One of the hardest things that I've had to come to terms with is realizing and accepting that there really is such a thing as pure evil. Because of my natural revulsion for phony organized religions I've always chalked up the idea of evil beings to being part of the mythology that so saturates the planet. But I've come to realize that evil is a reality, it does exist, whatever "it" is, and that it's first order of business was to construct a cover so that it could operate freely, and that cover took the form of religion. It takes many other forms too, and in the same way uses them to give itself the appearance of being good, and upright and noble and even arrogantly extra special. In this way evil has perpetrated governments, science, health care, entertainment, technology and even love.
The net effect of this realization is that I've become very grumpy and impatient with stupidity. Sometimes I'm gripped with hopelessness and feel there's no point in even trying to help peel the film away from people's eyes. When I can look at something without the burden of having been propagandized about it, I am able to see what's right in front of me, and I can see it for what it is, while all around me people can only see something that's not there. They see what they've been told is there, and they think I'm the one who's out of the loop. Don't ask them to prove what they're saying, it gets them very cranky.
Don't laugh, 100% of us are operating under any number of illusions about the world and every day life, and while not everyone is fooled or tainted by propaganda and lies, the vast majority of us are. Many people are completely unable to see what's right in front of their faces because they've been indoctrinated, trained, to see it as something it isn't. To see it as something else and to excuse the obvious downsides in the name of it eventually bringing about better things. Or they allow terrible things to be done in the name of some goodness or rightness, which is nothing but pure evil cloaked in the disguise of "good". Either way, the truth and fact is that it's causing horrible things to happen. If something is destructive to life today, it won't make it okay in 50 years from now. Just ask whoever's lives were ruined in the process and see how they feel about it.
We're living in a time when we routinely decide that destruction to some others is fine, as long as we get something out of it for ourselves. This is the old "end justifies the means" way of thinking. It's a philosophy that is founded on the notion that we're all in this for ourselves and that whatever we want, we should just take, without regard to whoever we may be hurting along the way. It's a belief in crime as a normal routine. Stealing what you want from whoever happens to have it, or has the obvious rights to it. And if you can't steal it easily, or they're giving you too much resistance you just kill them and be done with it. This is what is at the foundation of everything we call progress.
People always have to die in the name of progress. People die in the name of peace. People die in the name of freedom, democracy, and science. It becomes a macabre fact that progress seems to need human blood to survive, and peace needs war in order to remain elusive, something to strive for. We are always creating a current day hell of some sort in the aim of better tomorrows, but those better tomorrows never come because we're again creating current day hells for another set of better tomorrows.
It's true that along the way better today's come, but consistently they come only for a handful of people. Always the very people who are so gung ho about doing those things that make the world a living hell for so many others. They profit profoundly and immediately and stay very quiet about it. They are the same ones who tell the rest of us to tighten our belts because times are tough, when they themselves don't have to tighten anything, and they themselves have never tasted a hard time.
People in Africa are enslaved, tortured, abused and killed so that American princess brides can have a see through rock on their fingers on their wedding day. We don't want to know that people sweated and bled and starved and were oppressed so that we could be sold that rock. We just don't want to know. We don't want to know the human costs of anything we have in our lives that gives us any amount of pleasure. We like our cheapo deluxe big box stores and we don't care that literal slave labor created our appliances and clothing. We say, "I can't afford to shop anywhere else." Tell that to the slaves who created it for you. I'm sure they'll understand.
It NEVER occurs to us that we should just go without these things then. It never occurs to us to look at the reasons this situation exists and address them instead of forcing others to suffer so we can "afford" our desires. But going without the latest yard furniture, big screen TV's or imported toys is beyond the asking of we freedom and equality minded Americans. We feel we work so hard for so little that if it means slaves are living tortured lives to build our little products, then they must pay the price for our happiness. We just deserve that.
No wonder "they" don't like us much. We're no better than our own so called elites, who have no more consideration for us or our suffering than we have for the third worlders who live in poverty and oppression so we can shop at Walmart and feel good about the impression we put out for others to see. I'm growing to not like us much either because I'm witnessing the real trickle down theory in action. It's not the wealth of the elites that's trickling into our lives, it's their callous disregard for the lives of others as they single-mindedly pursue their goals of getting ever more for themselves.
Their philosophy of self has poisoned our entertainment, news and media, setting examples we immediately follow to become just like they are. Shallow, small minded, greedy and selfish. Deep thought or serious conversation never crosses our minds. In fact, we hate that sort of thing. It disturbs our pleasant obsession with ourselves. We have come to believe that being "good" means being just like they are. We have come to believe that evil is good.
Their desire to have us go commit violence so that they may profit has saturated all of our minds so deeply that we think of war as noble and good and necessary. We even tell ourselves that our God gives us a wink and a nod when we travel 8,000 miles to a foreign shore and set about mass murdering simple people who have never threatened us, much less harmed us. Even the God that created us all thinks we should be self obsessed and unconcerned with the welfare of others. It takes imperial hubris to be dismissive of other human beings just because they are not "us". It takes imperial hubris to make nuclear warheads, and nuclear power plants that produce waste so toxic and so deadly for thousands of years that it cannot be dealt with and will kill anyone who is exposed to it.
