Chapter 1
This chapter: about 2,734 words, roughly 10 pages at 280 words a page. Updated whenever the site is regenerated.
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
I want to show you how my conviction that I’m nothing like the “bad people” compels me to act just like them, pushing them deeper into the very condition that enables their wrongdoing; how part of me knows I’m doing this, even as I do it; and how I hide this fact from myself. Maybe you’ll recognize something of yourself in it. Or maybe not.
I’m going to make some claims about your mind and what you know. I realize this can sound presumptuous. Hold them tentatively, until you see the picture they assemble. Then you can decide for yourself whether they hold. For me, seeing this revealed a surprising truth about the nature of evil. That’s why I feel compelled to share it.
Seeing this depends on a state of mind that’s easier to find in a memory than to describe, so I’ll start by asking you for one.
Limbo
Have you ever done something you knew was wrong at the time, but couldn’t fully admit it to yourself until later? Maybe you took credit for someone else’s work, said something cruel to someone who’d done nothing to you, or cheated on a test (or even a partner).
Recall what it was like to finally own up to it. The knowledge that it was wrong: did it feel like new information? Or like something you had always known, but somehow hadn’t let yourself know?
It was right there to see if you had looked: fully available to consciousness, with you just turned away from it. It lived in a strange kind of limbo, in which you simultaneously knew and yet somehow didn’t.
And was it just sitting there idle? Any time someone came close to exposing it, or you started getting close to it yourself, did you find a way to deflect? If you did, did that happen passively?
Looking back, did some part of you know you were doing that, even as you did it?
Why do we have to hide such knowledge from ourselves? For me, it’s because I don’t actually want to hurt other people. I can’t, when I can see myself in them. That part of me that can see it: call it my better nature.
To cause harm, I must push that perception out of view. Notice an asymmetry here: to be helpful, there’s nothing I must hide from a “bad part” of myself.
At some level, I know that this is how it works in others, too. But that’s a painful thought. It means that under the right circumstances, I’m capable of the worst acts humans have committed. So some part of me needs to believe I’m made of “better stuff.”
Watch what happens when I believe that.
I’ll narrate what happens in my mind in such an encounter. Imagine my target is someone who’s just been cruel to an innocent person. The threat is over, and now I’m confronting him. If it sounds like I’m contradicting myself in places, it’s because two parts of my mind are in tension.
I’ve decided he’s a bad person—not just someone who does bad things, but who is bad. My eyes are saying something like: I’m a better kind of thing than you. And I want him to feel the full weight of it, almost as a kind of punishment.
Part of me senses something dark about my message, though I can’t quite place it. If I were on the receiving end, I would recognize it instantly. The message this is all you are carries a subtle but primal threat: … and therefore your wellbeing has ceased to matter.
I would defy a message like that too, and violently.
But if I acknowledged that, it would undermine the verdict I feel strangely attached to: he’s bad, dammit. Irredeemable. So I push that knowledge out of mind. I’m only being fierce, and if he reacts poorly, well, it only proves my point.
And it’s not like I’m actually threatening him. I’m just hinting at what will happen if he doesn’t stop. When you look at it that way, it’s really more like an invitation—to give up his darkness and return to the realm of those who matter.
But the truth is, there’s nothing inviting about my tone or gaze. Nothing that signals he’d be welcome back. How could there be, when I’m trying to convince him that this is all he is?
I sense something underhanded in it—that I’m provoking him in a way that I’ll later hold against him—but here’s the thing: he’s actually bad, so what does it matter? He would have reacted poorly no matter what I did. Who cares if I give him a little nudge to help him reveal what he is? It’s still a net benefit to the world.
And he can’t prove I’m doing this. And crucially, neither can I. That way, I know it’s not on purpose. If he accuses me of it, it can only mean one thing: he’s projecting.
And wouldn’t you know it: there it is. He’s accusing me of exactly that. Not with his words but with his eyes. I knew it. But there’s also something damning in them:
Don’t pretend you’re doing something noble here. We both know what you’re actually doing.
