I am in the process of reading a book I bought in the bargain center of chapters entitled Evil: An Investigation by Lance Morrow. I am about a quarter of the way through it and it seems as if it has been written on the heels of Sept. 11. It seems as if it is Lance Morrow’s way of trying to figure out and discern evil. One of the things I have found most interesting is the discussion on the relationship between evil and humour in the brain – which are somehow linked. I am not sure what to do with that but to say that I think, like Lance discusses, that the emotions and reactions that are linked to evil are similarly located with humour which I think explains why humour is often our coping mechanism for evil. I have to admit that when I have experienced evil it is often coped with on an emotional level with humour to some degree not in an unsympathetic way but with humour none-the-less.
I have also found some of the stories of societies in the world that have so deteriorated that some have accepted steeling food from children and pushing elderly people into the fire as entertainment. I think it goes to show the depravity of man and not just in isolated power crazed ways (like Hitler, Stalin, etc.) but in everyday places and in everyday ways.
However, I have to disagree with Lance in that to me, and I could be wrong, he assumes that evil is just in specific places doing specific things where I think it is way more subversive than that. I agree that our medieval concept and picture of Satan is distorted but evil exists and as C.S. Lewis describes in The Screwtape Letters it is more subversive than we give it credit for. I think evil exists as much in apathy as it does in intentionality.