Journey to Ixtlan

The poem “Seek the Villain” is about the inherent selfishness of humanity. There are small transgressions and then there is more. Integrity and guilt struggle in the midst.


Seek the Villain

Seek the villain at your risk
the mirror that most repress
wearing hats shared by all
even saints before their fall
miscreants much like yourself
with virtue held above all else
except when pleasure is at stake
then integrity is misplaced

when this foible is observed
have forgiveness for the failed
lest the monsters take offense
at trespass upon their sphere
seek not unearned liberties
easy pickings that come with grief
there is a price to company
among the fallen that complain

instead admit the frailty
that comes with life in this frame
mortal flesh seeking more
than austerity may explore
bless the villains for their place
among the paragons now displaced
feet of clay are obvious
shared by all in mirror’s face.

© 2019. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20190416.

The poem “The Fallen Ones” was inspired by listening to the audiobook version of “The Stand” by Steven King.


The Fallen Ones

Who will bury the fallen ones
when the monsters gather round?
the streets are empty except for those
with intents seeking blood
behind the masques of ill intent
sporting smiles with straight teeth
and the taint of make-believe

chosen targets are seduced
the balm of comfort before the cut
seduction offered for the chance
to remove the loathsome ones
with one hand to stroke a back
selecting space to sink a sword
or the head held in reverence
before the last shot is then heard

the allies linger at the edge
or their bodies lay in the grave
considered to be equally bad
to the enemy with bloody knives
these are sharpened on perished souls
lost in the battle to survive
blood as oil to hone an edge
then turn around to the hunt again

in the end the uniforms
glitter brightly in the sun
testament to the sacred work
walk the streets with this reply
“please ignore the fallen ones
there is no one to bury them
humanity lost before it won
the monsters turned out to be us.”

© 2019. Sean Green. All Rights Reserved. 20190103.

A Tumblr posting by emilyloisrose (https://emilyloisrose.tumblr.com/post/150945655019/heres-the-thing-about-evil-evil-is-not-a-person) inspired me to write the poem “Ourselves”. To paraphrase the inspiration, “Here’s the thing about evil; evil is not a person, it is an idea. – Fear of a vessel seems pointless, when we should not fear the person, but the idea.”. This aligns with my experience of evil both within and without of myself.


Ourselves

Born of selfish needs and deeds
crisis cast unto the masses
survival spurs life in peril
the end result is evil’s burden
if you wonder what is the source
consider where the bane resides
then look to the whole of man
the threads are there to intercept

there is a seed in far past
malice found in history
promoted by the wheel of time
until it finds fresh earth in the now
there it finds the fresh recruits
by temperament or hard abuse
look not to the past and you’ll find
this is the harvest of the worst

seek not the hands from beyond
humanity is sufficient unto itself
to wreck the lives of other ones
with drive to draw the end result
to rationalize is the means
this requires no demon’s bless
the end result of ancestral strife
is enough to fill the heart

fear of vessels is astute
though limited in foresight
protection can turn on itself
goading the thing sought to elude
in this we find ourselves
selfishness bred to lower ends
humanity put to vessels vile
when in the end it is ourselves.

2016, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved, 20161004.

I'm listening to The Pendergast series book “Brimstone”. The story begins with a murder, seemingly by a cloven hoofed attacker. A character in the book discards the idea that it is the Devil, saying that being that public is not the Devil's nature. I believe this is true. In my estimation people like Karl Rove are the demonic entities walking among us. The poem “Brimstone” is about the devils of this world who control and scheme with the visible princes of the world.


Brimstone
Poem for Day 257 – 20150915

Look not for the Devil,
fiend of The Book
in deepest of shadows
and the hottest of hells.
He's here on this earth,
partner of the most high,
the fixer of problems
and elevator of men.

Look away from the limelight,
behind the leaders of all,
to the one with sly smiles,
and a desire to conspire.
Promotion of darkness
is his deepest desire.
The minions are eager
when help is at hand.

No cut is too deep,
no mud is too dirty,
the game is the thing
for the Lord of the Lies.
Invite him to dinner,
to serve at your side,
the meal will be served
with the enemy expired.

Promotion assured
for the followers of id.
Their master is masked
as his evil is spread.
He's here on this earth,
you'll never know him
unless you seek to exceed
with the help of his kind.

© 2015, Sean Green. All Rights Reserved.

I finally found a book-on-tape by Dean Koontz that I couldn't listen to. Normally I REALLY like his unabridged material. It is witty and creepy at the same time. Well, the book Intensity was just plain creepy. It is about the interplay between the heroine Chyna Shepherd and the serial killer Edgler Foreman Vess. Vess embraces intense situations and only at these times does he feel truly alive. Additionally, he believes is invincible from powers gained in killing his victims. Vess kills for the sheer 'intensity' of it. He believes that life is all about accruing sensation, and that he must live with intensity in order to discover new sensations.

