2018 interview with Socrates: What is ‘evil’? How should ‘good’ people respond? How are YOU responding to good and evil? (7 of ?)

“We cannot fix the exact point at which our empire shall stop; we have reached a position in which we must not be content with retaining but must scheme to extend it, for, if we cease to rule others, we are in danger of being ruled.” ~ Alcibiades in 415 BC according to Thucydides, arguing for Athenian empire similar to current US “leadership” rhetoric today for more war in Syria, Iran, etc., etc., etc.

language warning: Socrates and I speak in the same direct language that caused his execution for “corrupting the young.”

Socrates (arms open, broad genuine smile): Carl! Welcome back!

Carl: Soc! (bro hug)

S: How may I be of service?

C: I’ve been contemplating the meaning of Life (and here), Soc, and wanted to include you in this public inquiry. I know we’ve discussed this before, with your emphasis that the purpose of Life on Earth is exercising virtue for growth, truth, and service.

I’ve been considering our .01% opponents for lying, looting, illegal rogue state empire, and the role they play as evil. If we stand that all is God, all is One, then these players are our brothers and sisters, of course, and because they are allowed by God then they must serve some kind of purpose a loving and unimaginably intelligent God concludes is the best available. Perhaps their presence is a kind of competition to spur our growth; a kind of “spiritual workout.”

As just another dumb-ass human with limited access to data, I’m guessing here, of course.

S: (listening intently) Of course.

C: (smiling) So, care to have a conversation on the topic of evil, Socrates?

S: (frowning) Nah, thanks. I really don’t like to talk.

(deadpan pause for three beats, then full laughter)

Of course! Evil! Ok! Let’s begin with what everyone might observe about so-called evil so we’re not confused about our subject. What is evil, Carl?

C: Evil seems to be the polar-opposite of virtue, Soc. Virtue is that which is good for all, in context of all of us existing within God’s creation. Evil seems to be those aspects of God as individuated points of attention who choose to exercise creative capacity for their own material acquisitions. That is, beings choosing evil reject God and others, see themselves as all important, and therefore seek to upgrade their lifestyles in material pleasures and benefits. They don’t want to die, and seek immortality as a kind of parasite to others: manipulating existence outside their physical bodies as resources to control.

S: (nodding) Ok, I follow that, but got anything easier?

C: (smiling with one chuckle) Well, that’s kind of the point of our conversation: to take something important, interesting, and complicated and make it simple. Let’s try three basic points. Evil is:

service to self with disconnection to others,
therefore without empathy,
but seeking partnerships to maximize their parasitism.

S: Shall we look together at each point?

C: Go.

S: Ok. Service to self. This seems self-evident that evil is attempting to disconnect from God and All Life in order to gain “superior” position relative to others. When you consider all the evil you see, Carl, and can imagine, is service to self present?

C: For one example, if we consider US “leadership” for parasitic forever wars in the present, this seems to match that evil wants domination over the weak, using all others as slave-like resources to maximize material gains for themselves. Does this also match your observations of Athenian empire?

S: It does. A small group of “leaders” lying to the public in concert to organize and order military to enforce ongoing tribute paid to the leaders. What else do you see important and fundamental about this philosophy of service to self?

C: It’s insane because a foundation of the philosophy includes clear lies: separation of existence, and then asserting one’s individual part as a wanna-be “God” to shape all other parts to one part’s service. Evil essentially tries to usurp God’s power to shape Life as evil seems to want: funneling all resources, natural and human, to itself for material wealth and physical pleasures.

Of course this is insane because the imbalance of all serving one is doomed for destruction, or even if relatively successful can never provide evil with any satisfaction as dominating and soul-crushing control repeats like a broken record.

S: Evil will never have enough control to satisfy itself.

C: Yes. And it gets worse: divine creativity channeled through evil will explore control and so-called “pleasure” through torture, pedophilia, and all kinds of manipulation in attempt to create worthwhile adventures, but must view all outside itself as “things” to either use or destroy.

Such destruction includes manipulating the public into lie-started and Orwellian-illegal Wars of Aggression (longer white paper here). It includes poverty to “motivate” the poor to feel lucky enough to work for slave wages. The costs are annually killing millions, harming billions, and looting trillions.