Shit. He’s onto me. But I absolutely cannot afford to admit it. I don’t even want to believe I have that kind of darkness in me—the kind that would knowingly forsake a fellow being just to prove I’m nothing like him.
Surely that’s not what I’m doing. I’m only holding him to account.
And yet he just won’t let it go. He thinks I’m the bad guy. Ha! Classic.
Any doubt I had is now erased. This really is what you are—and I’m going to make damn sure everyone knows it.
Yet for some reason, this only makes him more defiant…
He leaves the interaction more certain than ever that his enemies are evil—unable to own up to their own darkness. Which means that the part of him that feels a duty to stand by his better nature: it has just been weakened. He doesn’t tell himself “I’m going to ignore my conscience.” His justifications simply become more persuasive in this rotten world.
If I’d looked carefully, I’d have seen that I was causing this. So I didn’t look. And look what it got me: proof that he’s evil. After all, he dug in against my purely righteous behavior.
There’s a brief flicker of satisfaction, vindication, even relief at being proven right—just before I relabel it disgust or dismay.
I knew it. Other people are the problem.
The same corruption taking place in his mind—it’s taking place in mine.
I’ll go ahead and name what’s happening. One part of my mind is provoking him into the reaction I need, while another part is kept in the dark, so that I can absolve myself of blame. Limbo.
And he can see both halves: that I am provoking him, and that it’s hidden from me. This produces a uniquely maddening combination that says: I know exactly what I’m doing and I’ll never own up to it. Normally, having my enemy read my self-deception would be awful. In this case, it’s beneficial—because it is the provocation. It is sufficient to produce the outcome I need, and also necessary. If it felt accidental, he might forgive or pity me instead. But if it were purely intentional, then it would read as overt malice—which would make me the bad guy.
So what exactly have I done to him? Nothing but show that I’m doing this to him. Which prevents his accusations from landing, which makes it more maddening, which I also knew, which he saw, which…
I’m showing him that he cannot appeal to my better nature, because I’m convinced this is my better nature—a condition I trust he recognizes as the hallmark of evil.
I must be present enough to track his reactions, counter them, steer around obstacles, etc.; while being absent enough not to register that I’m doing this. So it is intentional: conscious and goal-oriented. And yet I cannot be aware of it. I can’t sincerely hold against him evidence that I know I planted.
This, I believe, is the great paradox of evil. It never feels “evil” in ourselves, but always looks that way to our enemies. We “had no way of knowing,” while they do it with “full awareness.” Therefore, we deserve understanding while they deserve contempt. Which is precisely what keeps the pattern alive and well. Which part of us knows but is not ready to admit.
Here’s how I see it. Turning away from myself (or my better nature) produces a gap. And in that gap, something uglier takes control—the very same “thing” I hate in my enemies, which they now recognize in me (and not by accident). More on that in Chapter 2.
My desire to stop him came from a good place. But my verdict that this is all you are? Not so much. It required turning away from him—seeing him as something less. And as hard as I try to convince myself this can be a good thing, part of my mind (my better nature) will simply never fall for it.
Not only can I not fool myself, but I can’t fool others, either. Believing I’m different and special is inherently self-deceptive. It leaks out my eyes, showing my enemy what I’m up to, forcing me to hide it harder, which only helps him see it more clearly, etc.
As long as that need exists in me, this trap is nearly unavoidable. It will always reveal itself to others, producing exactly the evidence it needs to keep itself hidden from me.
What does it look like when someone fights evil without this need?
Think of a time when someone corrected you with integrity, without the slightest trace of contempt. Their anger was directed at what you did, and not what you are.
They might have been more fierce than I just was. But did it make you dig in? Vow revenge?
For me, it has a very different effect. Even if they have different politics, religion, creed: something about their behavior feels deeply aligned. Check if you’ve had that before.
This kind of correction can feel like it’s reminding you of something—that you’re better than this. The opposite of what I did to my enemy above.
