EVIL IS AS EVIL SEES or WHAT’S A “PERSONALITY EXPERT” BUT ?

Can you believe this story? What good will name calling do in the scientific effort to understand people who seem to have no capacity to feel compassion for the suffering of others, which is what happens when presidents launch wars which kill untold numbers of innocent victims and homicidal criminals who torture their victims while killing them? Bush loves to use the word, “evil” to describe people in other lands who resist his illegal invasion of their country by his fiat. Is Bush more innocent because he doesn’t do the blowing up and rending of flesh in person whereas homicidal persons who also cut up and eat their victims do it on the spot? Dr. Stone needs to wake up and smell the beefsteak.

[Open quote.]
Dr. Michael H. Stone, a personality expert at Columbia University, favors use of the term "evil"…. He is now working on a book urging the profession not to shrink from thinking in terms of evil when appraising certain offenders, even if the E-word cannot be used as part of an official examination or diagnosis….

[But some scientists can arise above their need to moralize behavior in order to better understand it.]

"Evil is endemic, it's constant, it is a potential in all of us. Just about everyone has committed evil acts," said Dr. Robert I. Simon, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown Medical School and the author of "Bad Men Do What Good Men Dream."

Dr. Simon considers the notion of evil to be of no use to forensic psychiatry, in part because evil is ultimately in the eye of the beholder, shaped by political and cultural as well as religious values. The terrorists on Sept. 11 thought that they were serving God, he argues; those who kill people at abortion clinics also claim to be doing so. If the issue is history's most transcendent savages, on the other hand, most people agree that Hitler and Pol Pot would qualify.

"When you start talking about evil, psychiatrists don't know anything more about it than anyone else," Dr. Simon said. "Our opinions might carry more weight, under the patina or authority of the profession, but the point is, you can call someone evil and so can I. So what? What does it add?"
[Close quote.]


I’M A REAL DOG

Yesterday, I caught myself picking on Mertie’s dog Chichi for no good reason at all. I don’t mean I kicked or physically abused him. But truth is, Mertie and I had an argument the previous night, and she said something that made me feel read badly about myself. This seldom happens between us, but it did this one time….

Anyhow, the next day I found myself calling ChiChi some names in a shaming voice (as if he understood them) and just generally getting a kick out of the shamed dog look he so easily adopts. Later in the day, I recalled my action, then I recalled my own shame with Mertie’s words the previous night, then I saw that I got pleasure out of seeing shame in ChiChi’s demeanor. Then I saw what I an ass I can be, but more valuably, I caught myself being the animal I am and my need to lord it over other animals to make them bow to my power. Over and over, I’m reminded what evolution has given me to work with, and, again, I’m amazed that others can’t catch themselves in their animal lives as I can catch myself.

I think I’ve learned a valuable lesson here.


ODDLY ENDS

At the Salvation Army a couple of days back, I bought “Rio Grande”, the Ford/Wayne flick. Now I got two of the Ford/Wayne cavalry trilogy . “Fort Apache” and it. Next I need to get “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”. I hate what John Wayne stood for and what he did to fellow actors in the black listing days, but when I was a child, I loved his simplistic movies.

I hope at least a few Americans understand the difference between Martin Scorcese’s “Raging Bull” and George Bush’s “Waging Bull” performances.

How powerful is this god fellow that he needs so many hustlers out there in TV land and in the world and on radio to make sure we all think he exists? If he’s so damn powerful, why doesn’t he just get up off his lazy ass one morning and take a walk around the world up there across the skies of the globe?
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“I’m as pure as the driven slush.” —Tallulah Bankhead