"If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them." Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago.
This may not be the right blog for many today. Some I know need to do some loving self care and self compassion first.
But eventually we need to come to grips with our relationships with each other....with how we think about good and evil...the people wearing white and those black hats...us and them.
When I started thinking a lot about good and evil was when I interviewed Isak Gasi and his friend, Shaun Koos. In the 1990s Isak was living happily at home in Bosnia with his wife. He represented Yugoslavia internationally in rowing.
It would have been beyond Isak's comprehension to consider that within a few years he would be captured and then survive Luka, a Serbian concentration camp. Then by 2017, he would be testifying at the Hague for the International Criminal tribunal against high-ranking officers, including Slobadan Milosovic.
The world first learned of the concentration camps in Bosnia after a British Journalist broke the story. An emaciated Bosnian appeared on the cover of Time Magazine, and suddenly, the realities of a hidden genocide became apparent. What happened there was horrendous.
Shaun Koos met Isak when they paddled together internationally. Eventually Koos helped Isak and his family come to the United States. Isak begged Koos to tell his story and though Koos had never written a book, he did indeed tell Isak’s story in the book, Eyewitness: My Journey to the Hague.
What Isak wanted people to know is that bad stuff can happen quickly when we start to divide ourselves against each other. He noticed it beginning in Bosnia when he was asked to tell his ethnicity by someone taking a survey for the government. He reported that he and his wife were Eskimos.
Koos, himself, believes that human nature is best summed up in that often-quoted story about the two wolves – one filled with greed and hate, the other filled with generosity and love, each living within each of us. We become the one we feed. I have written about that previously.
While I was reading the book about Isak, I also started digging around in old books on moral development and romping though old and new studies done by investigators of good and evil…especially Dr. Phillip Zimbardo who just recently died.
We tend to think of people as intrinsically evil or good, that most of us are good, but there are a few bad apples. According to Zimbardo, we’d be wrong.
But first the definition of evil. According to Zimbardo evil is the exercise of power – to intentionally harm people psychologically, to hurt people physically, to destroy people mortally, to commit crimes against humanity. Zimbardo says it’s easy to make nice people (like us) evil.
Researchers have shown that normal, psychologically healthy people can be easily manipulated very quickly into doing outrageous things. Stanley Milgram found that two-thirds of us will give near lethal electrical charges to others when authorities tell us to do it – now THAT is a shock itself (I know a wonderful man who became a highly regarded CEO who was one of these people who gave a supposedly lethal shock. When I asked him why he did it, he said, “The experimenters said that was what would make the people learn.”).
Phillip Zimbardo found in the infamous Stanford experiments that within three days, regular ole people can behave like sadists. We know what happened within three months at Abu Ghraib.
Being evil is not good for anyone. I hope we agree on that simple idea. The good life and evil are incompatible. If you are like me and eager to resist evil, here are some thoughts.
First begin to understand how easily we are influenced. We are much more naïve than we realize. We must take steps to counter that manipulation and feeling of superiority.
Second we need to learn more about those who can resist becoming evil. We know more about these people today than we have in the past. Isak Gasi is a perfect example.
People who do not become evil despite all the right conditions for doing so are people who don’t care a lot about what others think of them (they can call themselves Eskimos if need be).
Zimbardo suggests that we take a day and do something unusual like mark our foreheads with a smallish black square. People are bound to want us to wash it away, but no. We just wear it. That helps to unleash us from others’ power over us.
Another thing we know about people who better resist becoming evil is that they often show concern for others by giving their time, attention, and money to others outside their tribe – people outside their own social group and family.
Various acts of kindness are simple to do. Designate a day each week to do five acts aimed at helping others, particularly others you don’t know very well. Buy someone you don’t know a cup of coffee. Pay the grocery bill for the person in front of you in the check-out lane – at least smile at them and wish them a good day.
Acts of kindness naturally lead us into “doing the right thing.” Researchers and most regular folks think “the right thing” is helping others, being thoughtful of others’ needs, not being totally self-centered.
And stop expecting that the good guys are always wearing white hats and the bad guys black.
As Koos remarked when I asked him about good and evil, “People are complex". Indeed, I was thinking the same thing when I wrote a review of the book which appeared on its back cover:
"Eyewitness is captivating for a number of reasons. The story is well told. It's history up close and personal. . .What's provocative and riveting, however, is the horrific struggle between good and evil that transcends Luka, Bosnia, and Yugoslavia and mirrors what's inside us all."
Isak’s story reminded me of reading Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s book, Gulag Archipelago, years ago. And there’s that amazing quote about the human heart in Chapter 1.
“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart”.
And then he follows that quote which has lingered with me ever since with…
“Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil”.
If we want to live the good life together, we accept and acknowledge who we are as human beings, capable of both good and evil. Every single one of us.
It’s not always a pleasant thought. Recently when I did my Braver Angels message at the Cashmere Presbyterian Church, I did the “workshop” called “Depolarizing Ourselves".
Some have called Braver Angels' work, "Self-Help for Society". Essentially this work is about looking first within ourselves and accepting that we may be doing something or thinking something that keeps us divided from others. Us and them thinking.
Since it was a Christian group I began with the passage in Matthew where Jesus basically says, if you’ll allow me to paraphrase, “Why are you so concerned about that little speck in another’s eye when you have this big frickin’ log in your own?"
