God I Hope Humans Aren't Innately Evil
But some of us sure seem like we're trying to disprove the hypothesis
FIVE MORE DAYS. Lol sob at least until Election Day itself, then who knows how long we’ll be dealing with chaos afterward, right? I hope to be switching gears soon, but until then I’m frozen, watching the train wreck unfold in slow motion, wondering how we got here and how long it’ll be until the human species just blows itself right up.
We’re going to go on a rapid but twisty journey in today’s post. I hope *not* to answer the implied question in the title (are humans innately evil???) with a yes, and we’ll take a stop at Samhain and Halloween along the way while we try to figure out the answer. Or maybe… we don’t figure it out. You decide. ;)
The Nazi look-alike spectacle at Madison Square Garden this past weekend finally caught national attention, though considering our collective attention span, we’ll have forgotten by the time this post comes out (I am starting this post on Tuesday, for reference). Racist / sexist / xenophobic / horrible things were said under the guise of so-called “jokes.” Any false pretenses of decency flew out the window in an ugly hatefest. When your party’s extremist draw seems to be “everyone else is a horrible human not even worthy of existence, while we alone — the ones shouting our hate the loudest, blowing unity to smithereens, calling other people ‘vermin’ — are the deserving ones”… I just wonder when in the world anyone decides to look in the mirror. I truly, 100% do not understand how you can go home from a rally like that, look at yourself and reflect on what you’re doing, and decide that you’re in a morally good place.
Just a few days prior, Tucker Carlson made very disturbing remarks at a Trump rally about how daddy needed to come home and give his daughter a very bad spanking that would actually hurt her more than him— even if the hypothetical daughter in question is a teenager. Besides that fact that this weird pedophilic pleasure about spanking should raise *all* the eyebrows, the crowd was so excited by this idea that they started chanting “Daddy Don.” (HIGHLY recommend deep diving with D.L. and Krispin Mayfield’s
post on this topic about violent authoritarianism starting in the home!)All of it is alarming on so many levels. How can we even begin to process it?
The cruelty and beauty of the world are held together in such close juxtaposition.
I drove my 5-year-old to her hippie nature preschool this morning, and the drive was perfect: fall leaves everywhere with a carpet of gold on the forest floor. But on the way to and from this little oasis, I have to drive through a portion of the county road where the houses on either side have every Trump / MAGA flag imaginable. It feels dark and, to borrow a word from our past, perhaps even satanic. I wondered this morning how you could still proudly be waving those flags after the fascist-hungry spectacle of the weekend.
To hate others so ferociously, you have to hate yourself even more profoundly.
I know it’s hard to fathom, and I’m no expert on Trump’s backstory and inner psychology, but the man has to secretly, deep down, loathe himself. And I don’t just mean “I sure hope he hates himself because he’s such a hateful person.” I mean that underneath the charisma (if you call it that) and the malignant narcissism (I definitely call it that), the man’s sense of self is so fragile you could pop it with a pin. There’s a reason he can’t take criticism, that he thinks he’s perfect, that he surrounds himself with yes-men. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing the election so he convinced himself and almost a third of Americans that he had actually won.
It’s because there is no sturdy, reliable self underneath that can get through the normal ups and downs of life. He has constructed his whole life so as to not be challenged, because his fragile, weak ego cannot take it.
Even that I say with a caveat, because my belief about humanity — that I sure hope is true, to answer the title of the post — is that somewhere in all of us, there is a core of goodness, of the infinite, the divine, the Source, the Self. For Mr. Trump, I believe it has been so covered up by trauma and entitlement and narcissism that he will never be in contact with that Source in this lifetime or maybe the next several, either (not sure how long this crap takes to work through in reincarnation, you know?).
Somehow, somewhere, the same Self that I hope to be in contact with in myself — to unbury and unburden enough to know that pureness underneath — is the same one that must be buried way down deep in him.
The collection of holidays taking place at the end of October / beginning of November: Halloween, Samhain, Dia de los Muertos, etc: occur as the year changes from summer growth and crop harvesting to winter dormancy. It’s an in-between point, a liminal moment, which is why many of our ancestors believed the veil was thinner between the world of the living and the world of those who have crossed over.
Lindsey’s
Substack (which you should most certainly be subscribed to, by the way) shared similar themes this week of the simultaneous holding of opposites, fear and hope, beauty and horror. Perhaps the reason we can experience beauty is the same reason we feel horror. The depth of our emotions, the depth of our thinking, enables some magnificent but also some horrific things.People from ages past, for whom the universe and our planet was both more and less of a mystery than what we know now, gathered at the close of harvest season. They burned bonfires, hoping that the sun would come out again at the end of winter. They sacrificed some of their hard-won crops to the gods that might smile upon them and grant a good next growing year. And in the middle of this, they felt that the spirit world was just a little closer. Perhaps that also served as a reminder of their own final destination.
Growing…and harvest. Work…and rest. Celebration…and mourning. Life…and death. Good…and evil.
My goodness is someone else’s evil sometimes, and my evil is their goodness. In the end we both die. And Mother Earth keeps on spinning, no matter what we do to her, with her water distributed in different amounts between frozen / liquid / gas, flooding dry zones that were liquid millions of years ago. We are born, we die, we incarnate again, and the cycle goes on.
Let it..be…so?
Thanks for joining my meandering journey — I write to process the complexity I see and feel, and there’s something that feels sacred to have so many of you joining me in this. If anything today sparked a thought you’d like to share, please leave a comment! Or just press the little "heart” button to say hello if you liked the post. Be well, my friends!
A powerful exploration of human nature and psychology, Christine! Agreed with every word. After reading and pondering, I will say what you were on the verge of saying: It seems we are simultaneously both inherently evil and inherently good. I am reminded of the Native American story about each of us having two wolves inside--one evil and one good. Which one becomes stronger depends on which one we feed. Sadly, we may be realizing for the first time that fully half of our nation--ironically the "Christian" half--chooses to feed the evil wolf, their inner shadow. That's pretty hard to take. I think most of us thought or at least hoped our nation was better than that. 😢
Excellent reflections as always, including the ones on the very not excellent subject matter. I'm with you. Baffled, yet grimly unsurprised, at how blind people choose to be about the state of affairs.