Evil’s destruction of its own environment causes a worship of death. This, obviously, is not sustainable anymore than a parasite killing its host. The word, evil, is an anagram of live, so perhaps evil means the polar opposite of Life.

S: So you’re defining evil in three parts: the first as service to self means:

attempt to dominate all things for its own use,
that such investment of attention and work is ultimately self-destructive from delusion that Life can be separated and therefore evil is at war with aspects of itself, and even when apparently successful evil will receive no pleasure from increasing control over what has already been experienced and will find itself wanting from lack of real creativity,
and that evil will distort creativity to become increasingly destructive to all Life forms around it.

C: Yup.

S: (purses lips, nodding) Ok, how about no empathy? How do you see this aspect of evil?

C: You go first, please.

S: Alright: If we understand Life, we must find no contradictions with what anyone can easily see around us. Humans seem to understand Life, in one way, through comparing contrasting aspects, such as evil and love. Zero empathy contrasts with total empathy, or total love.

Evil rejects love as it rejects the connectedness to all Life/God. Because whatever God is we’ll define as all Life, then all of God is interconnected. This includes all of us, all of nature, all of what we can and cannot see, touch, and otherwise experience through our very limited human senses.

Evil, or service to self, intentionally disconnects from Life in a type of frustrated experiment based on ignorance or infantile will to power. Whatever evil’s motivation to begin that journey, it certainly destroys love and empathy, as evil’s definition excludes concerns for others outside of maximizing evil’s utility of others as its own resources.

C: Nice, Soc. And look at this: the ultimate contrast in how to benefit most from others is on a spectrum I see on one end of unleashing others’ divine creativity to encourage synergy: the unimaginable breakthroughs of combining virtues, versus evil’s end of the spectrum to crush everything into desired patterns of what is already known, but must become stupefying boredom over time.

S: You’re saying evil will see its own errors over time and choose love, empathy, and acknowledge others’ existence to also be free and creative life forms?

C: Maybe. Or maybe evil becomes so pure it can’t co-create at all, and will choose its own destruction rather than sacrifice what it has built. Maybe that’s part of why Life has empowered evil’s existence; a kind of divine experiment to explore evil unleashed (and here).

S: The evil men in my time craved adoration from the crowds, fame built on lies of course, so we can seem to see evil as wanting a type of love from others but only based on propaganda that must keep others relatively stupid and weak.

C: Yeah, I agree. The public must be kept stupefied through “official” voices in politics, controlled media and education (and here), otherwise adoration will evolve into calls to arrest those “leaders” as crude liars; psychopaths literally killing millions, harming billions, and looting trillions each and every year.

I mean, oh my fucking God, people praise these psychopathic killers, looters, and liars only because they’re brainwashed. And they’re brainwashed from a relative state of unevoloved weakness that evil must keep dumbed-down to control.

S: The lack of love or empathy has another problem: constant fear of being discovered. Spies were common in my day, and mass surveillance is an area in your time that evil invests great attention and resources to safeguard itself from public discovery.

C: Yes, and here’s another problem evil won’t confront: karma. Choosing to destroy all it can’t control is a request of Life to experience what it gives. And who would want ten or a hundred lifetimes of brutal subjugation for one lifetime as a parasite?

These people are sick, yes, but must be removed from power to cause such massive harm to humans, animals, plants, and all inhabitants on Earth.

S: Ok, so what we point to about evil’s lack of empathy seems to match what anyone looking would see. Anything else you’d like to add to this point, Carl?

C: Just this: something happened in Earth’s past where evil seems to have fucked-up humans to condition them as fearful servants. I find this in my attempts to point to Emperor’s New Clothes facts central to helping these millions and billions of people, and trying to reclaim public trillions of dollars. 95% of people reject looking at the facts.

People seem shadows of what should be: crippled versions of strong, clear voices for virtue so that this planet becomes the paradise it could be. What do you see on this point, Soc?

