The Ego and Evil: Lent 2022: Day Five

How does the spiritually inclined person cope with a manifestation of evil like Putin? The very existence of an individual who can unleash mass-murder upon a nation, who orders the bombardment of residential districts, must raise theological questions.

Personally, I don't believe in Satan or the Devil - an equal and opposite 'anti-God'. Neither do I believe in a God who is omniscient or omnipotent. In the fullness of time, I believe, God will become omniscient and omnipotent, but that is the ultimate destination of the Universe, when God is in All, All is in God, and total awareness triumphs. God tends towards Good, God's Universe, a work in progress.

In the meanwhile, as the Universe is unfolding, we totter along on the edge of Chaos, on the edge of Misfortune. Yet unlike an earth tremor or volcano, a plague or some other natural disaster, Putin has agency. He has choice. He could have carried on running Russia as a miserable captured state, his oligarchs plundering the nation as they had done for years. But the model was running out of steam; he felt his personal obsession with rebuilding the Soviet Empire needed speeding up. He gave the order to invade Ukraine feeling that his armed forces were invincible and that Ukrainian people would willingly return to Mother Russia's bosom. He was wrong on both counts. Now, like Hitler ordering scorched earth, Putin is lashing out at civilians on a massive scale.

How can one take measure of such evil and fit it in one's worldview? I have spent the vast part of my life in the belief that history was on an upward trajectory, towards justice, away from depraved barbarity.

Is evil merely absence of good, or something else? 

The Ego unchallenged, any top dog in a hierarchy, surrounded by sycophants, unrestrained by any moral compass, any sense of 'win-win' -  is likely to behave like Putin. History has seen many thousand Putins - deranged megalomaniacs, and yet to date; apart from Stalin and Kim Jong-Un, none had nuclear weapons. Many died at the hands of their own people - Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, President Samuel Doe of Liberia. Mad and evil though they were, they had not the power to threaten Europe or America. But at the sick heart of each, it was the ego that prevailed over consciousness; it was all about 'me'. Unrestrained egos - the source of all human evil.

Good has had a habit of triumphing over evil - albeit with a huge and tragic cost in human lives before being overcome. I do believe in the power of prayer for a overall positive outcome; sincere, focused prayer - that good should overcome the misfortune of Putin's evil life, and quickly.

This time last year:

Possibilianism

This time two years ago:
To Dudeists and those who have built their own religions

This time three years ago:
Lent 2019 - Looking for the Wonder of It All

This time four years ago:
That was the winter that was

This time five years ago:
Self-discipline, habits and Growth

This time eight years ago:
Putin - tactical genius, strategic failure

This time nine years ago:
Socialist Realist architecture in late winter sun

This time 11 years ago:
The Cripple and the Storyteller - part II

This time 12 years ago:
The station with no name

This time 13 years ago:
Lenten thoughts on motoring

This time 14 years ago:
Flowers, spring - already