PP #38: Does True Evil Exist?

Project: Pioneer #38, June 9, 2024 Sunday 9am

The traumatic experience I wrote about in my last post had caused me to take a beat, so this one is a bit late. This will be a longer post, a bit outside my usual format, but it’s deep in the topics of good, evil, religion, spirituality, and suicide. This is more of an essay than a journal post, but it’s very important. Let me take you all to church on this Sunday!

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When things aren’t going well, it’s easy to become focused on setbacks and fall into the FML mentality. (That’s “F My Life” for those not hip to the latest acronyms on social media). That’s human nature, it’s how we’re wired mentally, psychologically. It’s hard to defeat, especially, at least in my experience, and good things and bad things seem to come in waves.

I talked about always looking forward to the weekends, even though in this pioneer life we’ve chosen, our peaceful weekdays end as the weekend campers arrive ready to cut loose. The experience I had last week at the court and county jail, documented in post #37, was a real setback mentally for me. It took me to a long-ago dark place, and the experience has been hard to shake, even after a week has passed.

I looked forward to this weekend, some relaxing time with Giavana, some outdoor live music, perhaps time at our beach, to shake it off. Friday arrived, and Giavana had to make a Florence Nightingale run that afternoon. She called a while later, saying she had a blowout and was on the side of a rural road, over the state line. I hopped into our trusty pickup Henrik and asked her to use Google Maps to send her location. She called again and said a weird guy had stopped to “help” and was freaking her out. We can’t carry our firearms across state lines, unfortunately.

I received her location ping and of course, the technology let me down when I needed it most. I encountered a bug between Android Auto and Google Maps that wouldn’t let me navigate to her, and was trying to resolve that and not wreck while racing to reach her in Friday rush-hour traffic. Yes, this stuff happens on Apple as well, and for twice the cost.

We used to get at least get a horrible donut tire with our cars, a big cost savings over a regular spare for the massively profitable, bailed-out-by-taxpayers-constantly auto industry. Now, we don’t even get that. No spare, no donut. I managed to get the tire to a drivable state with some fix-a-flat and the air compressor. Remember my recent discussions about having a portable jump-starter/inverter/air compressor in your vehicle at all times? They’re a savior in times like this.

That meant a new project—tires for the Gia-mobile. I spent much of Saturday morning on that. I pulled out my big tub of tools (one of those now-ubiquitous big black plastic storage bins with the yellow lid) and found it filled with water, some electronic stuff floating around, rust covering a bunch of stuff. Somehow, with the constant deluges of recent rain, it had been compromised, even with the lid on and covered by a tarp. That meant another new project—pull everything out and try to dry out and save what I could. Our small RV site yard and picnic table now covered with the mess of various rusted, wet tools to dry in the sun.

In the late afternoon I decided to head to the free evening outdoor concert nearby in our Ranger pickup named Henrik. As I sat at a red light on a busy road in traffic, there was a bang and I was jerked forward violently. Four-ways on, dismount to find out what the F is happening now.

The young black kids in tuxes and gowns in the now smashed car behind me looked wide-eyed at this scraggle-haired Rayban-wearing redneck-looking old white dude in camo getting out of a pickup truck and coming at them with what was probably not a friendly look on his face. I motioned to roll down the window, a gesture I know well from being on the other side of that glass and a cop on the outside.

His old Camry took a pretty bad hit, grill bashed in by Henrik’s tow hitch receiver, his trim hanging off underneath his headlights. Henrik had a little scratching, but seemed OK otherwise. The kid was upset, other drivers were upset at us clogging up this major artery in front of a huge entertainment complex. Hell, I was upset. What now?

I made sure my backup camera still worked, then crawled around under the truck to look for damage, checked under his car to make sure he wasn’t leaking anything, then took photos of his insurance card, plates, etc and told him to pay attention to the road, not his phone, and enjoy his prom. He looked pretty shocked, and relieved.

When I left to head home later that night, I discovered I must have dropped my regular glasses on the road when crawling around under the truck, and now those are gone and a new project to get an overdue eye exam and replace them. No good deed goes unpunished, it seems sometimes.

Breaking glasses (eyewear) for some reason has always been a triggering trauma for me. As a kid, my eyesight was incredibly bad. Coke-bottle glasses, getting picked on, glasses broken in fights or sports was very upsetting. It meant blindness to me. It meant a financial burden on my struggling parents. Still, whenever I see eyewear broken in movie scenes or in real life, it triggers me. I get very upset thinking my glasses are out there on that road, smashed and being run over again and again by vehicles. If I knew that puppy that the SD governor shot in the head for being a puppy, (and wrote about to impress Trump for a possible VP slot) had been wearing glasses, I’d be tempted to hunt her down and have a word. It’s tempting anyway, because she did what she did and bragged about it. Pure evil, as is our topic in this post.

