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, 3rd century
Part I: Limbo
Have you ever done something you knew was wrong at the time, but couldn’t fully admit to yourself until later? Maybe you made a cruel comment to boost your ego, took credit for someone else’s work, or cheated on a test (or even partner).
Try and remember what that was like. You knew it was wrong, even as you did it. So the knowledge wasn’t unconscious—but it wasn’t fully conscious either, was it? It lived in a strange kind of limbo, where you simultaneously knew and yet didn’t.
The part that knew: it couldn’t tell you exactly how it knew, could it? So you listened to the part that could—the part that “proved” everything was fine.
I mean, why not trust something you can prove?
Deep down, I know that what lives in the “bad people” lives in me, too. But this is too horrible to admit, so what do I do? I accuse them of being fundamentally other; inherently defective.
At some level, I know this “othering” is what enables all harm. Could the executive desecrate the rainforest if he felt its thrumming heartbeat as his own? Could normal people commit atrocities if they recognized themselves in their victims? No. To cause harm, we must shield ourselves from the life in others.
So by dehumanizing them—treating them with contempt—I’m doing to them exactly what I condemn them for. I know they can sense this, but that’s a good thing. They deserve to feel what it’s like to be on the receiving end. Maybe then they’ll stop.
But does anyone actually learn from this, or does it only embolden them? I already know the answer, and yet I can’t help but do it anyway. Why?
Trick question. I don’t do it despite knowing this—I do it because of it. Watch what happens.
Part of me feels completely righteous. Sure, I may be provoking them, but so what? It’s not like I’m making them more evil—just exposing what’s already there. Because what kind of person reacts that way to righteousness? I’m revealing their true colors! A genuine service to the world!
But something uncomfortable gnaws at me.
How do I behave when treated with contempt? I know the other person isn’t serving what they claim to serve. Their words say one thing but their tone and gaze convey something much darker—almost like they’re baiting me to prove themselves right. Seriously, fuck those people.
Good thing I’m not doing that. If I were, I’d know it—and I don’t.
Still… why would this person have to hide anything from themselves unless part of them isn’t okay with doing it? Are we the same on some level? It would mean I’m shoving a fundamentally redeemable person deeper into the abyss just to prove they belong there. Smothering their light to know they don’t have any.
Shudder.
I push this thought out of my mind. Because if I don’t know I’m doing that, then I couldn’t be.
Yet they seem to be accusing me of it anyway. Which means they’re not reacting to anything I’m actually doing—they’re just projecting.
See! I knew it! They really are rotten to the core! I had nothing to fear after all. I mean, I gave them every chance, and this is what they chose of their own free will.
There’s only one way to deal with people like that…
There is nothing more primally, viscerally satisfying than violently punishing evil. Pause and feel that.
And I’ve just nudged my enemy one step closer to becoming exactly the kind of person who can only be dealt with that way.
Each step makes me more confident that they’re truly beyond help—and I need that, because if they’re not, then what the hell have I been doing?
If I’ve been making them worse, then might they have spread that darkness to others? How far might it have rippled out?
It would mean that the horror of the world is not truly separate from me. I have some connection to it; some complicity.
And that just. Can’t. Fucking. Be.
So I must know they’re fundamentally different. I must prove it.
What do you do when you need something, but can’t stomach the idea of actually doing it? When the knowledge that you’re doing it would undermine the very outcome you need?
You do it without knowing it.
You turn away from a deep part of yourself—the part that wants to do right by the world. And how does that look from the outside?
Have you ever been on the receiving end of a dehumanizing gaze? Doesn’t it feel like the person is somehow absent or “turned away” from themselves?
That’s what you’re seeing.
They know they’re in this state—and at the same time, they don’t.
But you only see the part that knows, don’t you? And what does that make you feel for them?
My darkness: it reveals itself to you while hiding itself from me. By hiding itself from me.
This is how it spreads itself to you.
Part II: The Infection
The deepest part of me—the part incapable of wishing harm—is also what warns me when I am turned away from it. Which is the thing you recognize as evil.
So when I turn away, that fact is telegraphed to you and at the same time hidden from me. Both happen as a single act.
But it’s not just that I don’t know I’m turned away. I feel more certain than ever that I’m not. Like I’m seeing more clearly than ever before.
People committing atrocities—they don’t feel evil. They feel impossibly righteous.
Just as I do when hating them for it.
The darkness doesn’t win by confronting the light head-on. It wins by masquerading as it.
When I’m in that state, you can tell I’m rationalizing but I can’t. Because it doesn’t just usurp my moral capacity; it hijacks my entire thinking apparatus. I don’t just feel righteous; I can practically prove it.
No amount of thinking harder will reveal that I’m lost. If anything, it will make me more confident. Isn’t that true?
Which means I’m not just showing you that darkness is the way—I’m giving you a lesson in how to prove it to yourself. Teaching you how to ignore the part of you that knows in favor of the part that talks. And in so doing, I’m making you question whether the former even exists at all.
I do this by demonstrating it on you. Because where’s the evidence that I’m doing any such thing? There isn’t any. You would sound crazy for suggesting it.
The unprovability isn’t a bug: it’s the mechanism itself. That which robs light from this world by reducing it to mere ideas.
My darkness isn’t fighting yours. The two are collaborating from the shadows of our minds. My contempt for you—it is a secret handshake between our dark parts.
Both of us will go on to spread it to others. We will justify all sorts of tiny misbehaviors, confident they’re irrelevant in the grand scheme of things—or perhaps necessary in the fight against Evil.
I’m not benefiting myself at the expense of others—just sticking it to the man!
Not fostering contempt—just telling it like it is!
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. Fuck around and find out. Darwin Awards!
We tell ourselves that others won’t notice what we’re really doing, because even we don’t—and this is precisely how they do. Which is what we secretly needed.
This darkness radiates outward, relentlessly, increasing the odds of genuine atrocities in locations distant in time and space.
Committed by fundamentally defective people. People who need to be taught a lesson.
One part of my mind is doing my dirty work while another part keeps its hands clean. What does that remind you of?
Plausible deniability.
When I gather with my allies to foment contempt for our shared enemy: nobody is twirling mustaches. There’s nothing “evil” in our meeting notes. And yet, what do we invariably produce? What follows us out of that room?
Nobody sees the secret handshakes—because what secret handshakes?
When groups of people, unaware of their own shadows, form organizations: nothing extra has to happen. The self-deception scales up naturally. Inevitably. The left hand doesn’t know what the right is doing—even as it absolutely does.
And those institutions where our civilization’s collective self-deception has accumulated most intensely: what do we feel for them?
Do you think that’s an accident?
My contempt for the conspiracies destroying our world and the “uniquely evil” people behind them: deep down, I already know what it will accomplish. And I need it to accomplish that.
Because if all the darkness “out there” were to suddenly vanish, where would that leave me?
Where would there be left for my own darkness to hide?
The root conspiracy: the one ultimately behind all the evil—there’s a good reason we can never quite find it. Never pin it down. Why it feels so shadowy and yet so pervasive.
It’s because it doesn’t live in a single place. Serves no one master. It is everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
That’s because it is distributed across all our minds. A hidden network, operating just beneath our conscious thresholds—and yet fully visible if we know how to look.
I can’t find it because part of me has always been in on it.
The conviction that I’m the noble one standing outside the conspiracy, valiantly fighting it: that is the conspiracy.
Here’s what I’m really conveying to the “bad people” when I’m cruel to them:
You are the one who will carry my shadow. All of our shadows. You know this. I know this.
But good luck proving it.
The evil people: they are the perfect victims. Our collective dumping ground.
Part III: The Light
(TBD)