The atrocities of war and crime have followed humans through time. Evil is seemingly ubiquitous. It has followed our colonization of the planet.
Some, like William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, would argue that evil is an underlying character of humans. Others would argue that evil is the product of desire run amok and willful disdain for “Good.” Still others would argue that evil is an aberration, that humans are inherently good.
Whatever its source, evil has been with us and is here to stay. Generation after generation, we don’t learn. Maybe we can’t because evil comes in two forms: the instantaneous decision of one or a few acting out of unbridled emotion and the planned actions of the willful self-centeredness that has little or no compunction.
Evil doesn’t seem to hit us personally until it is a personal matter, until some act dramatizes it for us. So, few in the United States were aware of the slaughter in Rwanda in the 1990s. That evil occurred in a distant and backward land with little press coverage to personalize it for Americans. The evil in Syria and Iraq in the second decade of this century, however, has found a dramatization that personalizes it. I don’t need to go into the details because news coverage has been relatively thorough. What I do need to say is that evil is a set of fractals.
Whether or not evil is an individual and isolated event or a genocidal atrocity, it is the same. Like the pattern on the edges of leaves, the pattern of evil repeats itself. Evil has its own geometry, always repeating the shapes it takes regardless of time or place, and regardless of the radius of its encompassing reach. The murder of a co-ed, the bombing of a marathon, or the slaughter of a group: To paraphrase Dylan Thomas’s famous line about death, I would say, “After the first evil act there is no other.” The magnitude of an evil action against an individual is the total magnitude of evil. As all fractals do, the fractals of evil repeat, but just one of the repetitions is all that is necessary for an individual to suffer.
Some, like William Golding, author of Lord of the Flies, would argue that evil is an underlying character of humans. Others would argue that evil is the product of desire run amok and willful disdain for “Good.” Still others would argue that evil is an aberration, that humans are inherently good.
Whatever its source, evil has been with us and is here to stay. Generation after generation, we don’t learn. Maybe we can’t because evil comes in two forms: the instantaneous decision of one or a few acting out of unbridled emotion and the planned actions of the willful self-centeredness that has little or no compunction.
Evil doesn’t seem to hit us personally until it is a personal matter, until some act dramatizes it for us. So, few in the United States were aware of the slaughter in Rwanda in the 1990s. That evil occurred in a distant and backward land with little press coverage to personalize it for Americans. The evil in Syria and Iraq in the second decade of this century, however, has found a dramatization that personalizes it. I don’t need to go into the details because news coverage has been relatively thorough. What I do need to say is that evil is a set of fractals.
Whether or not evil is an individual and isolated event or a genocidal atrocity, it is the same. Like the pattern on the edges of leaves, the pattern of evil repeats itself. Evil has its own geometry, always repeating the shapes it takes regardless of time or place, and regardless of the radius of its encompassing reach. The murder of a co-ed, the bombing of a marathon, or the slaughter of a group: To paraphrase Dylan Thomas’s famous line about death, I would say, “After the first evil act there is no other.” The magnitude of an evil action against an individual is the total magnitude of evil. As all fractals do, the fractals of evil repeat, but just one of the repetitions is all that is necessary for an individual to suffer.
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