Human Evil

[Mike11]

I had a strange dream last night that kept me thinking. I was in the movie "1984", the good one with John Hurt. I turned Julia in the moment I saw her in the Two Minutes Hate. I was even allowed to prove myself by beating her. I don't really remember if I killed her or not, I think just beating her was enough to prove myself. I threw the diary out, I was going to keep my head down and stay out of trouble from that moment on.

The delusion is there can be a resistance to evil that is greater than that evil itself. There was a Christian who harbored Jews during the war but the Nazis didn't know exactly where. After they tortured him he committed suicide knowing he would talk, their power was greater than his, they knew that life can be made worse than death. They had the power, he was the material to shaped at their discretion. After the war there was a doctor working in Canada named Donald Cameron who would administer mind destroying drugs to patients with postpartum depression or would keep people with common anxiety disorders in drug induced comas for days while bombarding them with degrading messages.

What was the Chinese peasant thinking when the Japanese doctor, clothed in white and a gas mask, stood above and inspected his vivisected chest? Would he even have asked why? Maybe wondered when the rats infected with Plague ate at his flesh in his cell. "Oh God Oh God how can they do this to me?" A point in the mind, when it becomes dead to itself and you understand the need for your execution.

Picture yourself looking into those dead eyes, the absolute power of them. You're not even a machine to that mind, you're a Maruta, a log to be chopped up then burned.

The lie is that you wouldn't talk to the Gestapo after a few days with them. The lie is you wouldn't cave in and be silent while Hitler drove your nation mad.

Some people did resist.

Those people were not me or you.

How can we even say "I would not submit" or "I would not go quietly into the ovens". We see good all the time, the great achievements of man but Evil requires something special. It requires the castration of emotion and humanity, it requires an Iron Heart. How does one defeat that kind of Will?

You don't. You go along with it. You keep your head down and stay out of trouble.

Edited March 19, 2008 by Mike11

[Brant Gaede]

How can we even say "I would not submit" or "I would not go quietly into the ovens". We see good all the time, the great achievements of man but Evil requires something special. It requires the castration of emotion and humanity, it requires an Iron Heart. How does one defeat that kind of Will?

You don't. You go along with it. You keep your head down and stay out of trouble.

Careful, the Randian notion of the impotence of evil merely means evil is destructive, not creative. And be careful about telling us who will go along with what in what circumstances.

--Brant

[Mike11]

And be careful about telling us who will go along with what in what circumstances.

--Brant

This was more my internal monologue.

[Brant Gaede]

And be careful about telling us who will go along with what in what circumstances.

--Brant

This was more my internal monologue.

Or what you tell yourself. You see, it's always a series of choices and circumstances. In dealing with evil you can pick and choose, if you are lucky. Evil is just another expression of mortality. Good is an expression of life. Life needs the right soil and climate. And a powerful man may be the most impotent of all, a totalitarian dictator.

--Brant

[Judith]

How can we even say "I would not submit" or "I would not go quietly into the ovens". We see good all the time, the great achievements of man but Evil requires something special. It requires the castration of emotion and humanity, it requires an Iron Heart. How does one defeat that kind of Will?

You don't. You go along with it. You keep your head down and stay out of trouble.

Inducing despair is a powerful weapon of the enemy. So is convincing you that they are invincible. To prevail, one must see the enemy and see that it is NOT invincible -- see its weaknesses. Never compare your insides to their outsides.

Judith

Edited March 20, 2008 by Judith