Most scholars seem to think the passage is about working with ourselves before we start “fixing” others. It’s not really a very fun thought.
I don’t know how those listening to Jesus felt, but scholars say they probably saw the truth in that. I think it’s a hard sell.
We’d like to box up all the evil people – those guys out there and send them to Siberia. But as Solzhenitsyn calls us to consider, perhaps the issue is not just out there but also within our own hearts.
As I said it’s not an idea that’s going to get us a standing ovation in most crowds.
Now let me just throw in another thought from a book I read recently. The book is entitled, The Myth of Left and Right. It’s on the Braver Angels reading list.
The idea is that when we really try to get at what makes someone lean left or right, it comes down to their social circle more than their ideology. I won’t belabor that point, but do consider we are highly social creatures. We are considerably influenced by who we hang out with. There are exceptions. Maybe we could be one of them.
People like Gloria Reichman who died not too long ago and her best buddy Carolyn Kenoyer are good examples of people quite different in their politics. Both are (were) highly opinionated women. One a strong Democrat, the other a strong Republican. Stronger still was their friendship. How did they do it? This is what they told me.
“I know if something happened to me, I could pick up that phone and my buddy would be here in a flash.”
And those of us who knew them, saw that it was true. When one lost her husband, the other was by her side. When one got a brain aneurysm, the other was there.
Somehow that’s what we’ve got to get hold of. That being by each other's side thing no matter what political tribe they belong to. (Or soccer team they root for. Remember that research where people stopped more to help those who had on the same soccer team shirt?)
Frank Rogers, Jr. (our compassion guru and author of Practicing Compassion) recently asked, “Have you heard the story of the college-aged Muslim boy who wore a rainbow shirt to a Trump rally Arizona a few months ago? Then Frank told a story that went something like this:
"The boy was hit and kicked and left bleeding on the ground.
A woman in a Harris shirt started yelling, “See this is what happens at Trump rallies!”
Another man with a Walz hat on started video taping the hurting guy as he still laid on the ground.
Along comes an older fellow wearing a MAGA hat and carrying a sign, “Muslims go back where you belong.” But then he sees the hurt fellow, throws down his sign, grabs the young fellow, slings him over his shoulder, takes him to the hospital, and spends the night watching over him.
When the young man’s parents come, he says, “I’m so sorry.” They shake their heads and say, “We’re sorry too.”
I’m not sure that this story really happened. It sounds a lot like an updated version of the story often referred to as The Good Samaritan story in the bible. But what I do get from the story is that we are all involved in hate and anger and hurt, but when we are able to see our common humanity, we are able to throw down our signs and just care for each other’s wounds.
Maybe this message doesn’t resonate with anyone today. Somehow it helps me remember that no matter what is happening out there in the world, I have a heart to attend to, a good wolf to feed, and a log to take care of in my own eye before I start working on anyone else.
I, like all of you, knew a long time ago that fifty or so percent of us were going to wake up yesterday morning after the presidential election feeling sad and angry and disappointed. We just didn’t know which half of us it would be.
And I know that some awful things have been said and done by people on the right and on the left. And we must be held accountable for our actions. I also realize that there are truly mentally ill people in the world. And I know that we also see different sides of the elephant and see the world not with our eyes but through our autobiographies.
And, above all, I also know that we must figure out how to come together – see each other as friends. As President Lincoln said 1861, “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection”. A house divided simply cannot stand. We must not devolve into Bosnias.
How may we, even though passions may have strained, not break our bonds of affections and see each other as we see ourselves as complex human beings; how may we experiment with being kind to people outside of our tribe and resist falling under the evil influence of others?
And from Venice Williams, a poem which may resonate with some. A few of the lines which I have emboldened hit particular chords in me...from the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service:
You are awakening to the same country you fell asleep to.
The very same country.
Pull yourself together.
And, when you see me, do not ask me
“What do we do now? How do we get through the next four years?”
Some of my Ancestors dealt with at least 400 years of this under worse conditions.
Continue to do the good work.
Continue to build bridges not walls.
Continue to lead with compassion.
Continue the demanding work of liberation for all.
Continue to dismantle broken systems, large and small.
Continue to set the best example for the children.
Continue to be a vessel of nourishing joy.
Continue right where you are.
Right where you live into your days.
Do so in the name of The Creator who expects nothing less from each of us.
And if you are not “continuing” ALL of the above, in community, partnership, collaboration?
What is it you have been doing?
What is it you are waiting for?
Some pics I took this week which gave me little shots of joy.
Woman power - Nicky and Colleen re-roofing the General Store in Pioneer Museum.
One of the wonderful community meal partners, the Catholics - Our Lady of The Assumption fed over a 100 people last night. BBQ glazed wild boar meat loaf was the exotic entree.
I don't know the creator of this fun dinosaur. There are several made of driftwood I suppose. Amazing. And there's this sign below the creations.
Our Tree City USA is lined with gorgeous autumn colors in downtown Cashmere.
Our oldest church founded 1905, St James Episcopal Church. Lovely.
Yes, a good reminder for me every - love the adventure (was written on a sign sitting outside the Vet's offic). Signing off from Cashmere, the Compassion Capital of the World. It's a good day in the neighborhood.
Comments