The Diabolical and the Dialogical

The elephant in the room is the evil in the world that is all around you. You try to live through the stresses of the day, and have little room to deal with the stresses of your family, let alone those of the community, country, and world.

So the evil in the world that you read about or hear about becomes part of the background noise in your life as you deal with matters more urgent for you. You might be too busy dealing with project deadlines, getting the children off to school, and helping friends with their social lives to worry about the hate and evil that is everywhere.

A lot of evil resides in the people, politics, and clash of cultures around you, and it seems insurmountable. For example, how much can you do to help, as one person, in face of the evil intentions of whole countries? Alternately, the neighborhood might be ruled by gang warfare, and your children live in fear and you feel helpless. Or, some politicians in government might be corrupt and steal money from accounts destined for people in need, leaving you in worse shape than ever.

There is another type of evil that you might encounter -- the potential for you to be evil; the potential to express the worst bad habits that greatly hurt other people reside in all of us. You might say to yourself that this is impossible, but who knows what circumstances the future might bring to you and who knows how your psychological integrity might change because of them.

Or, at the other extreme, already you could be acting in the worst way, such as in abusing a child or a partner, and you know it as the wrong thing to do as much as other people. But you do not care to stop nor do you care about the consequences that result for the people who you hurt.

Or, you might perceive in a cold, calculating way that evil is necessary in a particular situation and expressing it might even bring you a certain pleasure (think sadism). [This type of evil is not the subject of this blog; but people who have this type of problem need much help to change their behavior.]

Sometimes you might perceive aggressive or evil intentions in other people when in fact the intentions are not this bad. Think of when you have attributed the worst intentions to people and ended up being wrong.

The same thing can happen about peoples or countries perceptions of other peoples or countries. Unfortunately, you or even a country or people could end up acting out of anger, hate, or evil for quite inappropriate and incorrect reasons.

You might think that I am exaggerating your potential for evil. To the contrary, because evil is a reality and can even reside in each of us, it is best to confront that reality and have each of us become aware of the potential for evil to manifest and learn how to deal with it.

Anger can disintegrate into evil without much effort, especially when you are in the middle of expressing anger. Anger is an emotion that indicated frustration, but it does not come with a plan to solve the frustration. That has to come from you and you might not have the will, resources, or ways of doing this effectively without help.

Anger management is a common psychotherapeutic topic; and many of the techniques related to anger management can be used to manage its most extreme version - the impulse to evil. Good anger management skills begin with good communicating with others and good communication with the self.

Good communication with others might help you get through tough times and offer you options that you had not been aware of. Good self-talk could spark you to find better paths than retreating into anger, hate, or evil.

Anger and evil reactions can be controlled by positively building yourself and your situation, and you can learn to do this better. Moreover, you can get other people to help you with it. Sometimes something as simple as a caring response by other people can help defuse your anger and turn things around.

For example, instead of perceiving your situation as a dead-end for which you have to strike out at others to get some semblance of a solution, you could learn of a different way and resist striking out and causing harm to others. The more you learn anger control, coping mechanisms, and how to solve problems, the more you leave the path that leads to anger as a first response.

Ethics and Morality Essential Reads

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As you build your psychological positives, there is less room for negatives. As you grow stronger psychologically and in the direction of using good habits, the temptation to use bad habits lessens. Anger becomes less of an option, as does evil. By your positive growth, you greatly reduce a place for the potential for evil that you harbor to find an active place in your psychology.

As you become more equilibrated and pleasant, you encourage the same in others. Your growth feeds their growth; other people become better at developing positive habits, anger management skills, evil control, and resistance of falling into bad habits.

The approach that I am advocating is that the war against evil begins at home - this approach gives less chance for evil to manifest and more chance that it will be successfully altered or resisted in other people who want to act in evil ways.

Of course, there are times when peoples and countries need to combat great evil directly. However, peoples or countries that live a philosophy of anger control amongst themselves can better coordinate in acting together toward combatting external evils. Once more, evil control starts at home.