Friday, December 1, 2006

Still searching for why

Every year around this time, I think about evil and the nature of evil. In other words, why bad things happen. I do feel there are truly evil things in this world. Or - people capable of committing evil deeds. There's not much that falls into this category.

Some religions take mundane things and call them evil. Things like drinking coffee or playing poker are roped into evil along with truly evil things. I'm speaking of murder or r_ape.

For myself, it's difficult to make sense of why people do evil things.

What can I say? Here are the facts.

Someone I grew up with is responsible for an act of evil. I don't know a great deal about the case - other than she was found to suffer from severe mental illness. This evil was done to another human being (not myself).

My theory is that it was due to being forced to live a double life and in denial.

By all mormon definitions, what happened should have never happened. Her parents were temple married. She was blessed, baptized, etc. She had all her ducks in a row. She attended all her meetings - we traveled to the mormon temple together for baptisms for the dead for gawd's sake.

Why evil exists is the subject of religion and philosphers. Whether or not it even truly exists is also debated. I don't seem to feel any cognitive dissonance about being agnostic and believing in evil. Most people will agree that some things are just wrong.

I can't pretend to understand the mental state this person was in. Did they know they were wrong?

And yet I find myself googling their name, family name eight years later. Trying to find out more information about what exactly happened. How was this person I went to sleepovers with capable of this horror?

I need to accept that I will never understand what she did or why.

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