S: (frowns in thought) I agree. I found myself exploring the extent of this servile acceptance of evil, then accepting it as the Gods’ will to express virtue as best I could on public trial. Well, that’s not entirely true. At age 70, part of myself was so discouraged and fucking pissed at such craziness that devolved into a 27-year fucking civil war that I kind of asked the public for more than they could do. They responded as best they could to vote by the hundreds to execute me rather than face my further requests to look in the mirror.

So yes, something seems to have happened to ordinary humans to shape them into evil’s minions.

(We both pause, feeling the weight of such a challenge of the awake attempting to be of service to the stupefied)

C: Our fault, really, or ignorance.

S: (shrugs) And understandable. Perhaps, as we’ve discussed, our choices to serve as we best imagined was and is the only path of the virtuous. Opening ourselves as a target to evil might be a kind of test to graduate from a certain level of evolution. “Give me liberty, or give me death” is how a recent American stated the case (in dark humor).

C: Yeah, being human on Earth is a tough gig.

Let’s move on, unless you have anything to add.

S: No. How about evil’s use of partnerships, Carl?

C: I also see hierarchies as a natural formation of evil, Soc. In order to maximize service to self, they need help. They need partners. But because evil is essentially selfish, they share the minimum they can with those willing to help. Evil wants and needs minions.

S: They certainly don’t want truth, as truth reveals all to all. They don’t want love, as love reveals all to all. Neither truth nor love supports parasitism.

C: Certainly true, yes.

S: So evil must form secret societies to optimize service to self, and that such hierarchies will promise and deliver greater material rewards to loyal minions as they provide greater material rewards to their masters?

C: That’s what I see. Evil uses minions, but those minions live in fear that evil, of course, has no love for them. These “deals with the devil” seem interesting as enough of the promises must be fulfilled in order to attract those beings willing to sacrifice love for material wealth, but with no guarantee to ultimately receive anything different from what they give: slavery and death.

It’s a path of self-destruction; eating their own as factions form and either rise or are destroyed in brutal control. The work of hierarchies seem to include:

maximizing resources (service to self),
keeping those human resources, the minions and general public, stupefied for such slavery and obviously without love to empower their own creative virtues,
spying to discover then crush human resources rising to oppose evil’s parasitism.

These partners for evil, or Evil Inc., these hierarchies must be secret in order to maximize parasitism of resources because:

ordinary humans reject serving evil when they see it clearly,
humans produce more resources if they believe they’re free,
the minions would reject evil if they saw the long-term karma it costs.

S: So the hierarchies are natural constructs of evil for obtaining the most resources.

Oh, and one other point: we can assume whatever evil “masters” are at the top of the hierarchy are much more intelligent than their minions. These people are brutally clever, master manipulators, and to be admired for their audacity as opponents.

Not intelligent enough to recognize their own lack of happiness in their current roles having dominion over Earth, but I’d be curious to see how they would respond to an invitation for virtue should the public remove them from power.

C: I’ve thought about that, too. As a history teacher, the “hidden history” goes past all records to keep those “masters” hidden. All they know might be evil, and after thousands of years of such living they might be ready and willing to evolve.

I spent years offering Truth and Reconciliation (and here) to them, and that I’d volunteer to speak for that resolution on their corporate media rather than imprisonment and death that most people would want when the depth of their evil is revealed.

I don’t want them dead; I want them showing us all how they dominated a planet.

I want the real history.

S: (silent and pondering with half a grin)

C: And I know you know that history, Soc, and won’t tell us. I’m not even asking this time. But we are leading to another question: what should good people do about evil?

S: Yes. What do you see?

C: Despite the difficulty all good people experience doing so, the light and love of truth seems to be the only virtuous choice. It seems divine timing hasn’t been ready for much progress to end evil’s dominion, and it seems we must invent ways of good-faith work to reveal that which ordinary people would reject if recognized.

Evil is a condition of parasitism.

Parasites depend on ignorant and/or helpless hosts.

S: So one should expose evil?

C: What’s the alternative? If one wants to tolerate psychopaths in one’s environment, ok. If that’s unacceptable, then it seems the first steps are to invite others to look, then when enough of us see, to take actions to remove the parasites.

