helps if you are not actually a psychopath). We can see this from our western perspective, contemplating the colonial exploitation of the New World (including slavery and genocide).
But with the Covid action, most of us trying to understand & deal with it are now in the position of the victims, not the perpetrators. Most of us have not benefitted from the massive transfer of wealth that occurred over the past 2 years. Most of us (and if not we, the enlightened few who are reading this, then our friends and families) believed that our governments & public health officials were genuinely trying to do a difficult job in a time of great emergency.
And maybe some of them were...
But now we are left confused by the refusal to acknowledge the emerging evidence of excess deaths all over the world, of damage to fertility, of other galloping health problems in all age groups. We don't quite know what to make of it, other than to see it as a massive orchestrated campaign of war against us, the people.
Beautiful, Charles— I agree that “we need to cultivate alternatives to war consciousness” and also we need to dissolve the causes of war within ourselves. 🤍
I’m excited to follow this series of essays. Wonderful to go all the way down the rabbit hole with you! Thank you for tackling this most profound and mysterious subject, Charles.
Charles, are you familiar with the book Political Ponerology, by Andrew Lobaczewski? Evil (organized psychopathy) is always with us, its ascension aided by denial of its existence. It can be managed and defanged, but only if it is detected and its harmful actions punished.
i urge charles and anyone else convinced of the ‘lab leak’ theory to revisit the work of those who are highlighting the shortcomings, and possibly the complete fraudulence, of the cell culture experiments that are at the core of modern virology (and the way we supposedly know that viruses exist).
additionally i invite everyone to read about the rosenau spanish flu experiments - the only instance i am aware of in which scientists have attempted to cause direct human - human infection. (un)surprisingly: “It seemed that what was acknowledged to be one of the most contagious of communicable diseases could not be transferred under experimental conditions.” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2862332/#!po=60.7527
if the 'no viruses' camp are indeed correct, i don’t think that changes the relevance of the message in this article. it can still be correct that the ultimate ’driver of the bus’ is our story of separation - (thanks charles, love your work, it inspires me daily). but wow, no viruses!? what a trip!
**
see, for example:
tom cowan's back catalogue of webinars. i liked this one: https://www.bitchute.com/video/LDr95jG08oa0/
All of that I could deal with. Finding out it was all a cover so they can rape children & drink their blood in ritual…I can’t.
You’re an extremely smart guy…you must’ve heard the terms adrenochrome & Frazzledrip, right?
I love your work but I feel you ARE very cautious. Not afraid…cautious.
Clearly these particular atrocities against babies & kids cannot just be dismissed as tin foil hat nonsense anymore?
Fritz Springmeier has very powerful books on the Illuminati. And Jessie Czebotar is a defector who was groomed to be a Mother of Darkness for their end times agenda.
Luciferianism truly does run: the money, the airwaves, the Vatican, NY, DC, education, healthcare.
It has infiltrated every aspect of our lives down to our food supply & our sham voting.
I am neither a cynic nor skeptic: I’m a frustrated & thwarted mystic/social justice being.
Both right & left wings are anchored on a diseased & dying bird.
I would’ve never believed any of it if I wasn’t personally targeted & hazed by this faction relentlessly from 2018 until now.
The Kardashians alone: genuine evil in action. Mean girls with extreme money & cruelty.
I feel they get hijacked.
Evil hops bodies.
I know that sounds science fiction-y…but I’ve seen it.
I tend to lean with your wife on this one.
They know exactly what they are doing.
There’s an element to this that is simply not human.
You cannot reason with a demon.
There ARE benevolent counterforces as well…or we’d have been cooked long ago.
Do we all have a Sith & a Jedi within us? Sure.
That said? George Lucas probably raped, killed and drank a few people’s blood to get where he is.
The Secret part of the Secret Societies is blood & sex magic.
ON CHILDREN.
So victory against THAT…is a must. It’s not negotiable.
But it’s more a victory of transparency over secrecy, action over outrage, and exposing these heinous baby rape/murder practices: to end them.
It really is another kind of holocaust. Less boots on the ground & more inner consciousness transmutation.
But it will require fighting.
It will.
SO we who prefer peace and the greater good have to look at ALL aspects of life: including shining a light on the darkness.
Whether we like it or not.
I know I’ve suffered immensely thinking that while some kid is getting trafficked or raped twenty or more times a day, Trump was blithely golfing or petulantly tweeting. And Biden is no better. He’s absolutely Illuminati puppetry at its most absurd.
