on evil and other nasty endeavors...

A buddy of mine and me were chatting about Evil today. He knows a thing or two, having studied up on the subject. (Which amuses me. Not that he's studied evil, but that someone else besides me has.) The concept is that Evil is a parasite, unable to live with out good to feed from. (Fucking preposition.) Evil can't create anything of its own, it relies on goodness (on us, if you're of that persuasion) for existence.

My concern was about evil being absolute. Absolute meaning: Evil, to everyone's perception, including its own (that's the important bit) is Evil. But can Evil be absolute if all it's trying to do is exist (and unfortunately hurts people in the process)? Can its own attempts at survival be evil to itself?

Can absolute evil even exist? I mean, the most narcisistic bitch you ever met is justified in her own mind, right? Bush thinks he's got a good thing going, getting all over the Iraquis. Someone is funding terrorism, so someone thinks it's all good. People are ok with not giving a beggar on the street money. And where does the evil lie in poverty? That he's poor? Ok, that's a given. But maybe he's a druggie despite having had all the "just say no" education the early 80s had to offer. So the evil is in the drugs? One person feels sorry for him, but does nothing. Another says "get a job". Both are probably right, and probably wrong; in a sense: evil. But to their own minds they aren't, so can we count their wrongness as evil?

So does evil lie in perception or actuality?

According to my friend, evil is also a separate entity from the rest of us.

Not. Of. Us. Not of this world.

Not of the rocks or the air or the wind or of humanity or animalia or any of it.

Something different, which very well might just make it incomprehensible.

So my second concern has to do with Sex's Theory of Connectivity. Everything is linked.

Everything except for evil? I don't know.

Some people think that evil and good are a balance and one cannot exist without the other. Perhaps like the roots a tree are as far-reaching into the ground as the tree itself, or maybe like balast on a boat, good requires evil just to stand on its own two feet. Or maybe it's goodness that is the root. That's certainly a more comfortable thought, right? But I don't think I hold with this, because again, it's about perception and perspective. Which is propping the other up?

There could be different qualities of evil, some of which is separate and absolute; some of which is born of us, a part of us, moving through our veins like black blood. (Think the guy who says "get a job." Think drug dealers.) But that somehow reeks of putting my own human parameters on something which I cannot understand. Seems to be happening a lot lately--not that my own ineffectiveness is keeping me from trying.

I just don't know. But trying to write true evil as a character is a total bitch, so it's always lingering in the back of my mind.

ah, fuck it. I'm going swimming.

and just so you don't forget who's talkin' to ya here:

my swimsuit is very small.