It takes not giving a good God damn who lives or dies just so that we can be comfy and have all our goodies and lifestyle. It takes being able to look at other human beings and tell ourselves they don't count, or even that they're not human. Well it seems that whenever men claim that some other people aren't human to justify their aggression and enslavement of those people, they're always human enough to be used for sex. Well gentlemen, are they human or aren't they? Or are you just into bestiality?
Sure, they're up for bestiality but that's just the tip of the iceberg because for people who don't care about hurting anyone else to get their own little rocks off, bestiality is the least of it. The lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, destruction, pollution, oppression, control, violence, murder, propagandizing and cruel punishment for refusing to go along with the "Me me me" plan of action, has permeated our entire culture to the point that we can't even stand looking at each other. We don't talk to each other, we fear each other, just like the "elites" fear us. They expect to be bodily dismembered in an angry crowd's rebellion for all the wrong they've perpetrated on us, and we expect everyone we lay eyes on to be a threat to us.
We're the shameless bastard offspring of the imperial mindset, whether we want to face it or not. We support every last one of the crimes they commit in the third world and the crimes they commit on us right here at home. We always support the biggest brute. Our police state exists to support it's own brutality. Their racism is our racism. Their intolerance is our intolerance. Their paranoia is our paranoia. But we all have three TV sets in our homes and two cars in our garages, and because they want us to see that as a wonderful prize that matters above all else, it does. If that's not pure evil I don't know what is.
The net effect of this realization is that I've become very grumpy and impatient with stupidity. Sometimes I'm gripped with hopelessness and feel there's no point in even trying to help peel the film away from people's eyes. When I can look at something without the burden of having been propagandized about it, I am able to see what's right in front of me, and I can see it for what it is, while all around me people can only see something that's not there. They see what they've been told is there, and they think I'm the one who's out of the loop. Don't ask them to prove what they're saying, it gets them very cranky.
Don't laugh, 100% of us are operating under any number of illusions about the world and every day life, and while not everyone is fooled or tainted by propaganda and lies, the vast majority of us are. Many people are completely unable to see what's right in front of their faces because they've been indoctrinated, trained, to see it as something it isn't. To see it as something else and to excuse the obvious downsides in the name of it eventually bringing about better things. Or they allow terrible things to be done in the name of some goodness or rightness, which is nothing but pure evil cloaked in the disguise of "good". Either way, the truth and fact is that it's causing horrible things to happen. If something is destructive to life today, it won't make it okay in 50 years from now. Just ask whoever's lives were ruined in the process and see how they feel about it.
We're living in a time when we routinely decide that destruction to some others is fine, as long as we get something out of it for ourselves. This is the old "end justifies the means" way of thinking. It's a philosophy that is founded on the notion that we're all in this for ourselves and that whatever we want, we should just take, without regard to whoever we may be hurting along the way. It's a belief in crime as a normal routine. Stealing what you want from whoever happens to have it, or has the obvious rights to it. And if you can't steal it easily, or they're giving you too much resistance you just kill them and be done with it. This is what is at the foundation of everything we call progress.
People always have to die in the name of progress. People die in the name of peace. People die in the name of freedom, democracy, and science. It becomes a macabre fact that progress seems to need human blood to survive, and peace needs war in order to remain elusive, something to strive for. We are always creating a current day hell of some sort in the aim of better tomorrows, but those better tomorrows never come because we're again creating current day hells for another set of better tomorrows.
It's true that along the way better today's come, but consistently they come only for a handful of people. Always the very people who are so gung ho about doing those things that make the world a living hell for so many others. They profit profoundly and immediately and stay very quiet about it. They are the same ones who tell the rest of us to tighten our belts because times are tough, when they themselves don't have to tighten anything, and they themselves have never tasted a hard time.
People in Africa are enslaved, tortured, abused and killed so that American princess brides can have a see through rock on their fingers on their wedding day. We don't want to know that people sweated and bled and starved and were oppressed so that we could be sold that rock. We just don't want to know. We don't want to know the human costs of anything we have in our lives that gives us any amount of pleasure. We like our cheapo deluxe big box stores and we don't care that literal slave labor created our appliances and clothing. We say, "I can't afford to shop anywhere else." Tell that to the slaves who created it for you. I'm sure they'll understand.
It NEVER occurs to us that we should just go without these things then. It never occurs to us to look at the reasons this situation exists and address them instead of forcing others to suffer so we can "afford" our desires. But going without the latest yard furniture, big screen TV's or imported toys is beyond the asking of we freedom and equality minded Americans. We feel we work so hard for so little that if it means slaves are living tortured lives to build our little products, then they must pay the price for our happiness. We just deserve that.
No wonder "they" don't like us much. We're no better than our own so called elites, who have no more consideration for us or our suffering than we have for the third worlders who live in poverty and oppression so we can shop at Walmart and feel good about the impression we put out for others to see. I'm growing to not like us much either because I'm witnessing the real trickle down theory in action. It's not the wealth of the elites that's trickling into our lives, it's their callous disregard for the lives of others as they single-mindedly pursue their goals of getting ever more for themselves.