It’s long past a time we could pretend that left vs right were remotely relevant. That’s just another distraction farce.
It’s the ancient war.
Good vs evil.
Extinction vs evolution.
And failure? Is not an option.
~CAW (aka Courtney A Walsh)
The study of human evil is valuable. One of the best volumes on the matter is “people of the lie: the hope for healing human evil” by M. Scott Peck. The case examples he uses to prove his working hypothesis are disturbing, but important to read if you haven’t witnessed “every day evil” for yourself. It is much more subtle, and thus, is something we all must examine within ourselves if you believe that evil is a trait that is formed out of generational conditioning (epigenetics) and can then evolve to less obvious distinctions.
Charles, I thank God for you; this topic has never seemed more ripe for exploration. My friends and I frequently question the nature and locus of evil: is it a state of mind; is it the purview of psychopaths; is it off planet; is it biblical; is it generational; is it rare, is it banal, is it even real? We ask because we want to understand what kind of forces we are up against that would set in motion so much suffering. I greatly appreciate the wise and diverse comments here and feel lucky to be in such a thoughtful, intelligent huddle. Thank you also Charles for your talk with Zach Bush on Farmers’ Foot Print and your dedication to permaculture. People like you and Zach make me proud and pleased to be alive despite and because of these seemingly dark times. In herbal medicine I believe a plant remedy grows near to where the poison does also. I wonder how this might factor into a discussion about evil. Sending love to everyone.
This was very well written and you made many of your ideas and sentiments accessible. One thing I wanted to ask about was this statement: “And I am 99% a pacifist.” What do you mean by pacifist? How are you defining this term? How can you be certain of this estimate?
In trying to figure out what you meant, I reflected this toward myself and the yoga idea of ahimsa which is non-harming and non-violence. While it feels humbling and idealistic to view my actions as non-harmful or mostly non-harmful, it is unrealistic for me to estimate myself as a 99% pacifist. Joseph Campbell in The Power of Myth talks about how accepting the reality that we must kill and harm to live (plant and animal products), is taking responsibility for my needs to live, needs which not only connect me to my reality but my spiritual essence. I must destroy to survive and I am dependent upon earth’s produce to do so.
While I see myself as acting non-violent, I accept violence as a part of nature (i.e. watching a gazelle get killed by a lion for food). As a human, I understand I have a choice in how I choose to act violently (participating in the meat industry). Does the existence of violence in human behavior make it natural as well?
Something else that made this comment stand out for me was you had just written a blog about your experience with Sacred Sons and learned that you enjoy fighting. I get the type of non-violent fighting you meant (such as your political activism), but in the instance in which you sparred with someone, did you consider that violence, all be it controlled and consensual? I suppose how one defines violence makes a difference.
Additionally, Americans make decisions everyday that keep us detached from how our behaviors may be harmful to others. Can I ensure that every aspect of the creation of this iPhone didn’t harm anyone or that the farmers who work at the farms where I get my food are making fair wages? How does shopping at Amazon contribute to ecological efforts of waste with all of the plastic and boxes involved in shipping? Am I absolved from harm when the taxes that I pay to the government buys guns that are placed in the hands of soldiers to kill humans? The reality is many of our actions inadvertently cause harm. I can do my best to remain vigilant but 99% feels a little high. What are your thoughts?
Charles, I am honored that my interview with Sasha inspired a bickering session about the nature of evil. :) Jokes aside, thank you. Thought-provoking as always.
Another masterpiece Charles, keep them coming please Word Warrior!
While evil cannot be denied and it is observably perpetuated by a limited number of human beings, I prefer to use the term ignorance.
To inflict 'evil' upon someone is a reflection that the perpetrator is disconnected from their true, authentic core and are projecting their pain and trauma upon others.
The solution is to become more conscious, which will result in wiser, more intelligent behaviours.
That's my two-penneth's worth!
Big respect from Bali,
The search for evil foes to vanquish is an endless pursuit because it is everywhere. Those who wish to find it need only to look into a mirror -- it is within all of us, awaiting opportunities to emerge. That's the basis of the timeless expression that power corrupts, and biblical tales of universal sin. We try to counter that with training, and with the construction of societies to establish and enforce acceptable limits. That requires constant vigilance and discipline. When society succumbs to those impulses and becomes collectively evil, then we must try to develop new societies to defeat the destructive one that afflicts us. Short of that, we're each on our own, and life will devolve to survival of the fittest. The fittest will begin organizing new societies out of the rubble. The war continues. Life goes on.