To be a friend
To write my own way
Have meaningful conversations
Frequent deep play
To publish
To skate
To tell a new story
Get to sashay
Spend time alone
Worship today
“Evil” is permanently banned from usage. It’s the way we use it that sucks.
Evil Eeyore (Photo credit: ybnormalman)
Not ban the word evil. Just its use, its interpretation.
The word “evil” is a cop-out.
Daily Prompt: If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
Young Helen Keller is evil in our current interpretation. Anyone who can’t see, hear and so, speak human, and therefore acts in an incomprehensible way, terrifying, terrified and violent and we feel we can do nothing to stop it qualifies as “evil”.
Evil is where communication failed. Evil is an un-touched child in a grown-up body. Evil is an impossible extreme were only an Anne Sullivan destined to attempt the impossible finds purpose and fulfillment and something priceless.
Yet, once the magic word “evil” gets applied, challenge extinguished. You don’t have to stretch, work hard, grow, come to understand or be accountable for your actions toward anything tagged “evil”. You can do the same things “Evil” did or does without becoming “evil” yourself. It works, I promise. It’s a game of tag. It’s a magic bullet. It is the most useless word for getting any peace and happiness, except for in the form of entertainment. Movies and stories of “good” vs “evil” are fun.
If you want action-adventure, to fight and be right and win, if you want to use the essential word “evil” to set up this story-game, set it in Middle Earth, a galaxy far far away, or The Matrix. There is no place for this word among human beings in this realm. Here, when tempted to label any person “evil”, consider it a sign of ignorance. Maybe it’s a moment to reconsider what you believe and an opportunity to connect a Helen Keller with her Anne Sullivan. It may become a heart warming story. And perhaps, only the one right person may be the answer.
Photograph of Helen Keller at age 8 with her tutor Anne Sullivan on vacation in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Failure to see the truth and find the right solution and connection does not equal “evil”. It just makes a mess like failure to find the solution that works in any other kind of problem. It’s just an unfinished adventure story, success story. When you see “evil”, you are on that exciting catalyst dilemma part of the story where you can’t see the truth yet. It’s one of the best parts of any great story, though it’s challenging. If you tag it “evil”, there is no adventure, no story, no growth, no fun for your superhero. And you become what you see. By seeing “evil”, you become the antagonist. Have fun being the antagonist while thinking you are the hero.
“Evil”, like “sodomite” is a magic bullet irrelevant interpretation of a word. It only works like “Tag! You’re it!”, or normal people transforming into Agents when they see “evil” , if you are playing tag or plugged into the matrix.
Possible interpretations for the word evil:
I tried everything and failed.
I don’t know were to find the person who has got the medicine for this.
I don’t understand this person/problem. Can someone else f-ing figure this out?
That is an “evil” person, project problem, we need an Einstein.
No satisfactory solution or balance has ever been achieved here, yet.
It seems impossible, but since it needs to get done, it is possible.
WTF! I am so not the person for this issue!
Help!
Evil
I know there are lots of other options, just can’t think of them just now.
Competition focuses, reaches, catches, traps, evolves, gives, takes, glorifies, laughs. Competition is a god.
Competition is like love. I don’t want to give it up! Like love, competition puts the fun in everything. Competition makes games. Games make fun. Fun makes community.
Competition is god. Sometimes though, we stand up to god. We can pick how we want to worship. We get to say what games we want to play. Vote with our feet.
The game where a few smart and amazingly talented people beat the rest of the world at the Monopoly is not fun. The point of a game is fun right? Fun on both sides. When the game is over, it stops. Or when we say it’s over, it stops. It’s a game. We made the rules, remember?
Play a new game.
Tug of war competition in 1904 Summer Olympics. Photo taken from Wikipedia.
Tug of war is no longer fun when it’s people against a machine. Maybe this game got dropped from the Olympics for good reason.
Give us bread lest we die.
It’s that old story. Growing up I always thought the protagonists that the God in the Bible Stories helped were the good guys.
But Joseph Sold Into Egypt he was more like a Red Ocean dreamer of dreams. So, like Warren Buffet, he could tell what the economy was going to do. We get the story that his prognostication was fair and based on the weather. Maybe so. In that case, so is the economic climate: There was going to be an inflation then a drop. So he invested and bought up all the corn. Yeah, people ate nothing but corn.
Then when the Great Depression err famine came he did the usual.
The people spent all their money on food the first year of the seven-year famine, Great Depression.
Second and third years people traded their cattle for food.
Next years their land.
Then the clincher: Give us bread else we die!
So, our righteous Joseph-Sold-into-Egypt accepted the lives of everyone in the kingdom in exchange for feeding them. Viola!
He was the king’s deputy. Kings are servants of their people. Not the other way around. They got their jobs backwards.
I don’t know if a God did or didn’t give him the heads up or the vision of patterns and the wisdom to save the world from starvation. Enslaving everyone was not necessary, though. Or was it? It was four hundred years later that, well surprise, Joseph’s own descendants are enslaved to the system that he started when he might have just served.
They wanted out of slavery and vicious miracles got them out in our Exodus Bible story.
Key to being enslaved is both sides play the game.
Oh, so you want just you and the Pharaoh to be left alive then?
You lose us, you lose your kingdom. Ayn Rand glorifies this outcome. In her popular novel Atlas Shrugged, just a Pharaoh and a Joseph and a mighty girl are left after they didn’t help the people. Try and get dumber than that. No one else was worth it. Some folks do seem to think that is a great story. (Note: I was one of them. People change.)
“Give us liberty or give us death!”
It’s just an attitude, as opposed to:
“Give us bread else we die!”
People are more important than game rules. Rules and games are for people. People matter. Public servants are for people. Smart ones are great gifts to all of us. Smart people matter just as much as not-smart-in-that-way, people.
Joseph and Warren Buffet can serve and care and offer their gifts how their hearts desire.
We have hearts, too. We can dictate what we experience and believe by consciously making choices.
We don’t have to sacrifice liberty to live. We don’t have to kill anyone, or die.
My childhood hero Joseph Sold into Egypt no longer impresses me.
waywardspirit 