Why is there evil?

Perhaps no other question in mankind's history has so perplexed our greatest thinkers than this one. From realms of human thought that include philosophy, psychology, religion, science and sociology, people have pondered this most troubling, enduring and--among all of life's millions of species--unique fact of human life: the existence of evil.

As I have been focusing on the ideas of Dr. Stanislav Grof of late, I am intrigued by his idea of why evil exists. Discussing the sometimes profound psychological and spiritual experiences brought about by holotropic states in his book, The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness, he says this:

"As our process of self-exploration deepens, we can discover within ourselves highly problematic emotions and impulses that we were previously completely unaware of--dark and destructive aspects of our unconscious psyche that C. G. Jung referred to as the Shadow. This discovery can be very frightening and disturbing. Some of these dark elements represent our reactions to painful aspects of our history, particularly traumas in infancy and childhood. In addition, powerful destructive potential seems to be associated with the perinatal level of our psyche, the domain of the unconscious that is related to the trauma of birth. The hours of painful and life-threatening experiences associated with the passage through the birth canal naturally provoke a corresponding violent response in the fetus. This results in a repository of aggressive tendencies that we harbor in our unconscious for the rest of our life, unless we make special effort to confront them and transform them in some variety of experiential self-exploration.

"In view of these disclosures, it becomes clear that the menacing doubles in such works of art as R. L. Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, or Edgar Allen Poe's "William Wilson" do not represent fictitious literary characters, but the shadow aspects of an average human personality. Individuals who have been able to look deep into their psyches often describe that they discovered within themselves destructive potential that matches that of evil individuals in the category of Genghis Khan, Hitler or Stalin. In view of such shattering insights, it is common to experience agonizing misgivings about our own nature and encounter great difficulties in accepting it."

The reason I am writing about this today is because of two different stories in the news this week that manifest both personal and general aspects of evil. Both are examples of mankind's Shadow that should never fail to shock those of us who believe ourselves to be above that sort of thing. Yet we must never forget that our own Shadow selves contain potential evil energies that most of us will never hopefully display to such an extent as these.

The first story involved the disappearance a week ago of a twelve-year old girl from Vermont. Initial indications were that she had met someone online and perhaps gone off with this person. She had been dropped off early in the day by her 42-year old uncle at a convenience store. A security camera even showed her being dropped off, then walking away in a different direction.

A few days later, the story took a bizarre turn. The uncle had been arrested for being part of a "sex ring" that had used girls for this; insuring their silence by threatening the girls family with death. This uncle had been having sex with one of these girls for five years--since she was nine. There was, however, no official connection to the niece's disappearance.

This, of course, did not bode well for the missing girl, but she still hadn't been found. Then after a week, her body was discovered in a shallow grave a mile from the convenience store. Soon afterward, her uncle was arrested for her murder and now faces the death penalty.

This kind of story sadly speaks for itself. The utter depravity of a man--especially an uncle--who would do this kind of thing is shocking, yet all too common in our world. Regardless how common this is, however, we must never feel inured to sorrow for this kind of tragedy to a life, because as human beings we all share in a common consciousness where pain and suffering for one is pain and suffering for all.

I recently watched the documentary Nanking. Using both actors reading actual letters and journals as well as archival footage, this movie depicts the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and its army's violent march to the then-capital of Nanking, which had a fairly large foreign community. As the Japanese moved closer toward the city, most of these people fled as quickly as possible.

There was, however, a handful of these Westerners who decided that they would stay and not abandon the people they'd grown to respect, care for and even love. They realized that being Americans and Europeans, they might be able to affect the behavior of the invading army.

To accomplish this, they created a relatively small Safe Zone in the middle of the city, which they specifically stated--to any Japanese official they or their friends in their home countries could speak to--was under their jurisdiction and control and that no Japanese soldiers would be allowed to enter. Their intention was to safeguard as many women and non-miliary males as was possible to prevent widescale rape and slaughter which they had been told was common during the army's march from Shanghai.

One of the surprising ways this tactic was successful was that a few of the Europeans were actually Nazis and Nazi sympathizing German citizens who utilized their country's political ties as another Axis nation on the Japanese.

For quite awhile, the Safe Zone worked as they had hoped. Outside, however, Nanking had become a living hell. The wanton violence and brutality was almost inconceivable. Females of any age were subject to a violent ongoing orgy of rape followed by disgusting mutilation and death. Non-combatant Chinese men were not spared their own horrible indignities as the Japanese found that, for example, forcing them to have sex with corpses before torturing then killing them also satisfied their incredible depravity.

In fact, the invading Japanese army was nothing more than an out-of-control mob with an unending blood lust, and the people of Nanking and other cities were the tragic victims of their rampaging evil.

