Good and Evil
I’ve lied to you. I’m sorry to say that but it’s true. I don’t want to talk about good at all. I only want to talk about evil. And I didn’t want to call this “What is Evil” because I care about your mental health.
Who has the authority to speak about evil? Catholic priests? Exorcists? Unitarians…? Probably those who have experienced evil have the authority to speak on it, though I feel that it is a difficult topic, for more than one reason.
Is evil a lack of conscience, and a lack of empathy? Is it a soullessness and curdled envy for those who have souls? It’s not something I can qualify or quantify or provide empirical evidence about.
But I’m sure we can agree about some things when it comes to evil: Those who gain pleasure from harming others are evil. Can we at least agree on that? And further, those whose primary aim in life, their passion, if you will, is to cause harm to others in order to be gratified, those people are absolutely evil. Except those people are maybe capable of being good and decent at times, isn’t that also possible? Sometimes serial killers have kids and isn’t it possible they love their kids? Who cares? Maybe their kids care. Watch “Evil Lives Here” you will see what I mean.
What about people who are evil-adjacent? Say a good man is forced by a cartel to help them, or else his family might be harmed. He doesn’t want to, but he’s enabling evil.
It's hard to talk about evil without referencing Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil” idea. She was a German philosopher who created this phrase (banal means boring, obvious, by the way) when talking about the trials of Adolph Eichmann, the (purportedly) petty bureaucrat who ran the train systems during the Holocaust- the running of the trains to the death camps. The Germans who worked at these stations maybe also had no choice, but Arendt’s theory says that the banality of evil exists because of basically laziness, thoughtlessness, an inability to see the perspective of others, and the tendency to follow orders without thinking.
And then there’s real estate agents. And I’m not comparing them to Nazis or cartels or The Mafia, but I wanted to introduce them because that’s what I have immediate experience with. I would say that in some instances, agents are people who are not intending to cause harm to others, but but some gain pleasure from causing harm. In the Bay Area, when you win a deal, someone else loses, and that causes harm to the other agent and sometimes to the other clients. And certainly, that is not the main goal for the agents I know, so I would not classify them as “absolute evil”.
To help me assess and convey the nature of agents I have encountered, I created an evil scale. It’s from 1 to 10, with 1 being the least evil and 10 being the evilest. So, the agent who inspired me to create this system I would put at a 7 on the evil scale. And I would submit to you that you can’t be a zero as an agent, that you must be capable of some evil or you will not survive as an agent. If you win and you win for your clients you should be happy. Why wouldn’t you be happy? But you are also causing harm to others. How to deal with this conflict? It’s a conundrum.
I’m not here to answer these difficult questions for you, or to argue with you. I’m simply here to offer you this tool: the evil scale. Try it on yourself, try it on others and see what you think. Are we all capable of evil? Do we go up and down on the scale? Would you say that it’s evil to do to others what they have done to you? I’m not asking from a religious standpoint. Just presenting you will a problem and a tool to help you solve the problem for yourself. I know where I am on the scale, but I’ll let you pick your own number.
Protect the Content of YourMind
This is a letter to myself and to anybody else who might find it useful or helpful.
Now is the time, more than ever, to protect the content of your mind. You can choose what you think and what you feel. It’s not good enough to be led along, manipulated, enraged, and lied to in the process of mindlessly consuming content. If you do not decide what you want to experience in this world, it will be decided for you.
We all have plastic brains, meaning we can change the way our brains are wired, intentionally and unintentionally. We impact one another just being together. When we talk to others, when we read something, when we go into the world or interact on a subreddit, we are altered, so it’s very important to be aware of how we feel as a consequence of our interactions.
For example, I was in a group therapy session for people who have experienced trauma, and people who have PTSD, anxiety, depression, and other conditions. Some were HIV+, and some had cancer. Some were hoarders, some had weight problems, and some had trouble leaving the house. Some had an abusive parent, child, or partner. Many had a combination of these. It was a very supportive environment but at one point, I started doing goal setting and sharing my progress with the group. I had a creative goal, a fitness goal, and a financial goal. It was common that I had little progress towards my goals to report, but it was still important to me to set goals and to be working towards something. One day, I expressed to the group that I was frustrated in terms of not making progress towards my fitness goal. The group rushed to console me, telling me that I was fine and that I didn’t need to reach my goal. I immediately quit the group. Even though they all had the best intentions in trying to comfort me, I thought it was destructive to be in a therapy group where people encouraged me to give up working towards my goals. I also felt that they were not working towards goals and that by sharing everything that wasn’t working or that was difficult in their lives, that they were probably reinforcing that they would continue to have trouble.