Their philosophy of self has poisoned our entertainment, news and media, setting examples we immediately follow to become just like they are. Shallow, small minded, greedy and selfish. Deep thought or serious conversation never crosses our minds. In fact, we hate that sort of thing. It disturbs our pleasant obsession with ourselves. We have come to believe that being "good" means being just like they are. We have come to believe that evil is good.
Their desire to have us go commit violence so that they may profit has saturated all of our minds so deeply that we think of war as noble and good and necessary. We even tell ourselves that our God gives us a wink and a nod when we travel 8,000 miles to a foreign shore and set about mass murdering simple people who have never threatened us, much less harmed us. Even the God that created us all thinks we should be self obsessed and unconcerned with the welfare of others. It takes imperial hubris to be dismissive of other human beings just because they are not "us". It takes imperial hubris to make nuclear warheads, and nuclear power plants that produce waste so toxic and so deadly for thousands of years that it cannot be dealt with and will kill anyone who is exposed to it.
It takes not giving a good God damn who lives or dies just so that we can be comfy and have all our goodies and lifestyle. It takes being able to look at other human beings and tell ourselves they don't count, or even that they're not human. Well it seems that whenever men claim that some other people aren't human to justify their aggression and enslavement of those people, they're always human enough to be used for sex. Well gentlemen, are they human or aren't they? Or are you just into bestiality?
Sure, they're up for bestiality but that's just the tip of the iceberg because for people who don't care about hurting anyone else to get their own little rocks off, bestiality is the least of it. The lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, destruction, pollution, oppression, control, violence, murder, propagandizing and cruel punishment for refusing to go along with the "Me me me" plan of action, has permeated our entire culture to the point that we can't even stand looking at each other. We don't talk to each other, we fear each other, just like the "elites" fear us. They expect to be bodily dismembered in an angry crowd's rebellion for all the wrong they've perpetrated on us, and we expect everyone we lay eyes on to be a threat to us.
We're the shameless bastard offspring of the imperial mindset, whether we want to face it or not. We support every last one of the crimes they commit in the third world and the crimes they commit on us right here at home. We always support the biggest brute. Our police state exists to support it's own brutality. Their racism is our racism. Their intolerance is our intolerance. Their paranoia is our paranoia. But we all have three TV sets in our homes and two cars in our garages, and because they want us to see that as a wonderful prize that matters above all else, it does. If that's not pure evil I don't know what is.
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Amen. Excellent writing. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteTrue, indeed, 'evil' is real…possessing an insatiable appetite, it wants to consume everything that is good, destroying truth. By what i see in its purpose there is no sign that it's program to stop at any point permanently—a perpetual machine, if you will. A machine bent on devouring to the point of devouring itself in the end.
ReplyDeleteIts everywhere, or should i say pervasive; as you said, "…evil has perpetrated governments, science, health care, entertainment, technology and even love."
(but Ang i don't understand how 'love' can be evil—it seems, once love becomes corrupted by evil, love seizes to be love and by then it becomes something else. Moreover, in speaking of the essence love, i would say it might be a wonderful antidote against the tyranny of evil.)
…continuing,
So evil crept into our institutions and our good life; seducing the weak willed ones that were completely lacking conscience…and yes, these lovelies were clever and crafty.
Now, aren't we endlessly thankful for their creation of these popular devices?: The Federal Reserve Bank, The Military Industrial Complex, Foreign Trade Agreements…etc. and so on…Oh! who can fail to mention the FDA and of course the mega-hit 'Illegal Immigration'(its really an invasion, at the very least, state sanctioned migration.), (i won't mention the security and intelligence and taxation apparatuses—their very shy and sensitive.) So all-in-all:
Isn't social engineering fun?
But what is it all for?
Seemingly even if when there's nothing more to devour, evil will have turn on its own to devour some more, it has to because it has only one purpose…let's say the elitist did succeed with their new world order, complete with all the trappings they envisioned (of course we'll still be around as their happy slaves)—Utopia! So then, at this time will their famous lust for more power and wealth die? Do you suppose evil will disappear then? Will the world of the elite be in perfect harmony? Will the elite shed evil? i don't think so! The elite are humans after all—there's always potential for evil with humans. And besides evil will always be with evil people. But evil has to always feed on something, remember it's a perpetual machine; in the end, they (the elitist) will struggle amongst themselves, until they themselves annihilate each other. Ops!
The New World Order perhaps really means "lead to destruction".
Evil is a dead end.
great blog, ang.
ciao!
After all, how can one know good without evil…
ReplyDeleteyou're bright and organized and you write long polemics. Me too. Never think that you are a voice crying in the wilderness because even the wilderness is filled with eyes.
ReplyDeleteAng, THANK YOU for your beautiful and well said thesis on the banality of evil! THANK YOU!!! I feel somewhat vindicated for my "choices" in life. I have refused to support this presnt system BECAUSE of the inherent evil I see in it. Your voice is one that needs to be heard over and over. Peace on you :)
ReplyDelete