S: And what if our human hosts defend the parasites? What if cognitive dissonance is too strong for truth, and good people are arrested, prosecuted, and executed for “corrupting the young” and “rejecting God”?

C: Whatever. I’ll take my complaints to management of this planet if I’m killed, but fuck if I’m taking this shit.

S: And please note you haven’t been killed, that the .01% “masters” have not been successful to dominate the planet for their victory, and that rebels like you are increasing in numbers. What does that mean, Carl? Surely evil would like to isolate the leaders among the good, then remove them. Why have they failed?

C: (grin) Dumb-ass human, remember? I don’t know, but can guess: spiritual reality rules, and Earth is some kind of place, some kind of school for choice. We leaders for virtue are protected somehow to offer choice.

S: Let’s see what we can say for certain exists for anyone looking. You and growing numbers of good people are both alive and in action for truth, justice, and love. Previous leaders such as President Kennedy and Martin King were assassinated as “solutions” for evil, but at what cost to evil?

C: It seems those deaths are among our best case studies to explain, document, and prove the existence of evil .01% psychopaths. It seems JFK, MLK, and thousands of others caused blowback onto evil that harmed them more than helped.

S: So evil must rule by willful submission?

C: Or perhaps they have a “season” to showcase just who and what they are. Perhaps the “night of evil” is a periodic school for all of us to exercise virtue as an “extreme sport.” Perhaps we experience virtue only to the degree we experience evil.

S: Perhaps, yes. But to my question: does evil require submission?

C: Apparently. Who will do their evil bidding if not minions? They need an army to run a planet: government to do what they want through policy, media and education to “cover” their crimes, and banking/finance to enrich themselves and pay the minions. All of this requires cooperation.

S: So what can ordinary “good” people do about evil?

C: What Gandhi and King concluded: non-cooperation and love of truth. Want some great quotes? (two more here)

S: Certainly!

“One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding… can be removed.” – Mohandas K. Gandhi, Indian Opinion (1 October 1903)

“‘A time comes when silence is betrayal.’ That time has come for us… The truth of these words is beyond doubt but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government’s policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one’s own bosom and in the surrounding world.

… A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. … A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. … A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. …We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. And history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate.

… These are revolutionary times.” – Dr. Martin Luther King, Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence

S: So that is your observation how to respond to evil?

C: It’s a start. The scope of a project to “reclaim” Earth from evil goes beyond that start. My particular role seems, at least for now, just to exercise my academic training and professional experience to just do that: clearly tell the truth.

Others have other roles to play.

S: (eyebrows raised) Yes, sorry about needing to keep the real history of this planet a secret. These truths are for your own spiritual development to work out, with the limitations of being human on Earth you accepted for this placement. The work done by researchers like you, and it is significant work as you and I know, would only be done through motivation. If you lived a life of bliss, perhaps you wouldn’t find that motivation (knowing pause).

I can say you’re loved more than you’re capable of imagining, always spiritually protected, and as you’ve stated: a legitimate path forward is to discover and exercise virtue as best you can imagine. Your thoughts, words, and actions are co-creating what doors open and close.

Don’t be attached to appearances, or think you know very much of the big picture. Parts of the nature of being human are recognizing the illusions of being human, both in sensory limitations and the full agenda of bullshit burying us, and the challenge to reclaim your connection to God that is absolute.

C: (deadpan) Yeah: don’t worry, be happy.

S: Oh, come on (slaps my shoulder), sometimes you feel that way. At your best? (broad and genuine smile)

C: Or my worst for the stupefied doubly upset by my trust in God to accept what I receive, along with pointing out the central facts of our lying and looting psychopathic wanna-be masters.

I don’t want to be happy under these conditions on Earth, Soc. It doesn’t feel appropriate. Being human feels like being in a form of war. I can point to many of the ways we’re constantly under attack, but with the damages and denial of my fellow victims… (sigh)

I don’t know. I don’t feel happy about being punked by evil, Soc (slight smile).

I find it’s easier to contribute “happiness” through truthful acceptance of reality, or God’s will of what we all co-create at any given time. I don’t feel right feeling or saying I’m happy about the attacks we receive for living and teaching the most important truths, Soc.

