Defining Evil In A Chaotic World

By James Donahue

Evil no longer seems to be what society says it is. The society in America, for example, strongly identifies such things as drugs, free sex, public cursing, robbery, murder, treason and now terrorism as evil things. Yet people in this country freely participate in everything on this list which is a contradiction in what we say we believe.

 Because of the way we live, and the things we do to one another and to people of other nations in either the name of God, the interest of national security, or just because we can get away with them, many foreign nations view us as an evil society.

The Moslem world, which ironically has produced a radical sect of people willing to blow themselves up and kill as many people around them as possible for Allah, regards the United States as "the great Satan."

For those who might raise an eyebrow or two at this challenging proclamation, we make our case:

Most Americans consume alcohol, acquire prescriptions for pain medicine, sleeping pills and other "formula drugs" from our doctors, and many of us smoke marijuana. The sale of "over-the-counter" pills to treat everything from colds to headache is a big business. A portion of our society also uses cocaine, hashish, LSD, amphetamine and other narcotics for recreational purposes. Everyone who does any of these things uses drugs, even though our society says this is evil to do so.

Many people engage in relatively free forms of sex. More and more couples just live together rather than get married. The rise in free sex among people of all age groups is reflected in the dramatic increase in sexually transmitted disease, including the dreaded AIDS virus. An apparent rise in homosexuality and pedophilia also is an indication that Americans are willing to do forbidden sexual acts, even though our society and even some state and local laws proclaim this behavior as sinful, illegal, and therefore evil.

Public cursing and use of four-letter bedroom and bathroom words has reached an all-time epidemic. Some women use these words as frequently as men. And the cursing is no longer refined to the factories, bars and men's locker rooms. You hear children using these words openly on the street. The words are freely used in television programming and especially in Hollywood movies. Yet our society identifies this kind of language as wrong.

Everybody steals. It seems to be ingrained in our cultural fabric to walk away with another person's property, especially if we find the item lying exposed and unguarded. Consequently we have locks on the doors to our homes, our cars and our suitcases. We lock up our bikes, our garages and especially our money. We cling to our possessions when out in crowds. The more we have, the more we worry about losing. We buy insurance to protect our investments from theft. We banter over prices in the stores, hoping to buy at a lower rate. A successful businessman is often a person who can outmaneuver his competition even if he has to cheat to do it. And we love to bring home pens, paper clips, paper supplies and other useful things from the place where we work. We use the boss's telephone to make personal long distance calls, and have no qualms about using the company copy machine or computer printer for personal business. Yet we all agree that stealing is evil.

Most of us refrain from killing other people. Yet we send our sons (and daughters) off to war where they are expected to kill soldiers (and now civilians) in other nations. Many of our states freely use the death penalty to punish people for certain crimes. There wasn't enough room to house all of the gawkers who wanted to watch the Timothy McVeigh execution. They had to furnish additional space and use closed circuit television to accommodate all of them. Some television stations wanted to televise the killing. Our movies and television programs are filled with stories of murder, war and death. Our leaders talk openly of murdering Osama bin Laden, the so-called leader of a group of terrorists that orchestrated the events of 9-11. Few Americans blinked when Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was hung after we invaded his country without provocation. Radical Christians have been murdering doctors and medical staff involved in operating abortion clinics, believing that they are doing “God’s work” because the abortion of unborn human embryos is conceived as murder. We are a barbaric nation. Yet we know that "thou shalt not kill" is one of the Ten Commandments and therefore killing must be evil.

Treason is something most of us would say rarely happens in the United States. But are you sure? In recent years numerous people in high security positions have been arrested and charged with selling information to foreign nations. Now that we are fighting a vague war against a people many of us aren't even sure are guilty of any wrongdoing, there are murmurings on the Internet and even in some of our daily newspapers about the truthfulness of our leaders. That our president is constantly protected by armed guards and rides around in a car protected by bullet proof glass suggests that he is in constant danger when among the people. That we have a national militia movement filled with members who believe they may someday have to rise up to protect the Constitution by force is troublesome. The government perceives the militia groups as treasonous. After the terrible events at Ruby Ridge, Waco, Oklahoma City, and 9-11, we have no doubt the militia groups think certain people in high government and military positions are treasonous.

