thoughts on the nature of evil

i think about evil a lot. the nature of it. why people do what they do. and even more interesting than that, how we respond to the evil acts of others.

it is easy to look at dictators such as Pol Pot and Hitler curse them as the embodiment of evil. to wave American flags and cheer at the news that Osama bin Laden was executed in his home. these acts of genocide were horrific and their masterminds did incredibly evil things. justice MUST be served, through a legal process court-mandating appropriate punishments (not renegade bounty hunting). but ultimately no justice will bring back what was lost. 

in Phnom Penh there are two genocide memorials to remember the millions of lives lost during the Khmer Rouge genocide. in both places there are books where visitors from all over the world can write responses. people repeatedly say over and over some version of "this was so horrible. i don't know how people can do something like that. i can't even imagine." understandable responses. 

but they feel a bit short-sighted. considering that human history is full of one story after another of oppression, destruction and genocide, maybe we owe it to those who have suffered and died as well as future generations to try to imagine. to seek to understand....

what is the nature of evil? where does it reside - within us or without? 

how and under what circumstances does evil find the ground to fester inside a person's heart and mind?  

what is the process that someone goes through to be so disconnected from their own humanity that evil is made manifest at their hands -- sometimes through seemingly random and other times highly calculated acts of violence -- even to the point of death? 

these answers are complex if not impossible to discover, but the implications for ourselves are critical to consider. i tend to agree with the Apostle Paul and Karl Jung that there is more shadow in us than we like to acknowledge. that we are a slippery mix of dark and light and every shade of gray. that the maxim "the things that most bother us in others are the things we don't like within ourselves" (what Freud originally termed projection) is very true. that denouncing the evil in others (though reasonable and justified) is also a functional distraction from seeing our own darkness, allowing us to keep at a distance the undesirable parts of ourselves that we can instead just see in others. 

over a year ago i went to hear a lecture by Kilong Ong, a survivor of the Khmer Rouge living in Portland. his moving personal story was preceeded by several talks about genocide, in which one professor introduced a new word to my vocabulary: emnification. 

emnification = enemy making. 

emnification is a process in which people are made into enemies. it starts with thinking of "others" as "us" versus "them." namely, those others are seen as "less than." that guy who cut you off in traffic was a mean self-centered jerk out to ruin your morning. whereas, when you almost missed your exit and cut someone off merging into the next lane you had a million reasons, and anyway - it was an accident. those reasons you afford yourself because you know you are only human, are not afforded to the other. and thus, the de-humanizing process begins. it starts with the jerk in traffic or the objectification of women and leads to racial segregation and gay violence and ends in genocide. not to say that if you curse someone in traffic that you're only a few steps away from mass murder. but it's the point: that cursing an other in your heart, cheering about the death of any human being (even mass murderers) is dehumanizing. To deny anyone of their God-given human dignity -- even if they have denied it of countless others -- is to fight with the same weapon. It is the seed from the same tree of evil. 

TO CREATE AN ENEMY ~ By Sam Keen

Start with an empty canvas

Sketch in broad outline the forms of men, women, and children.

Dip into the unconscious well of 

your own disowned darkness

with a wide brush and stain the strangers 

with the sinister hue of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed, 

hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as your own. 

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes, fears 

that play through the kaleidoscope of every finite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the 

downward arc of cruelty

Strip flesh from bone until only

the abstract skeleton of death remains. 

Exaggerate each feature until man is

metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant figures

from ancient nightmares -- devils, demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete

you will be able to kill without guilt, slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become merely an enemy of God, 

an impediment to the sacred dialectic of history. 

what would it look like to courageously push past our fear and hate and instead to embrace an understanding of ourselves and others as a mix of it all -- all broken beautiful bits of humanity. when that prideful stubborn story of "we are good" and "they are bad" softens, that's when light can come in. that's when there's room for God to show up and pour out grace and love. it's also when the world will be a lot safer.