ACK!!! I had to pull out of this whirlwind of egoic destructive satisfaction. It reminded me very much of Scott Peck's writings. Scott Peck is the author of "People of the Lie". I've found this book to be a fascinating examination of evil and its causes. From the wikipedia website:

Evil is described by Peck as "militant ignorance". In this it is close to the original Judeo-Christian concept of "sin" as a consistent process that leads to failure to reach one's true goals.

An evil person:

• Projects his or her evils and sins onto others and tries to remove them from others
• Maintains a high level of respectability and lies incessantly in order to do so
• Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency
• Is unable to think from other people's viewpoints.

Most evil people realize the evil deep within themselves but are unable to tolerate the pain of introspectionor admit to themselves that they are evil. Thus, they constantly runaway from their evil by putting themselves in a position of moral superiority and putting the locus of evil on others. Evil is an extreme form of what Scott Peck, in The Road Less Traveled, calls a character disorder.

To me, this is the kind of evil that animals and nature as a whole cannot reproduce. It takes a thinking entity to cultivate, maintain and project evil unto others. Something to consider. I plan to write more about the connection between intensity, selfishness, and those actions that are considered evil by a majority.

( A not evil, yet wonderfully intense, picture... )

I am finding a disturbing trend in the Dean Koontz I've read and listened to. The main villains are truly evil, but yet they have veins of sanity and "normality". Sometimes they seem more "normal" than the heroes. This is especially true in the book I am now listening to, "Dark Rivers of the Heart".

I am left wondering if regularl people are like this. Do we have things about us that push us to the edge of normality? Are we so unaware of these things that we believe normality surrounds us, but others see something very different? Food for thought...

Don't confuse the lazy, ignorant or 'altruistic' self-serving actions of mankind for malicious evil.

What is Evil? People attribute everything from bad manners to murder to this apparent opposite of Good. Most of us experience only the mild forms of Evil. These discomforts still exist against all voiced desires otherwise. Why?

I’ve pondered these little evils. Online they include the cold shoulder and the pointed word. The targets are diverse, but there is a common thread amongst these victims of minor evils. The shared trait is that of separation; differences between the peoples leading to harsh treatment.

( A fable by Tolstoy )

The gulfs between people promote a lack of understanding and empathy. Tolstoy’s fable has evils originating from hunger, ill temper, transitional love and fear. The Evil of the fable is not an entity. It is instead a condition perpetrated by differences in people’s lives and perceptions. The remedy to evil lies somewhere between closing these differences and accepting the cosmic prevalence of Evil. Acknowledged and recognized, the differences may be purposely decreased between all of us. Those who actively promote differences can be marginalized. All those who wish to embrace a life more free of intentional evils will live with awareness, forgiving themselves for those differences that continue to exist.

Recently I wrote about the suffering of people and the situations that damage our psyches. A foundational piece of this examination is the 'evil' people who inflict harm on others. This article will look at the human faces of evil, offering some generalized explanations of why people do evil things.

Many years ago I saw the Clint Eastwood movie, "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly". I think I was a teenager. The film taught me about the morals and intentions of humanity. From it I learned that the "Good" can do harm, the "Bad" can be quite evil by action, but charming in appearance, and the "Ugly" can be evil by action, but harmless/confused in motivation. The result was shades of gray in which the action/motivation interplay of people is rarely completely understood.

To me, the Eastwood movie asked, "why do people do bad things?". This is the question that I find myself blogging about. The responses from my LJ friends indicate a level of pain and injury inflicted upon them by others. Some friends have been bravely forthcoming, sharing periods of deep and prolonged abuse. The sadness of the shared situations, and indeed my own, is that the people who hurt us are not mustache-twisting villains of the movies. The people who do evil to us are families, friends, co-workers, and well-intentioned groups. It would seem that the potential for good, or at the least neutrality, is equal to that of evil. Stuff still happens. If people are not inherently all good or all bad, the evil stuff will occur. It is my opinion that the majority of evil perpetrated upon people is from a grab-bag of unfortunate human states. While the outcomes are easily condemned, the origins can be forgivable in their very sadly comical flavors.

Below is my list of the origins of "Evil People". I will attempt to apply the labels of "Good", "Evil" and "Ugly" to them, with the understanding that no source of suffering is truly "Good", but the intentions may be so.

( Read more... )

An abusive person rarely has only one of these factors. The classic example would be the parent abusing the child. The parent may be expressing bored/sickness/stress/tough-times/rage. Any sum mix of human faces of evil is more toxic than its separate parts. The influences of evil can feed on each other, amplifying one another.

The list of human origins of evil is by no means complete. The eighteen points I've listed are a good starting point. The mixing of these root causes leads too an infinite variety of "reasons". All is not lost. I'm a BIG believer in self-awareness. We humans do mean, stupid things to each other. Awareness of motivation, desires, and intention allows us to STOP before the outward expression of an evil act occurs. The self-regulation of awareness can turn the evil action to an ugly one. The ugly act can be shift to good. Or perhaps, just maybe, we don't act out at all. It is a mix of choice, not-choice, and bad luck. It is also all part of the human experience. Love it or lump it, we're here for the ride.