Americans say they are appalled at terrorism and we want this practice stopped. Yet this nation is considered by much of the world to be a master of terrorism. Our bombing campaigns against Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and Libya in recent years killed a lot of innocent civilians and left many others wounded, homeless and without food. To make it even worse, we laced our bombs with metals poisoned with depleted uranium. People in these countries surely consider us terrorists. News reports say the people of North Korea are currently terrified of the United States and are preparing to defend themselves against us. Earlier campaigns against the Mexican government to gain territory in the Southwest, and the American Indians were no less than early acts of American terrorism. Our fire-bombing of Dresden, Germany, during World War II destroyed the entire city which was not a military target. We did it on purpose just to terrify the Germans. Thousands of innocent people died. We did these things willfully, making up slogans like "manifest destiny" and "God is on our side" to help us justify our actions. Yet we say terrorism is evil and the United States government is heavily involved in a strange “war against terrorism” launched by former President George W. Bush.

The people in the United States seem to be forgetting who they once were. Instead of a great nation of free people, we are behaving like we are residents of a second class society and living under tyranny. Those not seduced by football games and their nightly six-pack are stockpiling guns and bullets because they are afraid of their government. People are packing away so many bullets, and our military is putting such a demand on ammunition the bullet manufacturers can’t meet the demand. Our government, in turn, appears to be afraid of the people. The courts have all but thrown the Bill of Rights out of the window and authorized police, FBI and CIA agents to listen in on private telephone, fax and Internet conversations, just in case we have would-be terrorists at large. Insanity is running amuck.

Indeed, we are a nation divided. Many believe (and there is supporting date) that we were tricked into waging war on innocent people of Iraq and Afghanistan for the sake of big oil interests. The story is that the oil companies have an eye on newly found oil in former providences of Southeastern Russia and Iran. That Russia suddenly has become a world competitor in the oil market is strong evidence that this story might be true. It is said there were plans to build an oil pipeline across Afghanistan and Pakistan to the sea, but the Taliban was in the way. This might help explain why U.S. soldiers are dying in a war against the Taliban, a radical Islamic group that was not involved in the 9-11 attack against the America. It might explain why former President George W. Bush invaded Iraq, a major oil supplier to the world, and why the United States is doing some saber rattling over Iranian nuclear policies that to date do not appear to be a threat to anyone. It has all been for big oil and of course, the American military industrial machine that feeds on war.

Some say 9-11 was a conspiracy generated from within the Bush Administration to give us an excuse to attack key nations in the Middle East. But would our own government stage an event so terrible as the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon just to get Americans to support such warfare?

It will be up to historians to judge Mr. Bush and the key figures involved in the events that occurred during his term. It is only recently that the story about how Winston Churchill appears to have targeted the liner Lusitania for a German U-boat torpedo to help get America involved in World War I. There is evidence that top military officials in the Roosevelt Administration set up the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor to get America involved in World War II. And some are now suggesting that John F. Kennedy may have been murdered because he was contemplating shutting down the Vietnam conflict, which was against the wishes of the national military powers.

Whether these stories are true is not for us to say. Our policy is to question everything and accept nothing as truth. We are all trapped in a third dimensional existence where everything we think is true is only an illusion anyway.

This is a nation of confused people. We are confused by the conflicting teachings of the church, our schools, our government, our society and our collective memory.

Alastair Crowley was perceived in his day by many to be an evil person. Crowley, a magnificent writer and brilliant scholar as well as magician, once penned a strange brief work called The Book of the Law. He claims it was dictated to him by a spiritual entity named Aiwass.

While Crowley insists that the text of this short work is not his own, he wrote an amazingly prophetic introduction that appears in every copy of the O.T.O. (Ordo Templi Orientis) published book. It was about 100 years ago that he wrote this warning of the future:

"Liberty stirs once more in the womb of Time.

"Evolution makes its changes by anti-Socialistic ways. The 'abnormal' man who foresees the trend of the times and adapts circumstance intelligently, is laughed at, persecuted, often destroyed by the herd; but he and his heirs, when the crisis comes, are survivors.

"Above us today hangs a danger never yet paralleled in history. We suppress the individual in more and more ways. We think in terms of the herd. War no longer kills soldiers; it kills all indiscriminately. Every new measure of the most democratic and autocratic governments is Communistic in essence. It is always restriction. We are all treated as imbecile children. Dora, the Shops Act, the Motoring Laws, Sunday suffocation, the Censorship--they won't trust us to cross the roads at will.

"Fascism is like Communism, and dishonest into the bargain. The dictators suppress all art, literature, theatre, music, news that does not meet their requirements; yet the world only moves by the light of genius. The herd will be destroyed in mass."

Crowley described current events almost to the letter.