the human group- Session 7 - the idea of evil?
Check in: What is Evil?
‘Donald Trump,’ said one human.
‘No such thing,’ said another.
‘A lie,’ said a third.
‘Perhaps it exists only as a thought,’ said the fourth human.
‘Trump is Evil’. Is he though? Do we know him personally? Do we simply disagree with him and struggle to see from his perspective? Do we put in the work to see how he could be right from within his contextual sense making and environment? We definitely do not do that work and often label him with all these monstrous names, but we have not lifted a finger to try to understand him. Who is Evil here? The witch or the witch-hunter? Trump or the angry bystander pointing the finger?
We use public figures as modern Judases and voodoo dolls to cast all our sins upon by projecting all our unconscious suffering. We put all this passionate energy into verbally punishing one another rather than using it to elevate ourselves. What the fuck?! What is evil is this scenario. Casting blame at any opportunity coming from another’s mistake, misgiving and sometimes unusual perspective.
This manifested witch hunt comes from the ‘idea of evil’. The idea. The story.
We do not know that the witch is evil. However, the story that is told illustrates a witch as being evil and we act upon this story as if it is fact. We do this with Trump. How many of us make our own minds up irrespective of the stories we are told as to whether Trump is evil our not? Not many of us. Why is this? Is it the herd mentality? The tall poppy syndrome? Is it the negative expression of our unconscious suppressed desire to be outspoken and express freely? This most definitely plays into it.
Why does the crab pull the other crab back into the boiling water? What is this program we are running on our unconscious operating systems? Is it what evil is?
‘No such thing.’ So evil doesn’t exist? I see this as a very helpful story to have for I believe the affects of such a story are compassion, empathy and understanding. Having no existing idea of evil leaves the responsibility to understand and accept this person’s affliction or perspective rather than leave it to the responsibility of an irresponsible story; evil. The idea of evil seems to conjure up a perceived threat in which invokes conflict and in this era of existential crisis, we latch onto these shallow moral battles against the idea of evil. Again we refuse to create our own meaning because that requires risk and in this environment of rabid blame and offence I am not surprised people are keeping their dreams and deepest thoughts to themselves otherwise the may get burnt to the stake.
Lets try an example of an idea of evil;
I am driving my car and a car in the lane next to me violently swerves in front of me, beeping at the same time. I get a shock and because I believe in evil beyond doubt I react with the story of this person being intentionally malicious with their driving. It is an act of war.
So I brood and drive right up the backside of this car and then when I get the chance I swerve around them violently and yell halfway out the window with an extremely enthusiastic middle finger and an aggressive, ‘FUCK YOU CUNT!’ Just as I say this I notice that it is a very old lady, stressed out about driving on the big motorway, or it is a backpacker unaware of the driving etiquette in Australia or it is a stressed out soon to be father racing his pregnant wife to give birth.
What have I done?
In acting upon the idea/story of evil I manifested as the evil idea itself; the intentionally malicious driver.
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ - ‘Mr Intentional’ - Lauren Hill.
It doesn’t even need to be an idea of evil. It can be an idea of ‘good’ that has the same negative manifestation as the idea of evil. Take the colonisation of indigenous nations around the world.
‘These unsophisticated people need our technology and governance because we are so far more advanced.’ - random well intentioned colonialist.
So we steal a generation of children and assimilate them into our culture, disconnecting them from their own family, culture, power and traumatising multiple generations. Missionaries so blinded by an idea of righteousness, charities as well, western nations such as the United States and Australia who call themselves the first world and much of the rest of the world, third, in need of our superior ways of being. This is being flipped on its head as we have now lead the sustainable world into our unsustainable ‘better’ way of being. Retards! I include myself in that and have a laugh and cry about it all. We are in deed evil in our delusional guise of righteousness. So blind to any understanding of another intelligence beyond our own.
Blind stories, fictions believed to be facts. What we regard as the known?
This could be evil?
‘A lie,’ this suggestion moves smoothly from the last idea. If the ‘known’ is something other than the present reality, then is it an untruth, a lie? Most definitely, a weak assumption to serve our beliefs, or the story we lean our meaning against. This suggestion promoted a fair discussion as to what is a lie and when is it ok to lie.
We exaggerate with the words we use to serve some insecurity within us. We lie to the nazi’s at our door in order to save the jews in the basement. What is a relevant righteous lie?
Let’s bring in the idea of collective intelligence into this conversation. In a recent ‘Rebel Wisdom’ podcast Daniel Smachtenberger talks about the individual senses in coherence create a multi-dimensional experience of the present (1). Look through one eye and you see a one dimensional flat picture, look through two eyes that each perform the same function separately but when used in coherence create a third perception or dimension; distance.
Scaling this idea to individual perception and combining our sense of reality to create an expanded experience of the universe. If a view is inauthentic, or there are lies and it isn’t the true authentic expression of the individual then this third intelligence is distorted. So a lie, a story can slowly create a chain of events that lead us to a completely separate reality, like the one we find ourselves in now. A literal matrix constructed by stories. Are these justified, these lies? Most probably they are backed by fear induced stories inspiring the individual to avoid inauthentic harm; a hypothesis of harm or a hypothesis of what is best for everyone else. An idea, a story, a fact, all coming from this idea of the ‘known’; what we think we know, knowledge itself.
The fourth human says evil exists solely as a thought. This hypothesis connects all three expressions of what evil is; an assumed uninformed idea manifested as evil when acted upon. Then there is the bible exert of ‘resist not evil’, this is interpreted as ‘resist evil by force’ by most christian institutions. However, maybe it means do not resist evil for in resisting we become the evil.
In Paul Levy’s book ‘Wetiko: Dispelling the Curse of Evil,’ and accompanying articles he says that indigenous groups around the world understood evil as a parasite of the mind that is contagious to all those that do not think for themselves. This definitely ties into the previous hypothesis’ of the group. People empty of their own questioning ability take on other’s stories of reality, and the main stories that are all pushed onto us are from mass media, and social expectation to name two. And it’s the evil stories and conflicts of good versus bad that sell papers and snatch our attention.
“To a considerable degree, the development of the wetiko disease corresponds to the rise of what Europeans choose to call civilization. This is no mere coincidence.”(3).
Perhaps the pursuit of knowledge from the garden of eden was the beginning of evil? Pursuing knowledge, slowly transforming dynamic ever changing nature to a static defined story and giving rise to western civilisation ignoring everything outside of their realm of ideas and stories. We are indoctrinated into wetiko throughout our schooling as the majority of education is based on knowledge; facts, ideas and stories. The world is reduced to a collection of building blocks for us to assert our power. We are industrially produced world dominators.
As we are faced with change, be it climate, economic, environmental, we still stick to the old story. These stories are old, tired and irrelevant and are cancerous upon our environment, society and individual health.
How can we use this power of manifestation that we see enacted through the action perpetuated by ideas of good and evil to create a totally different way of living? One in which we let go of who we think ourselves to be in order to be completely free. Forgive, for give, give the benefit of the doubt when the next idea pops into your head. Consider not knowing and simply be aware and listen to the universe in that moment.
Join us this week for Expression Sessions.
https://www.meetup.com/The-Human-Group/
References
1) Hall J, Shmachtenberger D, Wheal J. (14.09.19). ‘Making Sense of Sense-Making’ - Rebel Wisdom podcast. https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/8-posts/106-jordan-greenhall-jamie-wheal-daniel-schmachtenberger-making-sense-of-sensemaking
3) Forbes, Columbus and other Cannibals, p. xvii-xviii.