Tra-la-la

Pretty Lady just went on a Plant-Buying Binge. She knows this is completely irrational, winter being on its way and all. But on the other hand, winter being on its way and all, the trees in the park will be leafless, and thus producing almost no O2 with which to recharge her lungs and spirit. So perhaps it was not so irrational to bring home two African violets (to replace the ones that withered from old age and overwatering), a cyclamen, a bromeliad (the house-sitter DID succeed in killing the old one), an orchid, two ivies (every bit of the habanera helix died, and no other can be found! Tragedy!), a low-light purple-leafed thing, a miniature fern, and a miniature rose.

(Looking at the list, now, it DOES seem a bit excessive. Particularly as most of the windowsills were already jammed. The Cereus alone threatens to start swallowing cats.)

Hmph. Enough of that.

***

Lovely k poses a Deep Question:

Now I'll take some time to contemplate whether that pure soul is separable from the bad behavior committed by the self-same owner of that soul. Is it still a perfect one? Or is it true, sometimes, that the damage is incorporated within it? If so - irreparably?

Now you've gone and done it. Gotten Pretty Lady going on the Problem of Evil. We could be here all day.

Pretty Lady, from time to time, is suspected of Pollyanna tendencies. Worse, she is frequently perceived as being a wishy-washy pushover, uncertain of her values, possibly even Soft On Crime. Definitely, she has been accused of being Friends with Bane, which ought to be enough to get her committed. She is not sure, truthfully, whether Bane has any friends; Pretty Lady merely considers herself an occasional Bane Appreciator.

Nevertheless, in support of Bane and millions like him (Bane needs no defense; Bane is defense personified), Pretty Lady will point, vaguely, toward the classic Star Trek episode of the Two Captain Kirks.

(She points thus vaguely because she has not actually viewed this immortal episode, not being a geek, a nerd, a latchkey kid, or having had access to Channel 39 as a preteen.) HOWEVER, she is given to understand, by many nerds of her intimate acquaintance, that the essence of the episode is that Captain Kirk somehow gets himself split, into the Good Kirk and the Bad Kirk. The Good Kirk is all Good, except that he is completely passive and namby-pamby. He sits around dithering like Hamlet while the Bad Kirk charges around doing Bad Things.

Somehow, Pretty Lady assumes, he gets himself put back together again, and the moral of the story is that the Good and the Bad are inextricably intertwined to make a whole person capable of acting in the world, yah duh yah duh. Deep, but not infinitely so.

***

Friends, you may find this hard to believe, but at times in her youth, Pretty Lady could be an Arrogant Asshole. She referred to her compatriots on this mortal coil, frequently and casually, as 'stupid.' She went swanning into PHL 610Q class, flounced down in the front row, and engaged the professor in confidential conversation, while disdainfully ignoring pipings-up from lesser swine. She agreed without blinking when an intimate of hers declared, 'Our group is the Intellectual Core of the U.'

It honestly never occurred to her that other people might find this sort of thing a wee bit annoying. She got her comeuppances, of course. These were many and varied, and form no part of the current line of questioning.

The things Pretty Lady has noticed about herself, over time, however, are: 1) her flaws come from the same source as her strengths, and 2) that each comeuppance has taught her a greater measure of compassion for others. By extension and extrapolation, she tends to assume that this is true for most of us. Every time we 'misbehave,' every sin we commit, is another chance to learn, another way for God to get His hooks into us and draw out our latent potential.

Which is why, much of the time, Pretty Lady doesn't mind hanging with a sinner. And which is why, whimsically, she will often state that we are all perfect in our imperfections, and that paradoxically, we are becoming more perfect every day.

***

HOWEVER. Pretty Lady must bifurcate this discussion by encouraging each and every one of you to read Scotty Peck's bastard book, 'People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil'. It is most disturbing, and when you have read it, you will nevermore think that Pretty Lady denies the existence of evil.

Dear Scotty writes:

'...it is necessary that we first draw the distinction between evil and ordinary sin. It is not their sins per se that characterize evil people, rather it is the subtlety and persistence and consistency of their sins. This is because the central defect of the evil is not the sin but the refusal to acknowledge it.'

Well! Nobody can accuse dear Bane of THAT.

We come now to a sort of paradox. I have said that evil people feel themselves to be perfect. At the same time, however, I think they have an unacknowledged sense of their own evil nature....The essential component of evil is not the absence of a sense of sin or imperfection but the unwillingness to tolerate that sense. At one and the same time, the evil are aware of their evil and desperately trying to avoid the awareness...Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it.

Escape one's conscience, perhaps? The little voice that says, 'maybe it isn't such a good idea to do that?' The voice of God in one's ear?

So perhaps, then, the source of evil is not sin, but the denial of God. It is an active, wilful refusal to accept the nature of God in oneself. A desire to operate independently of Him, if you will.

***

All this is mere speculation. As Pretty Lady's wise, wise sister just asked her, 'Does it matter? Does it matter if you diagnose people as 'evil,' or merely 'sinners'?"

Pretty Lady doesn't know. All she knows is that when one gets caught up in questions of 'who sinned what sin when,' things get very ugly very quickly. And since we are all sinners anyway, it seems rather pointless.

But when one recognizes a pattern, in persons or in governments, of repeatedly performing negative actions and then not owning up to them, of lies, silly little lies, over and over and over, that is when Pretty Lady says: watch out. She doesn't know what to do about it. Just watch out.