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[AlohaDawg]

This is so true, but you know, maybe part of the problem is that if you really think about it - that every single other person has that big world in their head that they're at the center of it - it tends to make your brain explode. Dealing with every single other person you meet all day, if you thought about this every time - it's hard to see how you'd get on with your life. Treating most other people as minor characters is kind of an understandable defense mechanism.

Maybe the problem with so many people <is> that they are at the center of it...and we as humans are overwhelmed utterly by trying to make sense of that world and make it work and be successful AND balance the world we've created with those everyone else has, and the world around us.  Maybe sin or evil sneaks in as easy ways to seek comfort, or pleasure, or to make our little worlds seem better.

We aren't enough to fill the center of our worlds. There is always a space left. As humans, we try to fill that hole with anything we can seize on - drugs, sex, crime, behaviors, alcohol, work, religion, internet pornography, whatever...a good friend of mine refers to that space as the "God-shaped hole" in each of us. I believe that a positive faith can fill that place and give a person lots of reasons to do 'good' in the world, and that many of the other things that people try to fill it with can lead not necessarily to evil but certainly to continued unhappiness that some people follow to some form of evil, whether perpretated on us, in us, by us, or through us.

[lprkn]

I don't know if I really have any stories of true evil. To me, evil is knowing the right way to treat people and then doing the opposite, just for your own pleasure or to dodge a bullet, i.e., deliberately screwing over another person to save your own skin. I have a couple of stories of stifling incompetence, but nothing that really sinks to "evil." I'll have to think about this.

[Golfhaus]

We aren't enough to fill the center of our worlds. There is always a space left. As humans, we try to fill that hole with anything we can seize on - drugs, sex, crime, behaviors, alcohol, work, religion, internet pornography, whatever...a good friend of mine refers to that space as the "God-shaped hole" in each of us.

You're friends with Bono? Sweet!

[side_show]

Oh, you are all so awesome. 

AD is definitly speaking one half of the debate in my head.

All the stories that have come in so far have been really, really interesting.  It's also interesting to see the range of what people consider evil behavior.

I just spent four hours straight postering as the snow got worse and worse.  When I walked into the house, I was covered in so much sleet that globs of watery slush made plishing sounds on the floor a few minutes after I walked in.  I fanned out from the arts community to the broader community, and I'm really looking forward to what I get back now, because there's definitly going to be total strangers sending me their stuff now.

Oh!  And as I was walking around postering, I heard someone screaming out a car window, and looked back to see a friend flayling out of the opened door of a moving car.  After I ran over and exchanged hugs, she introduced me to her uncle and niece.  She thought my poster looked really cool and took another copy for her neice too.  She said "oh we have lots of evil stories" with a gleem in her eye, and I said they were all probably about her.  After the all drove off I remembered why they were together: my friend and these family members have been attending the trial of the man who stabbed her sister to death. 

[jaydub]

Is there something wrong with me that... I can't think of anything?

I remember in CCD class, waiting for our turn to go into the confessional, the other kids and I would compare notes to figure out what some good sinnage would be.  I always felt like I was lacking somehow in that I couldn't come up with much more than talking back to my folks.  Which God didn't need to worry about punishing me for, since my Mom wasn't going to let admonitions about "`Vengeance is Mine', sayeth the Lord" slow the administration of The Wooden Spoon.

[side_show]

Even better is going in there and telling the priest your sin, only to have him tell you it isn't a sin, and then kind of debating it with him for a bit, then just giving up and saying, "okay fine, I was sort of not respectful to my mom the other day." We had confession so often that I started making up sins.  Then I realized that was a sin.  Then I told the priest that, and he told me I needed to put a little more thought into confession, because surely I must have sinned since last week.  But the thing was we were required to go to confession, but isn't it actually possible to have NOT sinned every week?

The stories from strangers have started rolling in.  Fascinating.