In China today, the Rape of Nanking is still a sensitive issue in Sino-Japanese relations. The memories of such brutality, alas, do not fade quickly.

The other story in the news this week that brought up this issue of evil involves the controversial British-American journalist, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has enjoyed being an iconoclast over the years, first as a fiery Marxist, then most recently as an ardent proponent of our glorious invasion of Iraq.

He calls himself not an atheist, but an antitheist. He latest tome is a book decrying belief in God called God is Not Great. One of his most "excoriating critiques" was on Mother Theresa. In his book, The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice, he scathingly criticizes Teresa as "a political opportunist who adopted the guise of a saint in order to raise money to spread an extreme and aggressive version of Catholicism." Despite these things and a number of well-known personal problems, he is still considered by many, one of the best writers of our era.

What caught my attention this week about Hitchens was a story about his article in Vanity Fair called, Believe Me, It's Torture. The following video was a part of the article and in it, my eyes were finally opened to the "officially sanctioned" but highly controversial method of interrogation called waterboarding.


The War on Terror has become for the leaders of this country an excuse to create a world that conforms to their own irrational sense of fear and paranoia. And in doing so, they maintain that what the world of nations in the last century determined to be basic human rights--rights that must be afforded to any person involved in internal or external conflict by the Geneva Conventions--no longer has legitimacy in this new paradigm of an Eternal War on Terror.

Certainly movies have offered this simple ethic over the years with the many vigilante-as-protagonist movies produced. And television shows like 24 continue to promote the idea that there need be no moral constraint when protecting America. Our national fear following 9/11 has been intensified mostly by artifice by the persistent focus on the threat of external terrorism to create in us a desire to remain safe and secure at all costs.

The rights to privacy we have already given up in the name of homeland security is very disturbing, yet there is no one--including the two presidential nominees--who will begin a saner dialog about how we want our nation to function in this new world; which really isn't much different from the old world except that we have a new public enemy to exploit for the benefit of a highly-sophisticated Military/Industrial Complex.

Evil is and has always been our enemy. And our leaders can define evil however they like using terms like "Axis of Evil" as a double whammy of fear inducement; likening current nations to the World War II Axis nations of Germany, Italy and Japan.

Yet, overnight, evil can be redefined as happened this week when North Korea was declared to be removed from the Axis of evil that once included it as well as the countries of Iraq and Iran.

But when we think of how often methods of "interrogation" like waterboarding are being used on people who may or may not have any legitimate information in our War on Terror, how can we not include ourselves in the world's Axis of Evil?

And let us never forget the sadistic indignities that finally came to light at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq or those that are still being committed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. There simply is no way we can call ourselves a moral nation when evil like this is permitted by the highest levels of our government.

Certainly today, July 4th, when we take time out to celebrate the great nation we believe we are, how can we truly believe that we are the paragon of good in our world?

Certainly with innocent Iraqi citizens being killed every day and perhaps more than a million deaths overall because of a war we had no legitimate reason for starting, how can we believe that other nations should act like us?

Certainly with well over 4000 Americans killed and 30,000 Americans injured in the past five years in Iraq merely because of a few men's hubris and one man's emotional insecurity and unfortunate incompetence, how can we shout with joy as the American flag waves proudly over every government building and in hundreds of July 4th parades in the land?

Evil must be recognized for what it is from wherever it originates. Whether it comes from inside ourselves, from our political or religious leaders, or from individuals from organized or unorganized groups whose Shadow selves can merge with each other to form an infinitely greater evil force--such as happened in China in 1937.

Dr. Grof further explains in The Cosmic Game that holotropic experiences can lead to an understanding of what one of his clients called transcendental realism.

"It is an attitude that accepts the fact that evil is an intrinsic part of creation and that all realms that contain separate individuals will always have both a light and a shadow side. Since evil is inextricably woven into the cosmic fabric and indispensable for the existence of experiential worlds, it cannot be defeated and eradicated. However, while we cannot eliminate evil from the universal scheme of things, we can certainly transform ourselves and develop different ways of coping with the dark side of existence."

So in this as in so many other things in our world, it is up to us as individuals to work towards creating a better human. It is up to us as individuals to begin the energy shift away from the Shadow self that far too many in our world identify with.

And while the examples I've given here are at the far end of the spectrum of evil perpetrated by human beings, we must still recognize that all of us function at some point along this spectrum by our actions towards others and by our attitudes that create energetic patterns that merge with others in our society and in our world.

So while it is easy to say that one person can't do much about evil in the world, I think that once we realize that our consciousness is part of everyone's consciousness, we can begin the difficult journey toward the Omega Point of our universe's existence; and in doing so perhaps we can attract others to the journey by our own example and determination.