The Roots of the Tree of Evil
The roots of evil are often talked about. I don't know why people are so fascinated by it, maybe it's the secret hope that if we can subjugate evil as a dysfunction or a condition that we can merely diagnose ourselves as healthy and assume we are higher moral beings.
If one of my neighbours committed a terrible crime tomorrow and I was asked by CTV, CityTV, CBC, or CFRB why they did the things they did I'd probably say, it's not surprising.
This would instantly be construed by the media and anyone reading this now that I have some seriously mentally ill neighbours, or I am myself dillusional. I don't believe in evil such as it is, a dark force that pervades our universe like gravity and occasional exerts its force and causes someone to lash out and kill someone.
Before I continue I'm going to talk about something that you'll only understand if you play video games. In recent years there has been a deluge of video games dedicated to the idea of an individual's struggle with good and evil. For example, Fable, the principle character, whom you play has to carry out a series of tasks, in them you make choices which are predetermined to have good or evil associated with them. An example of this is that you can be paid to exterminate sparrows for a grounds keeper, the act of killing innocent life is viewed as evil and you become more evil. As is the act of abandoning the sick and weak or attacking civilians. The good choices are obvious so we'll move on.
If we look at humanity on one of these good-evil nexuses it's my opinion that the average (if not all humans) fall within the slightly evil category. I think it's part of life and that the struggle for survival comes at the expense of all others in the end when necessary.
One of my mom's top ten favourite expressions is that "Money is the root of evil." To me this makes about as much sense as "Guns kill people." No they don't, and no it isn't. People kill people using guns, and people invented money and now to get more are willing to be cruel and exploitive. What a shocker.
People just seem naturally bad and cruel. It could be my perception, but the fact that we horde what little decency we have just for the fact that it's too time consuming is a good piece of proof about our true nature. It seems to me that given the choice between good and evil, evil is usually the easier route and therefore the one most often picked by a lazy and apathetic society.
If one of my neighbours committed a terrible crime tomorrow and I was asked by CTV, CityTV, CBC, or CFRB why they did the things they did I'd probably say, it's not surprising.
This would instantly be construed by the media and anyone reading this now that I have some seriously mentally ill neighbours, or I am myself dillusional. I don't believe in evil such as it is, a dark force that pervades our universe like gravity and occasional exerts its force and causes someone to lash out and kill someone.
Before I continue I'm going to talk about something that you'll only understand if you play video games. In recent years there has been a deluge of video games dedicated to the idea of an individual's struggle with good and evil. For example, Fable, the principle character, whom you play has to carry out a series of tasks, in them you make choices which are predetermined to have good or evil associated with them. An example of this is that you can be paid to exterminate sparrows for a grounds keeper, the act of killing innocent life is viewed as evil and you become more evil. As is the act of abandoning the sick and weak or attacking civilians. The good choices are obvious so we'll move on.
If we look at humanity on one of these good-evil nexuses it's my opinion that the average (if not all humans) fall within the slightly evil category. I think it's part of life and that the struggle for survival comes at the expense of all others in the end when necessary.
One of my mom's top ten favourite expressions is that "Money is the root of evil." To me this makes about as much sense as "Guns kill people." No they don't, and no it isn't. People kill people using guns, and people invented money and now to get more are willing to be cruel and exploitive. What a shocker.
People just seem naturally bad and cruel. It could be my perception, but the fact that we horde what little decency we have just for the fact that it's too time consuming is a good piece of proof about our true nature. It seems to me that given the choice between good and evil, evil is usually the easier route and therefore the one most often picked by a lazy and apathetic society.