It's interesting how history cycles around to the same old thing, over and over. Ecclesiastes 1:9 reads: 'What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.' Ominous words that are sadly true -- a warning that mankind continuously fails to heed.
Historically, societies have good people and bad. The good people tend to live their lives with good intentions to stay informed, be involved in the community, heed their belief system, behave in a moral way, raise their children to be good people, and work hard. They innocently get swept up in the assumption that everyone else is also, basically good. So, they overlook the evil that encroaches upon their society in dribs and drabs. They look the other way, they make excuses for the bad behavior of others, maybe even taking blame for being the cause of the bad behavior -- all because of their internal belief that everyone wants the same things they want, and believe the same things they believe.But eventually, and out of nowhere, evil takes command of the society. The good people finally see the evil that has been there the whole time. While evil was still powerless, the good people did not see it, or did not want to see it, so they were blind. Perhaps they could not see it because they did not know what it looked like, smelled like, or sounded like.
Evil is silent. It sneaks up in the night, gaining footholds one drib at a time; one drab at a time. While the good people sleep, it sets a trap for its prey. When morning comes and the people awaken, they find themselves impossibly ensnared by the power of the beast, as it rains terror down upon the land, with full abandon.[...]
As the historical cycle goes, the good people don't stand a chance for they don't study history with the same rigor and attention to detail. Good people learn the stories of evil historical events, such as the Holocaust, with the focus on the horrible outcome. What they learn from the personal stories, the destruction of lives, and the devastating aftermath, is what evil looks like in its death. This is important, to be sure, but much more than that is required if they are to truly learn from history in order to avoid repetition. Good people must study the events that led to the horror with greater scrutiny. They must learn what evil looks like at its birth. What gets lost in the message of history is how, nearly always, good people were duped into complicity and cooperation, with and by, evil. Only if history is analyzed in such a way to determine what the silent evil looks like, and how it draws the good people to its side, will societies avoid allowing the evil to rise, again. And it always rises again.[bold text is my doing]
Evil studies and analyzes history so adeptly that each time it resurfaces it is able to advance more quickly and more powerfully than before, simply because it has learned from history. Good people must then do the same. They must be sure their children learn history -- the causes as well as the effects. If they aren't learning it in school, then it is up to the good parents to teach them. If they don't, they may find themselves like the good people of Germany -- duped, complicit, and guilty.
The evil haunting, or specter as Marx calls it, us today is communism/collectivism that is being prepared to be thrust on the whole world by economic circumstances. Just as the gulags and concentration camps didn't just appear out of thin air but were the end result of a long line of prevailing narratives from philosophy and culture that slowly filtered into the very fabric of society, so too is this modern day evil that is in the "birth stage" about to pop its head out into the world. Some of the prevailing narratives of today consist mainly of lies: man is causing the climate to change, therefore man must reduce his standard of living to save the earth; capitalism has failed and led to the current global economic mess, therefore capitalism must be scraped and replaced by a new system; no one culture is superior to another, therefore it is good to emulate a culture that is not conducive to human prosperity; the IMF and World Bank's stated goals are good, therefore they must be good; and etc. Not taking the time to look beyond the prevailing narratives of our time and taking a look at the foundation that these narratives are built on can lead one to end up "duped, complicit, and guilty" in supporting what can ultimately be called evil, using wisdom and summing up a very complex system into a simple word. It would suck to end up like the German people did after their country had been destroyed and their women rapped.
Good article.
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