I see good and evil. The good is beautiful, the evil ugly. (One knows it when one sees it?) Good is not the problem of course, but evil and the people that do it. A friend who doesn’t have this problem finds our whole species a sometimes entertaining mistake. But for me, seeing evil makes me angry and unavoidably sad. We humans are all deeply interconnected, in time and space with each other, the earth and all creation. To not see this is dumb. The human race could be a wonderful thing if there weren’t so many people, especially powerful people, doing dumb things.
Not all people doing dumb things are evil. They may simply be misguided, not aware of their own self-interest.
The evil ones are the rich and powerful who intentionally do harm to others as they seek what they mistakenly see as their self interest. They are selfish and dumb. As humankind has “conquered the world,” the powerful have monopolized the means of production of everything, including the way many of their victims think. That our political systems have bent to the rich and powerful makes evil – and it’s hard to avoid saying this – seem triumphant. As a boomer in his 8th decade – one who dreamed of changing the world, making it beautiful – this is deeply disappointing. This is my problem. And as I see it, also the problem of the American version of constitutional democracy left us by those Confounding Fathers.
