…Been wondering about evil and wondering what it is. By that I mean I don’t think there is anything like an entity of such a thing. It’s the boogeyman story someone made up to scare the bad thoughts away, I think...or to at least explain them.
Certainly it was something like evil when that counselor Paul Wright and his passenger drove away from the scene without any regard for the life that was slipping away from that child. It was something without remorse or compassion that righted the wheel and pressed the accelerator as he drove on and later, tried to conceal the evidence of the impact on his car, later…right?
He’s visited her grave every year since. I wonder what he might be thinking as he drives away from that. I guess he’ll be taking cabs to his probation requirements now that the incommensurate judgment handed down included the revocation of his driving privileges. Will he still visit her grave,
I wonder? I guess since he poses no imminent threat to others they considered his crime was lesser than manslaughter… some other legal differentiation that denotes a lack of malice and forethought.
So, it would be wrong to kill someone like that, I suppose
That Crummel creature who went around CEDU and other youth homes in the company of his pedophile psychiatrist pal… His murder conviction was over turned and he went on to rape and kill more children when it was convenient for him to do so. We know he’s not legally crazy because of the whole concealment of crimes thing. Real crazy lacks a vested interest in self preservation, they say.
Anyway back to those “lesser evils”… On to those “this is for your own good”, evils. As it is evil when a troubled teen counselor leaves the body of someone’s little girl on the side of the road to die and it is also evil when counselors exploit their position and abuse the children under their care. Sometimes the weight of this evil crushes the kid and they call it a heart attack. Another time the rest of the group is permitted to sit in the shade of a tree while somebody’s son is speaking in tongues (a language they mistake for not the sound of his soul slipping away from his body) as he dies of heat stroke. Sometimes the evil is some self righteous bastard forcing pregnant girls to kneel on pencils and pray. Sometimes the evil is a director saying she knows nothing of the children under her care being subjected to sexualized humiliations in the guise of therapeutics…before adding that the costumes must have come from the children’s wardrobes. Sometimes the evil is tough love in the form of screaming invectives and even beating a child to death…That should read children, it happens a lot so… The evil can be similarly melodramatic psychos swaddling a child in blankets, pushing their oppressive intent to force this child to fight to be reborn, while ignoring her pleas to be allowed to breathe, as she suffocates beneath the pressure they apply to her. Evil is using pepper spray and zip ties on kids. Evil is using stress positions, excessive physically exhausting tasks (even when it falls short of the point of causing rhabdomyolysis and/or death), sleep deprivation and nutrition restriction and unnecessary unsafe restraint tactics on anyone. Idle hands they say something about idle hands and minds being the devil’s whatever… they say a lot. It seems like evil makes short work in the guise of being for the greater good in the long run. Evil is in there somewhere when these “care providers” decide to practice these methods or to simply turn away when others around them do. They turn a blind eye to it, so to speak.
Wondering where this is going? Me too, just pondering Evil, indifference, ethics, pathos and purpose and the pursuit of understanding…
Sometimes the evil permeates.
Isn’t that what that one particularly damaged by something troll is so stuck on playing at? Others explore that topic without re-enacting it and they develop some fascinating discussion that is illuminating. Then some petty evil interrupts because it can and delights in its power to disgust and be discussed…it interrupts with something that it’s sure will achieve this end by posting about having a child for sale. It doesn’t have that pain that comes from the reality of other people’s pain. It lacks empathy, sympathy… compassion and it exploits that. It’s not that complex, that one. Indifference, my ruminating will return to indifference shortly.
The Capitol Evil is the one that my thoughts are perseverating about, though. EVIL, The kind of evil that is predatory and won’t stop without an impediment.
I’m thinking of it not as an evil in the sense of some external spookiness to call upon the gods to shame them or beg of them about. It’s just that some (subsumed within that expansive category of evil) harm others and want to be free to do so again with impunity.
If someone knew of Crummel’s misdeeds on the day his conviction was overturned and was lead by their own conviction to end the story right there before the bastard could visit his sadism on more victims, even if they knew what would come next and that they don’t look good in orange and they don’t like jello…would it be evil of them to have done so?
What if it’s not a life for a life thing or at least not so cut and dried? Dr. Forgey raped his patients, but never beat or strangled one to death. How many died of the anguish he caused, though? Even one…would be plausible. If someone who knew of his crimes and understood enough about recidivism in sexual predators to know that the threat he posed would continue killed him before he ever made friends with his child murdering cohort would they be evil?
If they didn’t wouldn’t their indifference to the outcome of their inaction be an all together different kind of evil?
I guess some would say they have faith that ultimately something just will come from whatever comes next…and that while one might be tempted to hasten that ira deorum, it is not ours to meddle there.
Then I wonder how can they be so sure?
N’ sure it is a dark murky place to dwell and certainly others have returned with more heft in hand. Reading through Lance Morrow and revisiting some Thich Nhat Hanh has offered no resolution.