My little evil for the day was the asshole spazz who told me the Panasonic digital voice recorder and voice to text software I bought was Vista compatable.  I then recorded someone's evil story on it, came home, spent a couple hours trying to set up the software, went to the Panasonic site, tried to upload the Vista patch they had up, which also didn't work, called the Panasonic line where the customer service agent told me the site is wrong, they had put up a patch they hoped would work, but it didn't, and that the software and recorder itself are actually not Vista compatable, that the real patch will only be ready in about a year, that I should just return the recorder.  So I just finished transcribing it the old fashioned way, and while I was doing it another total stranger was leaving a story on my voicemail.

It's a cottage industry of evil people.

[theinevitable]

"It is reason that engenders self-love, and reflection that strengthens it; it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or afflict him; it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other men; it is in consequence of her dictates that he motters to himself at the sight of another in distres, you may perish for aught I care, for I am safe. Nothing less than those evils which threaten the whole community can disturb the calm sleep of the philosopher and force him from his bed. One may with impunity murder another under his windows: he has to do nothing but clap his hands over his ears, argue a little with himself to hinder nature, that startles within him, from identifying him with teh unhappy sufferer. Savage man lacks this admirable talent, and for want of wisdom or reason, is always ready foolishly to obey the first whispers of humanity. In riots and street brawls the populace flock together; the prudent man sneaks off.

Hence, it is certain that pity is a natural feeling which, by moderating in each individual the activities of his love of himself contributes to the mutual preservation of the entire species. It is pity which inclines us to help those we see suffering, without reflecting about it, and which, in the state of nature, takes the place of laws, morals, and virtue, with this advantage—no one is tempted to disobey its soft voice. It is pity which will make every robust savage turn away from robbing a weak child or an infirm old man of the sustenance he has acquired with difficulty, if he himself has hopes of being able to find his own somewhere else. It is pity which, in the place of this sublime maxim of rational justice—Do to others what you wish others to do to you—inspires in all men this other maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect than the preceding one, but perhaps more useful: Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others. Briefly put, it is in natural feeling rather than in subtle arguments, that we must seek out the cause of the repugnance which all men would experience at doing wrong, even independently of all the maxims of education. Although it could be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his caliber to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would have ceased to be a long time ago, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasoning of those who constitute the race. "
-Jean-Jacques Rousseau

I am a big fan of this man. Sorry for the huge quote. Although some people in my class were trying to argue he meant this to be taken literally, and he actually thought that Pity was a savage impulse that the wise ignore?

[AugustWest]

My little evil for the day was the asshole spazz who told me the Panasonic digital voice recorder and voice to text software I bought was Vista compatable.  I then recorded someone's evil story on it, came home, spent a couple hours trying to set up the software, went to the Panasonic site, tried to upload the Vista patch they had up, which also didn't work, called the Panasonic line where the customer service agent told me the site is wrong, they had put up a patch they hoped would work, but it didn't, and that the software and recorder itself are actually not Vista compatable, that the real patch will only be ready in about a year, that I should just return the recorder.  So I just finished transcribing it the old fashioned way, and while I was doing it another total stranger was leaving a story on my voicemail.

It's a cottage industry of evil people.

I have a Panasonic voice recorder and this squares with my experience.  The actual recorder is great, but the proprietary software sucks.

Also, from what I understand, Vista sucks too.

[jaydub]

I am a big fan of this man. Sorry for the huge quote. Although some people in my class were trying to argue he meant this to be taken literally, and he actually thought that Pity was a savage impulse that the wise ignore?

That is probably the fault of reading it too closely.  The overall thesis is that there is wisdom in simple impulses that upon reflection with reason and philosophy, lead the unlearned down a path which advances humanity; that its a good thing too because the general capacity for reason is much less frequent than the teeming masses.

I think its interesting that I hear an echo of the maxim that Alistair Crowley espoused, "An it harm none, do as thou wilt" in Rosseau's thesis there.   

[linnea]

I remember in CCD class, waiting for our turn to go into the confessional, the other kids and I would compare notes to figure out what some good sinnage would be.  I always felt like I was lacking somehow in that I couldn't come up with much more than talking back to my folks.  Which God didn't need to worry about punishing me for, since my Mom wasn't going to let admonitions about "`Vengeance is Mine', sayeth the Lord" slow the administration of The Wooden Spoon.

