Preface
For so long as the root of wickedness is hidden, it is strong. But when it is recognized, it is dissolved. When it is revealed, it perishes. … It is powerful because we have not recognized it. —The Gospel of Philip
Bring to mind the very worst people in the world. The ones who hurt innocents without any sign of regret—some of them, apparently, with glee. You know the ones I’m talking about.
How do you feel about them? How do you want them to feel?
Maybe you ascribe their behavior to a force called evil—something they have that we don’t. Or maybe you see it as a profound form of confusion. Either way, check if there’s a feeling: there’s something fundamentally different about them. I could never do that. I’m made of better stuff.
The rage comes from something good in us—something that refuses to let it continue. But if we’re honest, there’s something else mixed in. A part of us that would love nothing more than to see them hurt—quite independently of any good it might do. Beyond the justice it would serve. Check and see if that’s true.
Here’s a test. Say you could either deliver the righteous vengeance they so richly deserve, or give them a pill that magically enlightens them—ending the threat, but no punishment at all. Forget the “right” answer. Isn’t there a flicker in there just itching to mash that first button?
I know there is in me.
But who cares, right? It’s not like we’d ever act on it. And if it’s just sitting there, confined to our skulls, then how could it matter? There’s no way it could have any effect on the world.
Except that it does. Because that belief—I’m nothing like them—doesn’t just stay in our heads. It leaks into the world. It designs our institutions, our politics, our justice systems. It compels us to behave in ways that secretly reproduce the thing we hate, perpetually recreating a world full of “evil people” who we can be sure we’re nothing like.
The idea that the “dark” part of us is confined to our skulls: that’s the lie that lets it leak out.
You may have heard versions of this before and dismissed it. Where’s the evidence?
I want to show you exactly how it works. How a hidden impulse inside us inevitably expresses itself in our behavior and systems, and what we can do to end it.
Nothing here will ask you to soften what you see, forgive what shouldn’t be forgiven, or pretend the harm isn’t real. If anything, you’ll end up seeing more clearly what’s wrong—how our individual blind spots work together to create broken systems we can’t seem to fix.
I can’t argue you into this, and you should be wary of anyone who tries. What I can do is take you to the places where you can see it for yourself—in your own memory, where you have evidence I couldn’t have planted.
If you look and recognize what you find, that’s the evidence.
Let’s start with small examples, since that’s where this is easiest to see.