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Entry 9-23-06 (originally written 9-13-06)
Life among the monsters.

Evil exists in everyone. The potential for evil is in all of us; it is an aspect of being human. But evil only has meaning as such because of how we respond to its manifestations, how it affects us emotionally, the pain and suffering it causes us. Evil is not the act, it is the response to the act. If one could stop being human, then evil would cease to be. Without the response, it has little more import than that of one microbe devouring another. Torture and murder and rape are reduced to negative stimuli, they become an inconvenience to impassive organisms. This is not to absolve those who commit such acts; on the contrary, if they are human, they must understand that they harm others with such behavior. In knowing evil, they commit it, and hang themselves with their humanity. If they are absolutely inhuman, knowing not evil, then there is no issue of absolution or guilt, because they lack the capacity to understand such concepts. But this does not speak to the question of how others ought to respond to such an individual, for they, in their humanity, confer evil upon the person; and it is they, in their emotional response, who bear the weight of it. The only way to eliminate evil would be for everyone, everywhere, to stop being human all at once. I don't think this is something most people would consent to....


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