Ouch!! Not The Wooden Spoon! How the hell did people justify hitting their kids with that? I hated it..

[smick]

Ouch!! Not The Wooden Spoon! How the hell did people justify hitting their kids with that? I hated it..

I always feel like a jerk when I do this, but I have my son copy dictionary lines.  The other day he was working in the letter F, and came to me and said "I learned a new word."

I nodded sagely, "That's always a good thing.  A nice byproduct of what you're doing.  What word did you learn?"

He got kind of weird and looked at the ground at this point and said "Fellatio."

Being as he's just hit puberty recently, he's had the "birds and the bees" talk.   It appears he's moving on to advanced concepts, before he's fully out of the "girls are icky" stage.

[AugustWest]

I always feel like a jerk when I do this, but I have my son copy dictionary lines.  The other day he was working in the letter F, and came to me and said "I learned a new word."

I nodded sagely, "That's always a good thing.  A nice byproduct of what you're doing.  What word did you learn?"

He got kind of weird and looked at the ground at this point and said "Fellatio."

Being as he's just hit puberty recently, he's had the "birds and the bees" talk.   It appears he's moving on to advanced concepts, before he's fully out of the "girls are icky" stage.

Education

[jaydub]

Ouch!! Not The Wooden Spoon! How the hell did people justify hitting their kids with that? I hated it..

Well, I'm pretty quick.  It extended her reach.

[side_show]

One of the actors involved with the project sent me a link to a video he made titled "Jamil Mahmood's Suffragette City" which is enjoyable, but what really made my day is his other video "Golden Vilar".  Vilar is his last name.  Dude is brilliant.  Wonderfully odd, and brilliant.

[side_show]

Just finished writing this play.  Some of the random stories were awesome, others sad, horrifying, etc. (person who told the story noted beside)

Here's a highlights reel since none of you will get to see it:

1)  a mother abuses her two children in drastically different ways (as told by the mother's adult daughter)
2) a guy goes into his ex-girlfriend's apartment using his old key, covers the mattress in a fine layer of powdered baby pablum (apparently this will stink of sour milk due to sweat and excretions), emails her family and coworkers pornographic pictures of her using her email address, and rolls her sex toys in poison ivy (as told by the guy who did it)
3) a murdered woman returns from death to let the love of her life know he doesn't need to cry anymore (as told by the woman's sister)
4) a gang member unsuccessfully attempts to drown a guy in a sewage lagoon, stabs him, douses him in gasoline but can't get the lighter to work, the guy dives into the sewage and swims through piss and shit to save his life (as told by the now ex-gang member, fresh out of prison)
5) a six year old explains to his four year old brother what evil is (as told by the two children)
6) a comic store owner talks about his personal take on the most evil moment in comics: when the Chief reveals his true nature in Doom Patrol.
7) a woman acts out a rape fantasy related to incest abuse from her past (as told by the woman)
a girl about to turn 18 comes out of the closet to her homophobic uncle (as told by the girl)
9) a monster movie fan recounts his reaction to Godzilla vs Hedorah and the fear of a monster of one's own making.
10) a man fantasizes about revenge on the man who killed his loved one (as told by the man)
11) a woman sees her former lover, who has been so badly beaten by her latest partner that she is unrecognizable (as told by the ex-girlfriend)
12) a guy is so caught up in doing drugs that he barely notices his girlfriend is dying - the solution?  Do more drugs (as told by the guy)
13) the same comic book store owner reminisces about another evil moment in comics (the Leader blows up the Hulk)  and reflects on the absence of clearly defined "good" and "evil" of today.

14) cut scene: a vet suffers PST and flashes back to killing a child warrior. (as told by another soldier who saw this soldier kill the boy)

Maybe now you understand why I've barely been here?   

Thanks to the two members of the board who contributed stories.  Apologies for the one TOUAMBIE story I didn't use - you got it in a bit too late and I already had way too many stories, but it was a good one, so thank you.