Monday Evening Reflections on Evil
Things are becoming clearer in this complex and muddled mess of change. And that sentence illustrates the muddle in this year of endless Mondays. The change is a muddle to the people who have made a mess of things and a mess mindlessly threatening a logical transition for the rest of us. Both ends of the the social spectrum find communication nearly impossible and in the middle of the spectrum people are struggling to maintain hope with growing fear at the threat of violence on each end. In fear they grab at acquiescence to the government that has failed them because they see no alternative. And that is the route to authoritarian rule that will destroy us.
But, hey, are we learning lessons! That’s where clarity begins to offer hope. We’ve been building for this for the last fifty years but just didn’t know it. Actually we knew it but didn’t think it would ever be real. This is the war of good against evil that is stripping away our illusions of how far we have come on this planet. We even have an evil king and hordes of greedy minions who make no pretense of any goal except greed and power and the delivery of pain and death to those who don’t bow down. But evil minions include some of our neighbors, friends and family. And they have been blinded by a fear that is overwhelming for them so they can’t help themselves. And they turn against everyone but their own kind.
But the evil has wrapped around the old political battle lines forcing us all to stop and look at our societies in new ways. We have spent all of our energy on looking at the evil and forcing ourselves to call it what it is: racism, misogyny, greed, willful ignorance, power, and arbitrary punishment. It’s exhausting because we thought we were mostly above that. That battle is now. And it is a far bigger battle than we thought. It is the battle for this planet. We are seeing that now, too. England, France, the US, Canada, Mexico, Russia, China are changing into a new order. Everything is changing as it must. It is becoming clearer but far harder than we even thought.
The issues that are becoming clear are greed against life, hatred against respect, sustainability against exploitation, health against sickness, opportunity against denial, happiness against fear. For millennia these were only ideas and, occasionally, ideals. The life of our species went on with local success and failures without a thought for the planet. Only now the majority of us have begun to understand that that easy disregard is the end. We are destroying our planet as a home for ourselves and our related species. Not just us but everything like us. That is one hell of a burden. No wonder we have people acting like little kids that don’t want to grow up.
So things are becoming really clear. We don’t have the choice of the old local bad guys killing a few thousand or a million or two of “their” people (Oh well, they don’t know any better . . .). We now have to get way beyond where we have ever been in the past. The irony is that to save the planet we will have to think outside our little bubbles of greed and power. We need to become inclusive on a planetary scale and learn to control the evil of greed, hatred, power, and selfishness. Not because someone said that is good or because of some Neolithic myth but because our asses are on the line. Look at all the life like us by which we are surrounded. We are carrying their fate on our shoulders.
The forces of evil want you to deny everyone else. They must deny that there is any threat even though it is a full, scientific, reality. That is why they are reckless in destroying our future, denying knowledge and demanding everything be done on the basis of emotion. The forces of emotion are our weakness. Our future is rational, logical, evolutionary ethics, and action. The more people focus on our planet and the life dependent on us the faster the evil forces lose their power through hatred and greed. The irony is that by beginning to think on the planetary level the closer we will come, I’m absolutely convinced, to what we have always known we should be. A force for good in this universe. This is not a small battle but, damn, I think we can do it. The forces for evil are fewer and making a last desperate bid for control. So clarity of purpose is hope. Maybe we’ll get to Tuesday, yet.
