An interesting discussion occurred in my life on the 4th of July which is still haunting me. Without rehashing the endless details, I began to accept (?) that perhaps “evil” has already won, and that whatever acts of “good” still occur in the world today only serve to delay and disguise the truth…
Certainly evil has shown itself to be more powerful and far reaching than good, if only in the way that good has to be actively and consciously propped up in our thoughts and lives, while evil endures and thrives there. Need some examples? I think I can come up with a few…
I believe that few people besides Trump really wanted Trump’s parade, but no one could stop it from happening. I believe that most Americans disagree with the policies and criminal activities of the right wing extremists in this country, yet they continue to shove their disastrous ideas down our throats in spite of being a minority. Mega wealthy people are stepping forward to say, “yes, we agree we should pay more taxes,” but tax cuts for those few continue at the expense of the many. Members of the auto industry who lobbied for deregulation are now asking Trump’s cronies to back off, and are being ignored as completely as the rest of us. Hate crimes are being celebrated as political statements, and lawmakers are supporting the haters rather than the victims; an approach so overt, cruel and disgusting that even formerly biased and out of control law enforcement people are beginning to object…
But you know all this, so let’s look at something more personal…
I get together with my daughter and grandchildren every weekend. Since her work schedule changed we can only do dinner and a movie (rather than a whole day of family time), but we do it consistently, every week. Including last week when I was suffering from a mild concussion. I made my daughter drive, but I was there, and happy to be there. And once a month my daughter brings them to my work for Coloring Club, a bonus couple of hours we all look forward to.
But yesterday, Coloring Club day, my daughter cancelled because the other grandmother had tickets for the whole family to go to an amusement park. No problem, right? Except that after driving for an hour to get there, and paying the $20 parking fee, the other grandmother did not show up. Nor would she answer her phone when they tried to contact her; actually, she would answer, then immediately hang up. After waiting almost two hours, trapped in their car by a massive thunderstorm, the family left with angry parents and heartbroken children.
Now… Which memory do you suppose will take precedence in those children’s minds: that grandma Lisa showed up with a concussion last week for dinner and a movie, or that the other grandma left them sitting in a miserably hot car on a rainy day for hours with parents fighting, and never showed up? And you can spare me “the long run” scenarios, please. Because evil doesn’t require special conditions, attitudes, or allowances to be memorable; it simply takes over one’s entire consciousness.
And which parent do you suppose will have the greatest impact on these young ones? The mother who sacrifices time, energy, principles and common sense to try and keep the promises she makes, or the father who repeatedly lets them down, by not being home when promised, or playing with them as promised, etc…? Be honest with yourself, here. What memories compel your adult behavior – the good ones or the traumatic ones? Even if the good ones were more common and routine than the evil ones?
We can, as adults, choose to focus on the positive, but the fact that we must actively do so is answer enough for me…
I learned something else of value on the 4th of July: that I am incapable of harming another with my thoughts, no matter how much I might wish to do so. I am not proud of the experiment I conducted that night, but being rigorously honest with myself is necessary to my journey, so I freely admit to doing it. And I admit it was a conscious choice to try it.
Having spent all day contemplating this question of whether evil has already won, and whether evil is naturally more powerful than good, I willingly engaged it. I have always been at least a little afraid of the “beast” which lurks within me. I am aware of its existence. I consciously seek to control its influence in my life and my actions, “fighting the good fight” almost every day of my misguided adulthood. So I have never truly tested its power to influence to world around me.
It’s true that there are times in my life when I tried to place myself first, often at the expense of others. That guilt and shame at my actions would eventually win out reversing my course. That I’ve had to accept that, at my core, I am basically “good,” and therefore destined to lose. But this night was different…
This night I fully embraced evil. Claimed it. Made it mine! This time I opened the floodgates and let the fiery acid of hatred flow freely through my veins. Had I been physically armed and mobile, I would have eagerly gone on a killing spree. But I was neither, so I sat, and rocked, and let the hatred consume my being, wishing with all I am for violent retribution against all who were near me! For hours I sat and sent my vicious thoughts out into the world, eagerly awaiting the bloodcurdling screams announcing my success…
Nothing happened.
And lest you assume my desire to harm others was not real, please understand that I had spent hours (from 10am until 3:30am the following morning) trying to rescue a traumatized animal, while these humans around me placed their own wants above this animal’s genuine needs. My motivation to harm them was both real and deeply sincere! I would gladly have destroyed all of humanity, including myself, if it could bring one moment of peace to this poor, suffering, innocent creature!
But I could not…
In attempting to process the results of that experiment over these last couple of days, I’ve had to own up to some other hard truths as well. If my thoughts are incapable of harming others, even when deeply motivated to do so, then it’s even likelier that my thoughts are unable to heal others, knowing now that evil is truly stronger than good. Perhaps better to say evil is more powerful, thriving as it does when given the least of expression, while good struggles to impact events even when full focus is brought to that intent. Any battle between good and evil is inherently imbalanced. And pointless…
Depressing? Oh yes, most definitely. Yet ultimately freeing as well. For if it’s true that evil has already won, and that it will naturally (and eventually) consume all that is good, then why continue to fight the inevitable? Why not simply accept, and surrender, and welcome in the newest dark age with a smile of understanding. Let us hasten to the finish line, where all good ceases to exist, so that suffering ends. For it is the struggle against the inevitable that causes “suffering,” rather than the inevitability itself…
Happy Independence Day my fellow Americans! A country founded upon evil can only end in corruption. There truly is no other way…
the otherhood of one 
Hi Lisa.
