I do not believe that natural events can be called "evil". They are surely destructive - who can see the images from the Indian Ocean tsunami of three years ago and claim otherwise? "Evil" as a word to describe such events, however, gives to them a essence, a purpose, they do not have. The destruction wrought by any natural event is only a byproduct of the event, an accident (to use classical parlance for a moment) rather than something essential to what that event is. There were hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, volcanoes, etc., long before human beings walked the earth. Long after our species goes extinct (as we surely will in the course of billions of years natural history), they will continue. To call them "evil" is to make a claim based upon a misguided anthropocentrism; the world does not, in fact, exist for human beings, to serve our needs and desires. It is the height of hubris and pride to think that the world cares a whit whether we as a species survive or not, or that any number of human beings die or suffer due to events that are nothing more than the result of natural forces.
Radical evil is what concerns me. Willed acts that serve no purpose but destruction. Whether it is the destruction of one human life, or the institutionalized destruction of human communities, either actively or passively, we have to do with that which is the most base threat, not to the created order (such as it is), but to human life and well-being, both physically and psychologically. Evil is the question that hangs over every attempt to make sense of the world, of humanity, of our history, our psychology. The attempt to fathom the depths of evil in the Belgian rape of the Congo, say, or a parent killing her child leaves us, in the end, with a large blank spot. All the usual suspects - greed, lust, the desire for power, even contemporary categories such as addiction, madness, and other psychological jargon - end up only telling part of the story. We are faced with the uncomfortable reality that there exists, not just in some people but in all of us, a shadow, a desire to act out, to destroy. Through accidents of history, sometimes these destructive elements become institutionalized. Sometimes, it is bad enough that such persons effect just one life, or a handful.
Facing this reality is never easy. As I said below, it is always easier, perhaps even necessary for a time at least, to distance ourselves from such as those who represent the void that exists when hope, love, and life have all been rejected in favor of rage, violence, and despair. It is easy to dismiss John Wayne Gacey as a madman. It is even easier to insist that such a one as this has no relationship to us and our lives. He is the Other to the nth degree - a reprehensible example of what is not human. We can celebrate his death because with it goes a mortal threat not only to innocent life but to our own equilibrium, our own sense of equanimity about ourselves as good people.
To hear and read about Gacey's life, however, is to confront the dilemma implicit in grappling with radical evil. His tale is a tale the echoes so much of our contemporary anomie and listlessness. His decision to succumb to his most base desires is only the end result of a path all of us walk, to a certain extent. We can deny that we would make the decisions Gacey made, the horrid destruction he wrought, the fear that he brings up in all our minds when we think of how ordinary he appeared. Lurking behind the smiling face of the party clown and local up-and-coming politico raged the darkest dreams of all of us. The difference between Gacey and most of the rest of us is one only of degree, not of kind.
We deny this to our peril. If understanding is to be achieved, we have to accept this reality. We have to look in the eyes of those we deem irretrievably lost to infamy - whether it is the ruthless sociopathy of Josef Stalin; the mindless perfectionism of the Khmer Rouge; the strutting, cocky swagger of Ted Bundy; or the lost, empty gaze of Jeffrey Dahmer - and see something of ourselves in them. If we do not do this, we miss the lesson that is available to us. We miss the check that must always exist in us, a check that keeps us from taking those small, almost baby, steps further down the path than we should go.
It is right here, I believe, that art serves an important purpose, because it can do obliquely, through image and symbol, what rational thought and consideration refuses to do.
This painting by Goya, entitled "Saturn Devouring One of His Children" is one of the most horrific images in modern art. At one and the same time the graphic depiction of a tale from mythology, a reflection of the inner turmoil in the artist's life, what has always struck me by this painting is the way Saturn's eyes bulge, staring out of the painting at the viewer. He is not considering his meal; nor does he have his eyes closed as he tears off another piece from his child. He is forcing us to look and see, not just the painting, but ourselves in this painting. This is as much a dark mirror as it is a dark work of art.
This is Black Friday by Willem De Kooning. Here we have a modern piece, more abstract, yet capturing nonetheless a sense not just of despair, but of grief, of sadness, even of terror. This painting captures both the individual sense of loss in our contemporary life, as well as that loss itself. In that sense, this painting serves as a novel of sorts, portraying through this single image an entire facet of our modern life.Many critics abjure this kind of talk as "pessimistic". They wish we could speak of art as uplifting, as giving the spirit of people hope, of the light that we all hope we receive from the best art. Yet, if art is to be honest, it must also display that which is deepest within us, that which we would refuse to look full in the face. We are horrified by the image of Saturn; we recoil from the suggestion that de Kooning was doing anything more than capturing a moment of time on canvas. How do we cope with the deeper, more disturbing thoughts these works bring to mind? How do we accept the story implicit in these works? In this sense, I believe, the best art never judges, but only offers an opening for understanding, to be taken or not.
That is why I think it is right here that there is the possibility of a beginning of a contemporary recapturing and discussion of the reality of evil. It seems safer to look at at a centuries old painting of a mythological tale, or an abstract representation of an artist's mood; yet precisely because it seems safer than staring in to the eyes of Charles Manson, or looking at what the rage of Jack the Ripper wrought in London's East End 119 years ago it is all the more important that we push the questions these images force upon us.