S: Yes, I don’t mean to patronize you to “feel happy,” Carl.

C: Hey, Soc: what should both Alcibiades and President Trump tell their children when they don’t want to eat their vegetables? (see quote at start of essay)

S: (pauses to think) Ok, what?

C: Give peas a chance.

S: (no expression) Hm. What shouldn’t be said at Trump’s house about giving peace a chance?

C: (winces) What?

S: “Sounds Greek to me.”

C: (nodding in deadpan) That’s good.

S: (turning serious again) Lifetimes on Earth, up to this point, are tremendous and challenging work. God’s plan will trump evil’s plans, so to speak. Don’t worry: Life is totally fair and honest in accounting for the value of one’s work, Carl. All people acting for virtue are rewarded accordingly. That’s what should make you as close you can feel to happy about all this.

If people really knew how fair this accounting is, people would be fearless.

If people knew their connection to God, the Oneness of the One, people would find total peace anytime, anywhere, and under any circumstances.

C: Soc, are you happy now? I mean, in your position disincarnate?

S: Oh, yeah I am! I’m on vacation in the love, power, and unimaginable intelligence of God! We can tap this love whenever we want, and it is so pure, so strong, so all-embracing, it takes you literally to your knees in tears of joy, and this isn’t close to describing it!

The power of God, once felt, can no longer ever be denied. God is in charge, brother. All that is, only exists with God’s permission. All that is, is one kind of intelligent creation or another given energy to discover it’s utility to all of us. The whole story is divinely amazing!

I can’t tell you why Earth exists without breaking a central aspect of this intelligent design: this is for you to exercise faith and virtue to feel and see for yourself.

But happy? That word isn’t close to describing the beauty, joy, and opportunities of my existence here.

And Brother: my work on Earth is leveraged. My help I gave there gave me ten times the help I receive here.

C: All good, Soc. Good to be reminded. (gentle smile)

S: (in gentle empathy) I’m only talking with you because I enjoy communicating to your readers and you, Carl. Those committed to virtue are my friends, and friends of beings all over creation diversely beautiful and powerful beyond imagination. As proud as I am of my work on Earth, I’m relieved to be done, and earned a “part-time retirement” to help those I choose who genuinely earn such help through well-practiced virtue.

Evil serves God, Carl, as bizarre as that sounds. It has a teaching and learning purpose for the beings on Earth given their stage of development.

Evil is both more horrible than your readers can imagine, and at the same time serving God as the best design so far to accomplish desired work.

I can’t tell you any more detail, but seek and ye shall find.

(pauses to see if there’s more helpful to say, and if I have something to add. I do not)

C: Thank you, Socrates. Coming to grips with evil is a big deal for humans. I appreciate your help for public consideration.

S: Glad to be of service (opens arms for a bro hug, which I happily give)

“Interview” series:

Satire series:

I make all factual assertions as a National Board Certified Teacher of US Government, Economics, and History (also credentialed in Mathematics), with all economic factual claims receiving zero refutation since I began writing in 2008 among Advanced Placement Macroeconomics teachers on our discussion board, public audiences of these articles, and international conferences (and here). I invite readers to empower their civic voices with the strongest comprehensive facts most important to building a brighter future. I challenge professionals, academics, and citizens to add their voices for the benefit of all Earth’s inhabitants.

Carl Herman worked with both US political parties over 18 years and two UN Summits with the citizen’s lobby, RESULTS, for US domestic and foreign policy to end poverty. He can be reached at Carl_Herman@post.harvard.edu

Note: My work from 2011 to October 2017 is on Washington’s Blog, which the owner closed from Internet censorship in 2019, and here since. Work back to 2009 is censored by Examiner.com (blocked author pages: here, here). This means that some links in essays are inactive. If you’d like to see those articles, go to http://archive.org/web/, paste the expired link into the search box, click “Browse history,” then click onto the screenshots of that page for each time it was screen-shot and uploaded to webarchive.

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2018 interview with Socrates: What is ‘evil’? How should ‘good’ people respond? How are YOU responding to good and evil? (7 of ?)

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