This is a weird month. The sixteenth will be the anniversary of the day my friend got shot at Virginia Tech and it will also be the Day of Silence to protest against GLBT namecalling and bullying. In a weird ironic twist, the Westboro Baptist Church will be protesting at Virginia Tech on the sixteenth. I'm not sure why.
It does make the day more difficult though, and a day for reflection.
There's a difference of opinion about what makes someone Good or Evil. Some think that "we" are Good while the "other" is evil. It happens elsewhere. It won't be one of us.
There's always an "Us" versus "Them" conflict going on in some people's eyes. Usually it's because when someone does something extremely fucked up, nobody wants to claim them. Nobody wants to say, "well yeah, this happens around me a lot!"
Not in my back yard.
If we can write these people off as foreign, as the other, then we don't have to deal with the bigger problem of hate or evil on a smaller level - in everyone. We don't have to acknowledge that anyone can do something horrible. We just have to decide if we are going to or not.
This helps us group people - probably unfairly - by region or orientation or race. We decide that we can't be as barbaric as them and we are more civilized, more moral. The idea is that good is something you just ARE. There are good people. There are bad people. Everyone is one or the other.
I think that we are all capable of horrible acts. Bullying and assaults and anything else can happen in any region to anyone. And horrifyingly enough - BY anyone. People who are otherwise Good People you'd never suspect of evil oftentimes surprise us and do the most horrific things. That's why people always say, "I would've never thought he'd have all those bodies in his basement! He's such a nice guy!" It's not because this person's neighbors and friends are all idiots. It's because even good people are capable of doing things like this.
Writing it off as one side versus another ignores pretty much everything about a situation and puts it into a neat little box in a corner and that's it - no problem is ever solved, nothing is addressed again. We have our answer. Evil did it.
I don't think, for instance, all the homicidal racist types out there today are necessarily just Bad Guys who finally decided to show their true colors. Circumstances cause people do do these things. Even otherwise good people. Of course, once these people have acted in this way and held up racist signs and even threatened the lives of people they need to be prosecuted and the acts need to be condemned.
I just don't think arresting them will make the world a little less evil. It's always around, so is Good. Until we fix the things that make it easier for evil to exist and make itself known we won't accomplish much. Until we address poverty and joblessness and economic depression and until we can talk intelligently about racism and homophobia people will keep being written off as evil or good. We'll continue to be shocked when a good person turns out to be a serial killer.
Until we all decide never to do bad things and until we all decide to work together to make everyone's lives better we'll keep dealing with this. We should stop being so in denial about ourselves and about our friends. We need to address evil within ourselves first if we want to eradicate it.
The guy who shot my friend at Virginia Tech, I still don't consider him evil. Neither does my friend, actually. This is a guy who had major mental issues for years. It was documented at the school and his psychologists and psychiatrists had information about it as well. He'd drawn violent images and wrote violent papers and he stalked two girls. He had noted and significant mental impairments which led to the shooting. He wasn't "evil." His act was evil. I really believe that if he hadn't been failed by the school, by Virginia's mental health system and by a lot of other things - as well as failing himself by not being more vigilant in his own care - this wouldn't have happened. Even if he were the worst person on the planet.
There are safeguards and they prevent things like this even with bad people. Even just having more supportive friends could be the difference between someone doing something evil and deciding not to do it.
That's why the Day of Silence exists. It teaches people not to bully. It sends a message. It reminds people about how horrible slurs against GLBT people are. It helps to educate people to stop them in their tracks before they resort to bullying - and I think it can be effective. We need to keep educating everyone instead of putting them in dichotomous groups.
All anyone really needs is a push in one direction or another. Can't we all help to push them to do the right thing?