Before I get to accepting or rejecting, or partially accepting your summarization, I have two questions for you: How do you define good, and, how do you define evil? I don’t mean a dictionary definition, but a Lisa definition?
Please pretend I am a total stranger. What would you say to a total stranger about good and evil? From there I can examine your thesis. Or, better yet, together we can examine your thesis. If you are willing…
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For me, Jerry, “good” is that which aids, comforts or supports life. “Evil” then is that which harms, destroys or negates life. Simplistic definitions, and perhaps not all inclusive, but you get the idea. 😁
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Speaking simplisticly, eating is evil, or at best zero sum, since you have to kill to survive. We can say we are not doing the killing, but someone else us killing for us, so still it is our need that is evil.
But that is just one example of where good and evil cannot be separated. Is it good or evil to do CPR on an accident victim, only to have them end up in the hospital on life-support machines for ten yesrs before someone finally pulls the plug. My personal directive, what some people call a living will, restricts me from being hooked up to life-support machines; if my body wants to die, let it die. To me that is good, to others it is evil.
Good and evil turn out to be different sides of the coin of life. We cannot ever know if an action can be good or evil, no matter what it seems like at the time of the action.
For me there is no good or evil–there are just choices, decisions, and actions that can lead to successes or failures, knowing that seeming successes can turn into failures, and seeming failures csn turn into successes. I cannot judge based on partial information.
But I can feel, and many things feel like successes or failures at the time. Trump looks like a total failure, but because of his excesses he could eventually cause a better future. He probably will cause a better future, if we can survive the next hundred years. But if we don’t, then he proves he is a total failure, but no one will be around to care…
This is nothing like what I wanted to say, but it is coloured by a email conversation I had with an Ilk Worm (trump follower) today. Maybe in a few days I can get back to what I intended…
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I would agree that eating is evil, and that it is more powerful than starving. If I starve because I refuse to eat, then I grow ever weaker over time. Evil “wins” out again. And every “evil” act comes with its own packet of defenses, excuses and justifications, because we believe we “must” even more than we believe we “can.”
In other words, evil doesn’t generally think of itself as evil because it serves a “good” purpose for the evil doer. Even in my own experiment that much is obvious; I wanted those people around me utterly destroyed, and I wanted them to experience first hand the pain they were inflicting upon others with their own selfish pursuits. But that was MY selfish desire. And my expression of evil was not strong enough to overcome the evil that surrounded me. But there was nothing truly “good” and life affirming happening there, anywhere. There was no other side of the coin. Unless, of course, you count the mild satisfaction experienced by the act of doing evil. But that seems minor and petty to me, and merely a game of semantics. For surely no one would do evil if they got no satisfaction from it at all, including myself…
I look forward to hearing from you again when you figure out what you truly wanted to say. So far, we seem to be pretty much on the same page. 😉
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Guess we’ll have to wait and see if I can get it back. I hate myself for saying this, but talking to the other side makes me want to reign on everyone’s parade. I especially hate being on another side, because I like to be life-affirming. But when I listen to vitriol, I start spewing it myself, and I hate that. Yet I want to understand, how can people be so different. Why can’t everyone see how destructive people are. While they wonder, why would anyone want to give up their superiority over other living things?
Achhhhhh! How can one give up what they do not have!!!!!
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I know that frustration, my friend. Truly… 😁
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A bold and courageous statement, Lisa. That evil always triumphs over good has also been my observation, so no argument with you there. I still struggle with Dylan Thomas’ poem whose famous lines are, “Do not go gentle into that good night. Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Seems the light is always dying, and if we are honest with ourselves and observation of our living environment we have to know that darkness always wins. Such ‘light’ comes from finite combustible fusion furnaces. Once that goes, what is left but darkness? And cold? Perhaps we should not compare ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to ‘light’ and ‘darkness’? Perhaps there is no relation except as false perception? Perhaps, as I tend to do more and more we should seek to ‘walk between worlds’ and not base our hopes, dreams, expectations and understanding upon a physical environment? Perhaps we are not denizens of this universe, nor citizens of a physical world? Perhaps we are not material beings at all and this passage (or passages) being experienced are to teach ourselves what we are not, to learn to be what we truly are which is, at the risk of sounding New Agey, light beings. We are the light, only it isn’t a physical light but an infinite and non-extinguishable reality. Perhaps what we experience as darkness is our own fear promoted by brainwashing, programming, and lack of perception of what lies ‘beyond the veil’ of a false, mechanical, material reality.
Your statement seems to me to be a ‘raging’ against standing alone and realizing that your awareness makes you a loser in the eyes of the sheeple. My experience of this is that there is no way around standing alone and being seen as a loser but look at the alternative: if you cannot beat them, must you join them? I say never. You must fly alone. If you carry “them” your wings will never take you aloft. So I see it now. Let them watch you fly, grow their own wings or try to shoot you down.
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I love this response, Sha’Tara. Every word. Detachment, yes. Independence, yes. Acceptance of self, without real limitations. And yes, even being seen as a loser. Choosing to vacate the battlefield does not make me a coward, in spite of how we have been programmed to believe. I think it takes more courage to walk away than not to. But that’s just my latest opinion based upon these most recent revelations.
And in my head, a song. The constant refrain, “another one bites the dust…”. The “battle” will end eventually, but whether we are all losers or winners when it does is an answer I can’t foresee… 🙃
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Who will be the winners, the losers? I suppose it depends on the prize we set before us…
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That makes sense… 😁
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