In 1997, a strategic planning group at the CIA made a visit to my company in Washington. They brought with them a woman whose job and title were classified. I was not allowed to know them. She communicated throughout the meeting that she held my work and me in utter disdain. Upon listening to my presentation on how small business and communities in America could be strengthened, she looked at me and sneered, “You know what your problem is? You don’t understand where evil comes from.”
She was right. Forced by circumstances — arranged, I suspect, by her colleagues back at Langley — I spent the years after meeting her in a concerted effort to understand where evil comes from. Yet, here I sit many years later still not having an answer to this profoundly important question. Where does evil come from?
Our economic problems are symptoms of a problem we have with evil. So if we want to address our economic problems, we have to deal with the root problem — the ascendancy of evil and its effective use of invisible weaponry, including financial weaponry
How do we navigate in a world where it is impossible to obtain the information we need to see our way clearly? If the mathematics of time and money can not help me understand phenomenon, then I try to navigate through common sense and the human heart. I view events through a spiritual prism, trying to live with uncertainty — to know what I don’t know and embrace this ambiguity with faith and grace.
This is why I have always enjoyed Jeff Wells’ blog Rigorous Intuition. Wells has a masterful way of dealing with some of the darkest and weirdest aspects of life on planet earth. Here is a man whose search for truth is without censorship. There is little urge to seek a shallow certainty. There is courage here.
Wells just published a new book, Rigorous Intuition: What You Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Them. If you want to contemplate real life outside of any bubble, this book is recommended. In a series of short essays drawing from his blog, Wells gives you many more questions than answers, some profound insights, delightful laughs and the pleasure of spending time with a fine writer.
Wells can not yet answer the question, “Where does evil come from?” Rather, he invites us to explore with him and helps us to stare into the abyss of evil and unknown with integrity and humor.
Angela,
I really enjoyed reading your post. A good antidote for all the other stuff I’m reading right now.
Thank you.
Regards,
Evan
It’s a slippery slope, this confrontation with the pit of evil. That’s why the shamans of old kept one foot squarely on the earth when descending into the abyss. The Masters of the Universe are currently (and openly) parading their all-knowing, omnipotent, and Malevolent Plan before us and having a feeding frenzy on the fear and sadness that it evokes in us. But we need to make a vow to ourselves to choose something else entirely, despite what we know.
There is still simple joy and praise to be had for the good medicine in wild roots, green plants and trees. Make compost and feed the precious 6 inch layer of topsoil and take the occasional break from the zapping of life force and creativity that this confrontation with psychopathy demands. Ultimately, the would-be godmen must each die mortal deaths, just like the rest of us. Hopefully, there is such a thing as the afterlife, Libra, Heaven, karma- what have you, to sort things out, but there won’t be alot of difference between the dead bones of the MOTU and our own in the end.
I think that a wonderful screenplay for a movie would be a peasants revolt, where all of these global haters would be rounded up by outraged “salt of the earth” types (aka useless eaters), who feed them a truth serum and make them speak the truth, instead of the manufactured dialectic they spew. Playground bullies cry like babies when attacked, but after years of programming and armouring, only a truth serum could unmask the pathetic, scared black hole of emptiness inside these people. Maybe we should pity those who seek to destroy us?
Man does not rule over evil except when he refuses to do it.
When he has truly done evil, he is its servant.
Hildegard of Bingen
Peaceout, and bless you Catherine,
Angela
From one of the books by Jungian analyst, James Hollis, a relevant quote from Jung.
“The spirit of evil is fear, negation, the adversary who opposes life in its struggle for eternal duration and thwarts every great deed, who infuses into the body the poison of weakness and age through the treacherous bite of the serpent; he is the spirit of regression, who threatens us with bondage to the mother and with dissolution and extinction in the unconscious. For the hero, fear is a challenge and a task, because only boldness can deliver from fear. And if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is somehow violated, and the whole future is condemned to hopeless staleness, to a drab grey lit only by will-o’-the-wisps.”
Hollis says that evil is what thwarts life, what blocks its purpose and intention. And the source of this evil is inescapable, for fear is ubiquitous. It is the bedrock of our common condition. After all, most of us have been told “the world is big and you are small. now deal with that.” While our vulnerability and our powerlessness may be mediated somewhat by supportive family and tribal mythos, or not, ultimately the world will break through our delusions and remind us of our powerlessness. Fear, then, is the enemy. Whenever fear is not made conscious, chances are very strong that the theology, the psychology, the politics will be fear-driven, fear-based, fear-compensating. From such origins much evil will arise, for as we have seen, even our most reasoned choices may serve something sinister.
To live in a world without imagination, I would die a figurative death. As John Lennon sang, in his popular song, Imagine:
[…]
You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world […]
Satan the devil is foremost source of evil… good will ultimately triumph over evil at the battle of Armageddon in the not too distant future. “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven (Jehovah) will set up a kingdom that will never be brought to ruin. And the kingdom itself will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite.” (Daniel 2:44)
Where does evil come from? I think this question can easily be misleading, but I cannot write much at the moment. However, I just wrote the following to a friend dealing in part with Greek Tragedies that I think is relevant at times to this problem: “This interview reminds me of a Greek Tragedy. In a Greek Tragedy, the pain and suffering do not stay simply within a family but spread like a plague to groups, apparently connected only indirectly with the original untoward deed, usually done by a leader belonging to a larger family of high position. The tragedy continues for generations, spreading from person to person, and group to group, like a contagious plague. There seems to be no rhyme or reason for the destruction, except a dark senseless fate that will not be stopped, set into motion by the original untoward deed.
(I believe these tragedies were really lessons warning that an apparently relatively minor transgression, especially when done by a leader, could put into motion events resulting in generations of misery. I don’t this know interpretation for sure, but I am beginning to wish I did.)
In the bible God says “the imagination of mankind is evil”. Evil comes from our imagination. So search to the depths of the bottomless pit of imagination and good will never be found. Only God is good and you can find that in the word of God.