I had a bit of a mental break in the midst of all this (and more), so now Giavana isn’t talking to me. Sometimes, everything is too much. I need to get back to and focus on the Buddhism and mindfulness to better deal with these waves of misfortune.

So, why all this whining prologue? What does this have to do with evil? While listening to the music (an excellent nine-piece band) last night, I tried to rationalize.

One theory, as I mentioned, is that when bad stuff starts happening, we naturally become focused on it, not acknowledging the good that happens or things we have to be thankful for, and it feels like all there is. FML and all that. We want pity, we want someone to tell us it’ll be OK when we’re losing hope and down and out.

Another theory is that now that I’ve embraced goodness, and trying to fight against the evil that’s sweeping our world today, perhaps I’m in the crosshairs of that Old Testament evil. Perhaps it is a thing, perhaps there is a Satanic evil spiritual force, just as I believe there is a spiritual force of goodness. If so, I’m definitely on its radar, and it’s trying to break me. I don’t remember this much going wrong when I wasn’t such a good person. Evil and me, a love story.

Sometimes I think maybe it’s a signal, time to pack it in and move on to whatever comes next. That can be enticing, now that I believe this world is just a proving ground, a training ground, and when a soul is finally fully formed in the kind of goodness laid out in the Beatitudes and Ten Commandments, we get to move on to the paradise in eternity we’ve been promised. Otherwise, that bun goes back into the oven, our spirit reborn here, with the lessons learned baked somewhere into the subconscious. It’s possible, this swirling menagerie of good and bad, this temporary tempest in a teapot we call life.

I’m not going anywhere, but those internal debates can be fascinating. One one level, you’re thinking that you’ve had a long and good life, checked all the boxes you’d hoped to check, and this world now belongs to others. You begin to get excited to learn the true answer of what comes after, even if it’s nothing, and if so, maybe at least there’s peace and an end to a world of growing greed, evil, and suffering. You’ve had the good career, good life, love, youth, raised the kids, done all the things. What’s left, other than that Kerouac Buddhist suffering?

Then you worry about the impact on those you love, because they don’t understand. If they truly did, they’d be happy for you, but they don’t, and so it would be horrible for them, perhaps scarring. My elderly mother, my kids, my grandkids, my beautiful Giavana and Pia. You wonder if you might lose your pass if there is a better beyond, perhaps fail that final test by throwing away your gift of life, and go back to Start. No thanks!

Things will get better, they always do. At least, they always have. Life here is short, it’s the blink of an eye in relation to history, and certainly compared to eternity. Why not live it out, and don’t quit in that fight to make this world a better place for those you love, especially the young ones? What cowardice to bail out on them, on yourself!

At one point in my (bad person) life I thought all the religion stuff was a bunch of made-up stories to control other humans and extract money from their pockets. But, being a voracious reader and very curious person, something kept nagging at me. There just seems to be too much corroboration of these ancient events for them to be wholly untrue. Humans are notoriously bad at recording history, it’s always slanted as they say, “History is written by the winners.” But in the Bible and other religious texts, not so much. There’s plenty of losing!

A turning point for me was curiosity about the afterlife in the wake of losing a beloved relative, with whom I’d had frequent conversations on the topic. I wrote about all that in a prior post focused on afterlife. I had always felt this as well was something folks just conjured up to take advantage of other people, in our desire and inability to comprehend an end to our life. But in reading After, and similar books, I became convinced, and regained my spirituality. I’m more hopeful, and happier now.

I think it’s very possible we’re born into this wicked stew of an environment, greed, evil, temptation ever-present, and with natural proclivities toward temptations, in order to see if our will, our inner goodness, is strong enough to overcome it. Until we’re well-formed enough, strong enough, good enough, to be part of a perfect paradise. Otherwise, it couldn’t exist. Maybe that solves the riddle of why everything bad for us tastes and feels good, and it’s so hard to do the right things.

I have no doubt those original writings have been embellished for things the various churches and religions felt entitled to add or change, to their advantage. You could take the pessimistic outlook that Jesus was just the greatest con man ever. But then, what was ever in it for him, other than certain death and suffering?