This recounting is not entirely accurate- there were people who would report on the positive steps they had taken. But too often, I felt that others participants in the group were allowed to focus on the negative: what was wrong, what wasn’t working, what was upsetting. I felt that it was the fault of the group leader, and that perhaps she had come to rely on the group herself, and that she enjoyed wallowing in everybody’s self-pity. I don’t think that is healthy. I wonder too, when is it that individual therapy stops being healthy and is more about the therapist making the client dependent on them? It seems like a great therapist should be able to work towards goals of recovery and independence with their clients, and not allow their minds to constantly ruminate about everything that has hurt and is still hurting the client. Whatever we think about, we will continue to think about.
Here are some things you can do to protect the content of your mind:
Disengage from relationships in which you continually feel bad
Turn off your devices and go into nature
Sleep enough
Eat healthy food
Exercise
Meditate
Limit your exposure to news sites, including news on social media
Limit your exposure to social media, especially if it upsets you
Be careful about the movies and shows you watch- know that the content will not upset you
Girl, Stop Dating Losers
Girl, stop dating losers.
You know better. You know you deserve better.
It’s easier said than done. And I can write until my hands fall off about how you should believe something or do something different than what you are doing, and you can agree with it until your eyes fall out of your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to become a part of you. It needs to become something internal to you, not something you read, or chant, or pretend that you already have, or something you wish for.
The truth is, when you are looking at (past/present/future Mx. Loser) you already know it yourself. You know they are a loser. You know you should want better for yourself. So why do you keep sabotaging yourself? Do you feel like you deserve better? If not, how do you change into somebody who knows they deserve better and acts in alignment with that belief?
Are you trying to help them? Do you feel your life would work better if they could just quit drinking or watching porn or smoking so much weed? What if they could just spend more time with you instead of always hanging out with their friends or that person from work they’re “just friends” with? What if they tried to get a better job or any job? What if they wanted better for themself? Are you so kind to be caring about their abusive ass? Girl, why are you so focused on them? They are a loser. How do I know? You’re reading this, aren’t you?
Maybe you love them. You love them and you know they can be better. You know they just need support and that’s what relationships are about. That’s what love is about. You need to be there for them and support them until they get out of this funk or whatever their issue is because you’re that kind of selfless, giving, nurturing person. Maybe if you quit your job and stop talking to every single person in your life other than them, maybe if you put all your free time and all your creativity and all your generous spirit and all your loving life force into this person then they will realize their potential. Maybe then they will be able to be there for you and start meeting some of your needs. Wrong. Once you have given them their life back, you’ll be a hollow shell of a person and they will leave you because you have nothing left to offer. But that’s the future we’re talking about. In the present, how are they going to meet your needs if they are:
*in jail
*always putting you down
*with their other girl/lady/man/wife/etc
*always at work
*never at work
*on drugs
*always watching porn
*incapable of empathy
*a liar
*takes you for granted
*is abusing you
*is neglecting you
*_________________add your own examples!
Stop Being So Nice
Why are you so nice? Is it because you want something? Is it because you are expecting something in return? Is it because you’re afraid they will leave you if you don’t let them keep taking advantage of you? Is it because you were abused in your childhood? If so, join the club. Some of us fawn because we’re afraid to stand up for ourselves. Some of us are just acting nice because we really want to get something from the other person. Guess what, both suck. Stop being so nice. How is being nice going to get you what you want, really? Do you think nice people want somebody nice? Do you want somebody actually nice? Or do you think nice people are losers too? Maybe nice people don’t turn you on. Or maybe the nice people are just trying to control you. Hard to say. But guess what, if you’re nice, it hasn’t worked for you!
I’m not saying you have to be a bitch or a bad person and I’m not glorifying sociopaths at all. I’m glad you’re a nice person and I want to help you to make the world a better place by having a healthy relationship and radiating happiness into the world through your great example.
Oh, and of course, I’m talking to myself. When will I change for good?