My column in today's paper.
The Origin of Evil
As a child growing up on the cusp of the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, I still have a vivid memory of turning on the big console radio in our “front room” and tuning in to hear a male voice intoning the sinister words: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?” The answer of course was “The Shadow knows.” It was all we knew about evil in our childish innocence of that time, not having a live streaming of Adolf Hitler’s newest concentration camp during the Holocaust being piped though our television sets every evening.
The Origin of Evil
As a child growing up on the cusp of the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, I still have a vivid memory of turning on the big console radio in our “front room” and tuning in to hear a male voice intoning the sinister words: “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?” The answer of course was “The Shadow knows.” It was all we knew about evil in our childish innocence of that time, not having a live streaming of Adolf Hitler’s newest concentration camp during the Holocaust being piped though our television sets every evening.
The closest we came to understanding a presence of evil during those days of the Cold War was running out into the yard every time we heard an airplane, trying to read what insignia might be emblazoned on its fuselage, hoping it was not a Russian bomber, because we were having drills at school of ducking underneath our desks just in case we were attacked.
Now, thanks to the 24 hour streaming news on all our electronic devices some 65 years later, our children and grandchildren know where the real evil lurks. It is in the images of trucks being driven into large crowds of people, or bombs exploding during normal celebrations of American life, like marathons. This week it has been the images of the lifeless and bloodied bodies of babies and children being carried by weeping parents and grandparents from houses where Bashar Hafez al-Assad of Syria has sent his war planes to rain down horror and pain upon his own people.
It was one of my favorite writers, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who penned these words regarding the origin of evil: “If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
Solzhenitsyn was certainly an authority on evil, having been a prisoner in the Gulag, the Soviet prison system, for many years. And the profound truth he expressed in his writings still holds true today. All of us are capable of committing horrendous acts of evil. It is only through the example of our parents and familial support system, the teaching of our religious institutions and our educational system, along with civilization itself and yes, our own consciences, that instead we commit “random acts of kindness” (as described in Thursday’s Jacket edition of this newspaper in the excellent article written by LHS student, Tyra Rogers.)
Dr. Martha Stout wrote in her book “The Sociopath Next Door” the following: “Imagine not having a conscience, no feelings of guilt or remorse no matter what you do, no limiting sense of concern for the well-being of strangers, friends, or even family members. Imagine no struggles with shame, no matter what kind of selfish, lazy, harmful, or immoral action you had taken.”
“You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience, that they seldom even guess at your condition.”
“And pretend that the concept of responsibility is unknown to you, except as a burden others seem to accept without question, like gullible fools.”
“Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs. Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.”
“You can do anything at all, and still your strange advantage over the majority of people, who are kept in line by their consciences will most likely remain undiscovered.”
“In other words, you are completely free of internal restraints, and your unhampered liberty to do just as you please, with no pangs of conscience, is conveniently invisible to the world.”
We call people like this sociopaths, but in reality they are people who have allowed the possibility of evil in their personality to become a certainty, and take over their hearts and lives and emotions to the extent they can become a Hitler, or an al-Assad, or a Saddam Hussein, or even the monster in our own midst who brutally and sadistically murdered Johnnie and Colleen Wilson in 2010 right here in our own backyard near Bennett Spring.
The word “conscience” comes from the Greek “suneidesis”, meaning to have knowledge with oneself, or inherent knowledge. But do all of us have a conscience? That will give you something on which to ponder this week as you watch the news.
Two notes from columnist: First, the book passage I have quoted above has been truncated, but not changed in content, in order to accommodate my space. Second, I want to correct a name which appeared in my Wednesday column on Susan Rice. I inadvertently wrote the Benghazi Ambassador’s name as David Stephenson. The correct name was Christopher Stevens.
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