Evil is so often tawdry. We want it to be like Hanibal Lecteur, a demon bigger than life to haunt our nightmares, but more often it's more like the loser down the street who beats up his wife to make up for his own feelings of worthlessness. And this is how it snags us. In the little compromises we make. In choosing to do this instead of that...then later, after a whole series of decisions, we turn back and see what's happened, and we are amazed.
Lord have mercy on us all.
Evil is so often tawdry. We want it to be like Hanibal Lecteur, a demon bigger than life to haunt our nightmares, but more often it's more like the loser down the street who beats up his wife to make up for his own feelings of worthlessness. And this is how it snags us. In the little compromises we make. In choosing to do this instead of that...then later, after a whole series of decisions, we turn back and see what's happened, and we are amazed.
Hear hear ...
I know folks often attribute the sentiment of "all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" as indicative of how little it generally takes to combat evil and stop it in its tracks.
But on a personal level each of us naturally falls into the deadliest of sins absent real effort to be good. It's being good that's the tough part, the triumph. Being evil is easy. Too easy.
Very difficult -- almost impossible for particularly slothful and disorganized folks like myself -- to form Good Habits. I have scads of bad ones I'd love to break, however.
Cheers, Conundrum. I enjoy your posts.