What is lost by leading a life of goodness, as we’ve been asked? Perhaps profit, perhaps some level of “enjoyment” we get from certain evil pursuits. I believe the self-esteem and other mental benefits of being a good person, an actual good person as outlined in the Beatitudes, are very much underrated. What enjoyment you get here, in this very short temporary existence, from doing bad, is a heavy price in the long run.

We’ve been watching The Chosen series (Netflix, Amazon Prime). I’m not much for these religious series, as they often portray Biblical characters as rigid, unflawed, and not like actual humans. This series is very different, and quite entertaining and enjoyable. It shows the humanity and flaws in legendary people like Matthew and Simon.

I’m fascinated that the Rapture is often mentioned, mostly by Jesus. It seems a modern-day warning to us. The fishes (us) will be sorted, by good and bad, when the time comes. There may no longer be an oven to return to in order to try harder. Maybe the resets offered to humanity with the tablets on Mount Sinai, the great flood, and sending of an emissary an example of what is expected of us (Jesus) were the only attempts to fix us that we’ll get, and the next step is an end to the experiment, the Rapture, as prophesied. It sure feels that way.

In the show, it’s often mentioned by Jesus that you don’t have to follow a bunch of crazy human-designed rituals or even go to church. You just have to follow those rules laid out for us, to be good. I’m surprised at that frankness, because the churches themselves are for the most part now just businesses and gatherings of hateful people who think by giving up that one hour a week they’ll be absolved of the other 167 hours of “a mouthful of scripture and a heart full of hate.”

We see evil now as bad as we did during the worst of times—the Catholic Crusades, Roman Conquests, genocide of Native Americans, Civil War, WWI, and WWII, Jan 6, 2021. What Hamas did on October 7, 2023 was evil. Israel’s response (and the things they had done prior to prompt the Hamas attack) has been pure evil. They perpetrate the genocide of incredible numbers of innocent civilians, especially small children. As was our senseless Iraq war under Bush, Vietnam, and the dropping of nuclear weapons on two Japanese cities. The war machine, the military-industrial complex and money flowing in bribery to our politicians to fuel it, is evil.

We seem to have the actual anti-Christ in our midst, with a huge following of the simple-minded, greedy, and evil. Every single aspect of what Trump is, incredibly, is the complete opposite of what Christ was, in watching this show and re-reading the Bible. Yet, he’s leading to once again become the most powerful person on this planet. It can be easy to feel that all is lost, that the force of evil is winning here, and it may be time for the other team to abandon ship, take its players off the field, bring them home, and call it a day.

It certainly could come to a head as the planet crumbles beneath us. Heat now unsurvivable in places like India, where election poll workers are dropping dead in large numbers. Melting glaciers and water levels so high now that an island city off the coast of Panama must be evacuated—for good. Huge, destructive tornadoes in unlikely places like Maryland. So bad that the recent NOAA hurricane forecast for this upcoming seasons seems apocalyptic, if it comes to fruition.

Maybe the youth of today will realize what we’ve done to their future, and rise up against the forces of hate and capitalism the way the hippies of the 1960s and Occupy movement in the early 2010s did. You have to hit these people in the only place that matters to them—in their investment accounts. If they decide to, I think I’ll be right there by their side. People who have lived their lives already can be a dangerous weapon. We have the numbers, for now.

The band I saw last night sang a bunch of incredible original songs about the usual stuff—until the end of the show. They didn’t close with a big preachy message, at least not a speech. They did a very attention grabbing final number—War Pigs by Black Sabbath, a 1960s song about wars caused by greed and hate, and how it’s always the working class kids that are forced to go off and die in them (hence, those folks don’t care much for contraception or abortion…). The band performed this old rock song with such passion, I think it was their message. I’ll close with the words to that song, as they’re quite relevant to these times, and quite topical to all I’ve discussed.

What’s Next?

I guess I have some projects to get to, car things, vision things, tool things. I have some damage to repair on several levels. I’m trying to do a mental reset on this Sunday, not think too much, do my writing and relax and maybe read if the rain and clouds break. Perhaps hit that hammock for a bit, and back to watching The Chosen. The show gives me a profound sense of peace and relieves stress magically for me. It gives me hope. I’m thinking about what awesome things are going to come in order to level out these recent challenges.

This pioneer journey continues… Don’t forget, commenting is now turned on for everyone on these free posts. Let’s interact!

Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerer of death's construction

In the fields, the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord, yeah!

Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah
Time will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait till their judgement day comes, yeah!

Now in darkness, world stops turning
Ashes where their bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour

Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees, the war pigs crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing, spreads his wings
Oh lord, yeah!

—Black Sabbath

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