Assuming you believe (or better yet, see) the sense in which this is intentional, it raises a curious question: how could this part of me be so sure it would provoke his reaction?
It needed to know he would receive it as hypocrisy—that I was pulling the very same move (turning away) I’m accusing him of, that he could recognize what it meant, and that I wanted him to. That’s only coherent if it’s a mechanism we share, and we know the other has it, and they know that we know, etc. In other words, it must exist as a kind of common knowledge. A shared basis on which contempt is rendered legible: we both know what it means to hide something from yourself. What I’m doing is violating that shared knowledge, and making him carry the knowledge that I am violating it, while I hide it from myself.
The darkness leaks out of my skull, empowering his, because its meaning is universal: he reads it the way anyone would. My justifications, on the other hand, are believable only to me (and my allies). I knew that too; it’s how I could predict his reaction. So part of me already knows the difference between the “good” I’ve invented to excuse myself and the real kind that everyone knows. I just tell myself I don’t, which helps him do the same.
The part of him that knows that difference is his better nature. I am speaking exactly to the part of him that I claim doesn’t exist. And, in my need to prove myself right (and righteous), I am attempting to bury it under another layer of confusion.
Of course that’s a painful thing to confront. No wonder I must hide it so carefully from myself. No wonder we, as a society, cannot admit that this is what we’re doing to one another.
If seeing this makes you want to hide, notice that’s the same verdict, pointed inward. It feels like accountability. It isn’t.
Other kinds of contempt
That’s the hot version. Contempt often runs cold. I just write the person off: a quiet filing-away, a politeness with nothing behind it, and a small satisfaction at being done with them. It’s the same verdict, delivered by withdrawal, and they feel it just the same.
Most of it is quieter still: a vague sense of well, I could never do that, or I’m just a better kind of thing than them. It isn’t always moral, but it’s always a sense of being more deserving. The stupid, the slow and the weak get the same verdict, with better cover: I’m only being accurate. It doesn’t feel like contempt at all, and it can happen a thousand times a day without my noticing.
I send it to people I love. The what’s wrong with you? that needs them to know they’re broken. The sigh that tells them what I really think of them, dressed up to make me seem like the reasonable one. The look on their face that tells me it landed, which I pretend not to have seen, leaving them nothing to accuse me of. It has the same flavor as what we call evil. Part of me knows it will spread the same way, too, and that’s part of why I send it.
I don’t only send it to people; I send it about them, to my allies, with nobody’s face in view. Or online, on social media. That spreads it too. Everyone in the conversation learns that the verdict is safe to hold, and leaves a little more practiced at it.
The subtlest form of all is aimed at everything: a flatness toward the world itself, where trees and animals and nature itself are just so much inert stuff. Calling it “contempt” sounds ridiculous, but it has the same essence, and originates from the same place.
Part of us can already see that the world isn’t inert; that seeing lives in limbo too.
Self-serving
Most turning away isn’t quite contempt. It’s quieter: the mind angling, all day, for small advantages at the world’s expense, and never letting us know it’s doing so. It’s the same turning away, at a low dose.
We see it easily in others: the private equity firm that buys nursing homes and calls the staff cuts efficiency, the politician who votes for the donor’s bill to protect jobs. Each would sincerely say they’re doing good, and each knows. That’s limbo. It degrades the world through a causality no accounting shows, and yet one that part of us always knows.
And when my contempt is aimed at those people, and not just at what they did, my mind is doing the same thing: making the world darker for my own benefit, while telling itself a very convincing story of how what it’s doing is good. This is why, if I want to end theirs, I have to see how to end mine.
Checks
Here are two checks you can try on yourself. Forget about the “right” or “decent” answer.
Is there something primally, viscerally satisfying about seeing evil violently punished? What might you be revealing to people when you feel that urge?
If you had the choice between delivering your worst enemy the vengeance they so richly deserve, or a pill that would instantly enlighten them, is some part of you itching to mash that first button?
Really pause and find the worst person in the world, and apply these checks to them.