the origins of evil

Last night K came over, ostensibly to plan a menu for annual "health week." It is a tradition in her family to spend a week getting ready for swimsuit season, and given this winters slothful decadence, such a ritual is definitely in order. We cracked a bottle (or two) of red wine and settled in to talking. Needless to say, the health food menu fell by the wayside as we gave ourselves over to one last winter bender. The conversation tripped and spiraled along, bending and twisting and migrating up and onto higher planes until we landed on one that held us fast: the origins of evil.

We spoke of the film Hotel Rwanda, and specifically, of the scene in which the two women sit speaking together at the bar -one is Hutu and one is Tutsi. They were friends and they wondered what separated them. M said that, according to the film, there is no real distinction between the tribes, and that the only thing dividing them is the color of their skin -a fluke of nature. We puzzled aloud, wondering how on earth it all began. How did some humans begin to consider themselves worthier, lovelier, closer to heaven? How is it that they fell to such hatred and violence against those they considered to be beneath them?

We remembered Ishmael and the teachings of Daniel Quinn -how with the advent of totalitarian agriculture humankind began to populate and grow, to settle on the land, to divide up the labor, to conquer new territory. With this seemingly innocuous development came strife -human against human, human against animal - the need to protect what one had acquired made beasts of us all. No sooner had humans gained dominion over their environment than they ceased immediately to live in communion with it. They set their minds to the brutal task of subduing those things human, animal, and vegetable that came within their grasp. Before this, all nature was for the taking -the uncultivated wilds were a resource to which all might turn in times of trouble. With crops to protect, stores to shore up, and a growing population to feed, humankind developed the capacity and the will to determine "who shall live and who shall die." And in the case of Rwanda, the Hutus decided that the Tutsis should die -and die they did, at least half a million by some accounts.

But yet we wondered: how and when did the psychological shift occur? We understood how it worked practically, in utilitarian terms. But how did humans acquire this penchant for judgment, for abuse, for power-over instead of power-alongside? How did they learn hate, and murder, and greed? Then K remembered a film we'd all seen in which a pack of monkeys overtook the territory of another clan, slaughtered them all with gory abandon and ate their murdered opponents brains in a rash, bloody and senseless act of destruction. There was no purpose for it. The monkeys were not starving, they did not require an expansion of their territory for any practical purpose, they were not suffering under an imminent threat from mysterious predators. They seemed to do it strictly for pleasure, and, more likely, simply because they could.

We shivered and glanced at one another, disbelief glinted darkly in our eyes. "We are all just scary animals -we're just evil," K said. We shrugged in unison and a foreboding silence fell. Indeed -it didn't seem like there was any explanation to be had, no secret to unlock, no mysterious curse that we might, through reason, return to and reverse. We are all just scary.

I for one cannot accept that evil is at our core, although I admit there is much evidence to support it.