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. 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 that everything was fine.
I mean, why not trust only what 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 just 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.
Why do I already know how I’ll use it against them?
I know what it’s like to be baited. The person’s words say one thing, but their tone and gaze communicate something much darker. They’re not serving what they claim to serve. I can see right through them—and I’ll be damned if I let them get away with it.
But that’s different. They’re bad and I’m good… right?
But… why would a person have to hide anything from themselves unless part of them didn’t want to be doing it? Are we the same on some level? It would mean I’m shoving a fundamentally redeemable person deeper into the abyss; smothering their light to prove they don’t have any.
Which would mean… oh, God.
I push this thought out of my mind. It cannot be.
Yet they seem to be accusing me of it anyway. Which is ridiculous, because if I were doing such a thing intentionally, I would know it—and I don’t.
Which means they’re not reacting to anything I’m doing. They’re projecting.
Ha! Caught them! 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.
Do you think that’s a coincidence?
But it can’t be on purpose, right? If I were fully aware of doing it, there’s no way I could. I already know where that path leads.
And yet something in me needs it to happen. Because if even the worst people are just trapped in the same basic mechanism I am—just further gone—then the horror of the world is not truly separate from me. I would have some connection to it; some complicity in it.
And that just. Can’t. Fucking. Be.
So I need to know they’re fundamentally different. I must prove it, for all the world to see.
What do you do when you need something, but can’t stomach the idea of actually doing it? When the very act of doing it would undermine the outcome you need?
You do it without knowing it. But how?
How do I reliably, purposefully bait someone into proving they’re evil without knowing it?
Think about what it takes to cause harm without knowing it; without feeling it. You must sever your connection to the deepest part of you; the part that only wants to do right by the world.
And how does that look from the outside?
What if “doing it without knowing it” is precisely “it”? What if that’s the signal?
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?
They know they’re in this state, of course—and at the same time, they don’t.
My darkness: it reveals itself to you while hiding itself from me. By hiding itself from me.
Part II: The Infection
Why must the darkness “turn me away from myself” unless something deep within me—the very thing I call “myself”—isn’t okay with causing harm?
And if I knew it were separating me from myself, do you think I would just let it?
No. What turns me away must also prevent me from knowing that I have turned away. It must convince me that I actually haven’t.
That’s why evil never feels wrong. It always feels justified or righteous.
But if it worked only on me, it wouldn’t survive for very long in this world, would it?
Tell me: when you see me in this state, what can’t you help but feel?
What can’t you help but turn away from—without having any idea that you have?
The darkness doesn’t win by directly confronting the light. It wins by masquerading as it.
When I treat you with contempt, something in me is teaching you that all that matters in this world is what we can get away with; what we can prove. And it does this by demonstrating it on you.
It robs you of faith in goodness itself—because where’s the evidence that I’ve done anything wrong? There isn’t any.
In that case, what does the word even mean—except whatever we want it to mean? Whatever we can prove it to mean?
But it’s not just robbing you, is it?
Both of us will go on to spread this newfound cynicism 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.
We tell ourselves that others won’t notice our self-deception, because even we don’t—and this is precisely how they do.
The darkness radiates outward, increasing the odds of genuine atrocities in locations distant in time and space.
Committed by fundamentally defective people. People whom it is my righteous duty to hate.
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 groups of people, confident in their own righteousness, form organizations: how do those organizations behave?
Nothing extra has to happen. There doesn’t need to be a “committee of evil” anywhere. Our individual self-deception: it scales up naturally. Inevitably.
And those institutions where our civilization’s collective self-deception has accumulated most intensely: what do we feel for their members?
Do you think that’s an accident?
My contempt for the great conspiracies of the 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 they were to suddenly disappear, 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.
It doesn’t live in a single place. Serves no one master. It is distributed across all our minds, hiding in our collective blind spot.
The belief that I’m the noble one standing outside the conspiracy, valiantly fighting it: that is the conspiracy.