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The Evil We Do
March 27, 2007 | Category: In My Life
I have been in a flare, caught up with my muse (tip-tapping the characters and stories out) and, just to avoid housecleaning, strutting up and down my yard (coincidentally gardening) to show off my pink hair. But I was IM'ing along today and found out about a blogger getting death threats and the absurdity of it stunned me in my tracks. So here are my thoughts on the matter - or, rather, my anti-thoughts.
Wherever there is good, there is also evil.
And evil will always grow, until it reaches the undefined threshold that stirs us up to take a stand.
Good will always be handicapped. Because good? Plays by the rules.
Duh.
This is the age-old axiom that no-one has been able to solve.
More restraints do not make a civil society. The evil just pours istelf into domination.
Less restraints do not make a civil society. Just look at the Internet - a more fertile ground for anarchy there never was, and it just gets crueler every day.
What started out as a grassroots forum of the brilliant and tedious has slowly evolved into a place that harbors malice and screams for controls. We walk here, brittle in the knowledge that to say our names is to paint a target on our backs.
For every happy wedding site, with giddy updates about lace and favors... there is someone lurking by the light of a monitor, tapping away a comment full of hate and vile. A little meaner, now: Next time I will say worse, and worse. And you will rage, and I will win.
It will not get better. High school kids find themselves destroyed in a single night's whim with a vindictive MySpace page. Pedophiles troll openly to rip apart the children barely old enough to launch the Disney site. Politically loud bloggers will find their names eviscerated on a web of sites aimed at making some folks feel big by ripping others down - and most of all, making a hit-count rise.
There are no arms to take up. No plug we can pull. This is the brotherhood we belong to by birth. The one that will define us after we die. It is why we slow down to look at car accidents. It is why we gather for the tragedies, but not the mundane.
It is the evil we do.
It is why we pray there really is a God.
Machiavelli once dared to respond to the question: Is it better to be feared or to be loved?
So many of us would prefer feared, if it came with the attention of kings.
But there find the seeds of evil.
Good is not weakness. It is not boring or pedantic. To seek its growth does not ring the death of ripping honesty, of lively debate, of genius, of wit.
Good is kindness without untruth. It is laughter without meaness. It is critical thought and creativity and yes, heaven help us, sometimes blogs about lace and favors.
Today I wanted to thank and celebrate those who will hold themselves open, knowing trolls live beneath the bridges and daring them up into the sun.
They who are smart, and sometimes spurt-out-your-nose funny, and generous with themselves. They who have stayed, when many have shuddered, sighed, and shuttered up.
And most of all, they who remain wicked but never evil - and would, frankly, smackdown evil with a spoon long before it would occur to them to join the fray.
There are so many, and here are just a few. Thank you:
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