The weight of the world

I see many people watching horrible atrocities in other parts of the world and feeling outraged. I feel it too. I want to grab a sledgehammer and smash anything and everything that could ever allow innocent people to be harmed for absurd reasons like a territorial grab, money, political influence or religious ideology.

I spent a long time focusing entirely on all the injustices I could see, many of which were in plain sight. I saw everyone in terms of part of the problem and part of the solution.

But I have a tendancy that I don’t observe in many other people. When I hate something, I try to immerse myself in it. When I see something I think is utterly horrible and that everyone around me condemns, I try to find reasons to support it. It doesn’t mean I DO support it, but I spend time with the ideology that would allow me to support it.

I’m not trying to be contrarian. I just want to understand how anyone could do such a thing. I am curious and I feel confident that I can learn a lot in the process.

I also understand how “dangerous” this feels. We see others sucked in to crazy world views and we don’t want that to happen to us. But if we are so strong in our convictions, what do we have to be afraid of? If we know we are right, why should this be scary?

I try very hard to understand the worst of people.

This is not an easy practice. It’s much easier to say “I could never do such a thing” than to dig and dig seeking a monster within yourself. And once you find it in yourself, you can see it in everyone.

And I see it in you and everyone you know. This is not to say you are going to do horrible things, but anyone who believes that some people are just born evil and that they are fundamentaly different isn’t being honest with thenselves.

When you see the people you love harmed, you’ll see it. When you see heartless acts of cruelity, it comes closer to the surface. That version of yourself that says “by whatever means neccisary”. That you that can excuse horrible things as a means to an end. That version of yourself that can stop seeing other humans as humans.

How could they be humans when they behave that way?

Every true angel knows what it’s like to be a demon.
Every real hero knows what it’s like to be a villain.

Gather your darkest, ugliest thoughts and see where they lead. I promise you it is closer to a monster than you want to believe.

You can blame them for choosing that path, and that’s fair! You can blame a system for propegating such behavior, but can you try to understand the system on a deeper level, removing all your judgements about it?

Can you do that? Can you look at the matrix without your own imperfect human judgement and understand on a deep level why it is the way it is? Can you see how it evolved without your own judgement calls?

Human greed? Dogma? Trauma?

Yes! But go deeper!

Do you really think these aren’t part of your program as well, just because you condemn them?

I do not make such an assumption.

That’s why I stopped fighting and started digging harder. I want to know every single corner of my mind and my heart, to find all the contradictions and inconsistancies and to fix them. And in the process, I will inevitable change my ideas about certain things, and that’s ok.

I have certain core values that are beyond any ideology and those anchor me.

It’s scary though. Friends may abandon me. I will often feel like I don’t belong anywhere, especially in an increasingly polarized world.

But at this point, I realize that if I want to create a more ideal world, I need to become a more ideal version of myself. I have been trying to rewire myself into someone who is capable of bringing more love into this world, one where it’s harder for anyone to get away with the horrible things we see today and have seen in the past.

And I feel more and more convinced that my ability to make a difference in the world is almost entitely about making a difference in myself, clearing out my bullshit and reframing everything to stop feeling like a victim because no matter what happens I have control over what I put my focus on, and everything else can begin to change from there.

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