pause | Pics, Poems, and Philosophical Prose

Yesterday my friend Rich asked me a substantial question. Being one of the wisest men I know, Rich is full of questions. Deep questions. The kind that cause pause. The question yesterday was, “How do you stop evil?” Pause…..Deep pause.

This deep pause, connected to this question floated in and out of my consciousness for the past 12 hours. It drifted into my Psychology classroom and laid itself on the desks in front of my students, where it was picked up and tossed around with intense seriousness.

GUNS! My students immediately connected evil with guns! Evil people use guns indiscriminately. Almost 50% of my students live inside the Aurora city limits. One of my students was an EMT at the theater scene where the revised script featured mass murder! Not much different from a real script. And also not unlike a real script, my students’ thoughtful responses to stopping evil was to use GUNS!

It makes sense to me that an inanimate object cannot be the source of evil. Tools. They are tools. Tools are very neutral until used. GUNS. Guns are tools.

I wonder, if we want to stop evil we just might have to go to the source of the evil. Many sources? Many evils? There are some that have a simple answer for evil. SATAN! But since I happen to NOT believe in Satan, I’ll stop that argument cold. I have to believe in him for you to argue that one with me. And since I don’t, we’ll move on.

Could it be possible that evil comes from the same place that God dwells? Within us? Certainly within the “collective us” there is evil. Just as there is “good”(God) and beauty (Goddess) within us. And in the “collective us.”

BEAUTY! Life is beautiful for most of us. And often because we CHOOSE to see life BEAUTIFUL-LY! Evil lacks beauty. Love is beauty. Creative love is beauty.

If we disconnect GUNS from evil, can we also disconnect GUNS from stopping evil?

War is evil. There is no “just war” except in the minds of warriors.

So Nation A has a deep history of hatred toward Nation 465R. They have been fighting intermittently for over 1143 years. Our Nation, is not as fictitious as the fighting nations are. We ARE the United States of America! From the very conception of Nation 465R in 1946, the United States has strongly supported them. So last week, Nation A bombed Nation 465R bringing destruction to 3 major cities! The USA cannot stand back and watch! We just HAVE to get involved!

Our President begins to think about the last several wars we’ve fought. S/he thinks about the cost of those wars. All the war advisers are telling the President there is no time! We must attack Nation A NOW! But the cost of lives, the huge financial debt of the previous wars haunts the President.

Instead of gearing up for war, the President does something frighteningly unheard of! After tallying the financial cost of war (over a million trillion dollars) s/he calls a meeting with the leaders of the fighting nations. “Instead of entering into war, the USA will offer both of you half of the financial cost of us going to war, not in money, but in schools, technology, transportation infrastructure, and agriculture.”

Simple, I know. Would it work? I don’t know.

Does war work? No.

Would it stop evil? I don’t know. But the saving of lives alone would be worth the risk!