Pondering Evil

I really was resisting writing anything about this because I know that I can't match some of the very good pondering I have seen written already ... but the two columns I read this morning generated even more thinking on my part and it poured out here.

I already had been thinking about evil before the Virginia Tech massacre. After Rose and I watched the premiere of Drive, I was unsettled because of the cruel methods used to coerce some of the participants. The basic premise of the show is that it is an anonymously run, illegal cross country race with the winner receiving 32 million dollars. Although the race liaison, has informed them that there are other competitors, the group does not know exactly whom they’re racing against, or even where the finish line is. Some are participating sheerly for the cash while others have been forced to participate. In one case, Alex Tully is trying to save his wife who has been kidnapped. In another, a mother's newborn son is being held hostage. In a flashback we are shown a couple racing to save their young daughter, who watches them crash and die before her eyes. And so on ...

It is clear that Alex Tully (Nathan Fillion) will also be working toward uncovering whoever is running the race and stopping them from ever doing so again. What bothered me was the idea of such evil that would kidnap a wife or take a newborn from his mother without any reason other than the sport of motivating participants. It made me think of the villain from Daredevil who was sadistically and purposely evil at any opportunity. He bothered me so much that I forbade the girls to ever rent or buy the movie (and, believe me, that is something that I don't often do).

The evil in Drive may be further explained as the plot develops further, however, it provided food for thought all day long. Was evil worse because I didn't know about any motivation? It seemed so to me and that didn't seem right either. Evil is wrong no matter whether we understand the motivations or not. Truth to tell, I realized that knowing the motivation for evil is no excuse at all. Many, many people suffer what might be similar motivations but very few act upon them.

As we watched the next episode it became clear that Alex Tully had been a very bad person but that his wife had somehow redeemed him and helped him transform into a good and normal man. He is being required to revert to his more basic, bad-guy self in order to save his wife. In fact, a race representative was specifically sent to make sure that was clear to him. And revert he did. The sweet and pure seeming mother of the newborn was given an order to eliminate another racer, along with a loaded gun. She was able to find a solution that fulfilled the requirements without having to kill anyone, or even eliminate the other person from the race at all.

Again it seemed to me that a major theme of the show was evil. Some people are being lured to it with the reward, some are being forced by choices that seem unthinkable. Some people are showing their worst sides in response while others are managing to hold onto themselves while fulfilling the requirements. Still I pondered. Was it any more acceptable that Alex Tully was having to race now that we knew he was indirectly responsible for murders? That possibly the punishment for his past sins were being visited upon his innocent wife? I knew I would keep watching if only because it generated so much thought. Also, let's face it, I liked the show and because it is a television show I know there will be answers that will eventually fit into an acceptable moral guideline. That is what good stories are all about, after all.

That same evening I learned from Tom of the Virginia Tech massacre (I am unplugged from news, computer, and email once I leave work). Here was a real life example of evil for which we could not fathom any possible motivation. In our household, as in those across the country, we kept saying to each other, "Why? Why would someone do something like that?" I thought of Cho as a baby, a toddler, a little boy and my heart ached not only for the people whose lives he cut short but for the potential that somehow went terribly wrong in his own life.

We will never know.

As reports have surfaced it is clear that there were many warning signs. Debates will continue over what to do in such cases.

Rod Dreher wrote a "it could have been me" editorial for the Dallas Morning News today (free registration required).

So I was saved twice by friendship during my teenage years, and by having the grace to respond to lifelines when they were thrown.

Still, it's a little frightening to think about how things might have turned out for me had I continued drifting down that dark river, until I'd lost sight of the last human settlement. Was Cho ever thrown a lifeline? Was he too lost in a fog of self-pity and loneliness that he couldn't see it when it was thrown?

Along with my horror and sorrow over the massacre, I also had felt a profound tiredness from the beginning at the thought of the experts, the analyses, the "what if's," the "it could have been me" stories that we now would be subjected to ... all of which would solve exactly nothing.

It is not that the various solutions I have read about would do no good. Undoubtedly it would be a very good thing if we were nicer to that loner, reached out and fought harder to get help to a troubled person, tried through personal example to help our culture regain some of the social strictures that probably reduced these sorts of incidents in the past, or put a few sane controls on gun laws (I'm all for the right to bear arms, but semi-automatics? Let's get real here. And as for the Europeans clucking about violent American society ... Cho's guns were manufactured in Austria and Germany. How about taking a look at their contributions to our problem?). However, there will always be some people that these things will not help, no matter how well the solutions were applied.

My own thoughts (undoubtedly as lacking as everyone else's) coincide amazingly with Scott Blow's column in the Dallas Morning News this morning.

When I first began to educate myself about mental illness, 20 years ago or more, I repeatedly encountered a calming assurance:

"People with mental illness are no more dangerous than society at large, except perhaps to themselves."

That was part of the campaign to remove the stigma from mental illness. After all, hadn't pop culture always depicted "crazy people" with an ax in hand?

While I applaud the ongoing effort to erase that stigma, I wonder if we didn't let the safety assurance lull us into a certain complacency about mental illness.

For the moment, Cho Seung-Hui has blasted us from our complacency.

And though I would never want to go back to the days when "murder" and "mental illness" were synonymous, must we continue to shrug off these rampages by "misfits" and "loners" as inevitable?

They are not.

One thing about mental illness is known for sure: Treatment works. People with mental illnesses can be helped.

I see that NAMI – the National Alliance on Mental Illness – has slightly adjusted its basic statement. "People under treatment for mental illness are no more dangerous than society at large," NAMI legal director Ron Honberg told me yesterday.

"Under treatment" – a couple of very important added words.

Go read it all (free registration required).

As someone who has dealt with mental illness suffered by a family member, as have many people I have been surprised to find out), sometimes they are just sick. There is no rhyme or reason to their thoughts or feelings. They are sick. We would remove plague carriers from the general population to protect society and we should give serious consideration to doing the same to those with mental illness. It is no kindness to these tortured souls to let them suffer when they can be helped and sometimes they just can't see clearly that they need help. In our case, our family member did alert us and I thank God often for their clarity of thought that had them asking for immediate assistance.

Now I have fallen into the same trap as everyone else and given a solution ... which is no real solution at all. However, it might make life better for some people, and maybe not only for those who are the immediate sufferers.

As to the problem of evil, I still ponder it. Or rather my reactions to it. Knowing why evil has been committed should not make the evil seem less than that with no obvious motivation. But it does somehow, at least to me. I think that is a problem with my spiritual eyesight that I need to be aware of and ponder some more.