Hello dear Reader,
I have been unwell. I'm actually going to be calling my physician in a little bit to make an appointment to deal with a possible sinus infection. Other aspects of my health are not very well at the moment either. It is making quite a few things challenging.
I woke up today with the hope that today would be the day things turned around. Instead, I found news reports about the massacre in Las Vegas and more details about transgender children being abused. Grief is a reasonable response to such things, especially when you do have a fundamental love for life. I am, however, numb. It is not a pleasant sense of ennui that has been romanticized by certain people.
It is the horrible numbness that comes when you are burned and for a brief moment you can't tell if you feel as though you are freezing or on fire. It is the numbness that comes when you have learned that someone you dearly love is dying and you are helpless to do anything to even bring them comfort. Or the numbness as you witness a tragedy so great it alters the lives of even the people who come in passing contact with it.
Some would have us say that we have seen evil and it lies in the hearts of humanity (some would say men specifically, I refuse to because all genders have this capacity). The faith of Filianism and Déanism tells us that evil is the fruit of that which is not of Dea. It tells us of the Dark Queen and her servants who function in much of the mythos as the Satan figure does within modern Christianity. We are told that we are fundamentally good, though flawed in our existence in this world because we are at some distance from Dea - who is the source of and the one who sustains all good.
When I take these things into my mind and contemplate the deeds of myself and others, I find myself troubled. The fundamental question as to the nature of evil gets more challenging when we move out of the rarified realms of pure philosophical thought. We find ourselves asking if the person who steals a loaf of bread is wrong? And if they continue to be wrong because they are doing so to feed themselves or another. The list of conditional modifiers that can be hung upon just one simple question makes the question of evil murky and hard to resolve, even when the simplest answer is that it is from that which is not of Dea.
I look to Loki, a much maligned god of the Norse pantheon who many would treat as the Asatrur version of the 'Devil'. His answer has always been that evil is only evil to they who are harmed by it. It is an answer that many would take great offense over. At one point, I did as well. Then I looked at the horrific things done for the sake of the equally nebulous concept of good. Murder is murder, regardless if it is done on the street over a pair of shoes or an imagined insult or upon the field of battle. When one kills another, it is murder. The value of the act comes from the context, which is more often than not defined by the mindset of the parties involved. (This is one of Loki's favorite arguments by the way that our perception of good and evil are relative.)
Thus, I find myself drawn to the mysteries of physics. Einstein had some fairly definite things to say about frames of reference and how they influenced everything. Such things could be applied to philosophical or theological questions. But, at what point do we find that we must say that the value judgments are meaningless because they have no direction they move in at the speed of light? It is a question that keeps coming to mind of late.
Is there good or evil? Well, yes. But they are only recognizable in context. That which is good to me may prove evil to you and entirely valueless to someone else. Thus, I question, is there some absolute value that good and evil can be calculated against. Some manner of spiritual equivalent to lumniferous aether or something else that we can gauge good and evil against. In my years of struggling with this question, I have no answer. It only brings up greater questions. And the biggest of them is why people do these horrible things.
The only answer I have been able to come up with is because they think it good and right and proper. And when considered from my frame of reference, they are insane. And the question about why the gods permit such things are even more difficult. It is, however, something to discuss on another day.
May there be healing for all who have been harmed this day.
