Evil?

I just finished (well, almost) cleaning my fridge.  I hate that job, but after what I've just seen I might be ready to think about evil...

Do I believe evil exists?  You really threw me with that question.  I was awake in the middle of the night thinking about it.  I don't really have an answer yet, but I have learned that when I start to write, my truth seems to come out - or at least an aspect of my truth.

I am going to "out" us, a little more.  We are from an Irish Catholic family, but both my sister and I are convinced Friends.  We came to Friends at different times in our lives, and are both members of Quaker meetings.  During one meeting, many years ago, an older Friend whom I really admire spoke about the Light and the dark.  He proposed that dark is not the opposite of Light, but the absence of Light.  Then we have Love and fear, and evil and good as opposites, and so perhaps fear is the absence of love and evil is the absence of good.

Last night, in the silence, I considered evil.  First, I truly believe that humans are good and kind and intelligent.  I will repeat this over and over.  I preface many statements with this - and I do believe it.  We are born good and when we are raised with love, we are loving.  So what has happened.  Were accidents the beginning of fear? A parent disappeared and we panicked for the rest of our life? I started wondering about how our brain processes events, especially events we can't control.  We seem to anthropomorphize, then name it.  And we seem to think in duality - male/female, yin/yang, day/night - it was logical to name good and evil.

Rather than evil, what I see is the breakdown of connection.  We are no longer connected to the Earth.  And so we can dump poison on it, frack it, destroy it.  We are no longer connected to family.  You are my sister, we share blood and history, yet we rarely see each other.  I know it is because of the damage, and the damage drives us further apart, and in our aloneness we lash out and damage more, harder, deeper - and we live in more sorrow.   We begin to feel that only we are real.  That makes everyone/everything else an object. If we identify someone as evil, we can push them further out, disconnect them.  I think maybe Love and evil may be opposites.  Evil is the absence of Love.  Evil is the absence of connection allowing us to be heartless. It's a downward spiral, that if we recognize - we can reverse.

I look to people like Alice Miller who wrote For Your Own Good, tracing how abuse creates monsters like Hitler.  One of my heroes is Patch Adams who heals by not allowing people to be separate.  If someone is bulemic, everyone throws up with them.  They are not alone, and their behavior does not have to be secret and shaming.

In the middle of the night, I recited John Donne, "every man's death diminishes me for I am involved with mankind."  We have forgotten.

You said that you feel more love for your pets than for many humans.  Maybe that's why we have so many pet rescues today.  The dogs are teaching us about wearing our hearts on our sleeves and being unabashedly joyful to be together.  I know the last time I went to a family event, I came in guarded, and didn't really relax entirely until we were on our way home.  I am not unabashedly joyful.  I don't know how to be.

Back to the message delivered from the silence.  My Friend suggested that dark is the absence of Light.  But when playing with his words, I got another vision, or another interpretation.  The Light is, it is eternally present everywhere.  When it seems to be absent, perhaps we have turned our backs on it, and are standing in our own shadow.  We are hiding to protect ourselves - maybe.