compassion – Just the Tarot

THE DEVIL CARD AND THE CONUNDRUM OF EVIL PEOPLE IN THE WORLD

An exploration of the notion of evil as it applies to anti-social personality disorders.

There are some people who seem to be just . . . evil.

It feels kind of icky, just making that statement. It seems like stepping into that whole judeo-christian tar-pit of demon possession and punishing, crazy gods and hell fire and damnation and sinners. We can see that idea illustrated pretty well in The Devil tarot card. Two nude people are chained to a black altar while a gigantic, scary demon bat/goat sort of a thing hovers over them. Yikes! They done been possessed by the devil!!!

Evil in that context seems like a very medieval, primitive sort of a concept. Something that you expect to hear coming out of the mouths of fundamentalist religious people who aren’t very spiritually evolved.

Still . . .there are some people who seem functionally evil.

Many of us have had the ill-fortune to encounter a few psychopaths or sociopaths or malignant narcissists. Usually – if we’re normal people – they take us completely by surprise. Many of them are extremely adept at concealing their inner natures, but they basically have NO EMPATHY. No sense of compassion. No kindness. No love living inside of them. Not even a little sprout.

It’s a shock, when we realize that. That these are people who appear to be perfectly normal on the outside (in fact, in the case of narcissists, they may be very attractive on the outside) but have nothing but a dead, arid desert in their hearts. What’s worse, many of them aren’t content with just being morally and ethically dead, they actually delight in causing harm to others. Sociopaths may be content to live and let live (as long as you don’t cross them) but malignant narcissists and psychopaths go out of their way to fuck people up. They don’t see other people as humans – they see them as prey.

It can still be difficult to get from that behavior to the concept of evil. We tend to view, “evil,” in terms of moral wrongness and choice. In other words, if we see a clear choice between loving kind behavior on the one hand and cruel, malicious behavior on the other and we choose to be cruel and malicious, then that’s evil. The evil lies in perceiving the distinction between the two behaviors and choosing the one that causes harm.

Psychopaths, sociopaths, and narcissists don’t seem to have that sense of choice. It’s not that they’re choosing to be evil rather than being kind, they simply have no concept of kindness. What’s more, they view that lack of a sense of compassion as a strength. They view normal people who have a conscience and try to be kind as weak and they go out of their ways to exploit that weakness.

So, in a classic sense of ethics, we can’t really see them as being evil, because they don’t have that capacity to choose between being a good human being and being a fucked up human being. They’re just fucked up. Period.

We may embrace the medical/psychiatric model and try to make excuses for them. We look at them from a normal person’s point of view and think, “How awful it must be to live in a world of no love and no kindness. Something horrifically traumatic must have happened to them to make them that terrible.”

Well, yes and no. Sociopaths, for instance, have brains that are measurably, physically different from those of normal people. They appear to have been born that way. Not all people who are born with that brain structure become sociopaths, however. It seems that something has to happen in their environment to trigger the brain into becoming sociopathic. It’s like they’re hardwired that way at birth, but someone or something has to throw the switch to activate the wiring.

Psychologists and researchers are still arguing about exactly what it is that throws the switch. It could be emotional trauma, physical trauma, horrible parents, malnutrition, all of the above or – in some cases – none of the above. A lot of sociopaths were born into wealthy, loving families. Somehow, though, they end up with NO feelings of compassion or empathy, with a total lack of the characteristics that make us fully human.

It’s important to note, though, that THEY DON’T FEEL THAT WAY. At all. They’re quite happy with the way they exist in the world and think the rest of us are fools. They don’t see themselves as lacking in basic human characteristics, they see us as weaklings.

It’s also important to note that there are apparently no, “cures,” for these disorders. There’s no way to magically change them into, “normal,” human beings. If you dig around on the internet you’ll find some theorizing that talk therapy may be effective in treating malignant narcissism, but when you ask actual therapists about that, they just shake their heads.

There is some evidence that the number of sociopaths and narcissists among us is actually increasing, but there are arguments against that. It could be that our methodology for detecting them has just gotten better. It could be that they’re just more visible because of our new world of social media.

In any case, there’s no question that they’ve always been among us. In fact, Austrian philosopher Karl Popper argued that what we call, “history,” is largely the record of the psychopaths of our species. We study people like Hitler, Napolean, and Genghis Khan, people who caused immense pain and suffering in the world and just didn’t care, but we ignore all of the millions of kind, loving souls who were trying to just get through life.

Although they are very much a minority, almost a tiny fraction of the population, they have an oversized effect on the people around them. Because of them, we tend to question the goodness of human nature. We see the world as a dangerous place and fail to see all of the love and compassion that exists in the majority of human beings.

Even worse, they frequently succeed in dragging us down to their level. Anyone who’s been worked over by a malignant narcissist will tell you that you emerge from that experience with a lot less trust of other people and with a constant question of whether the next person you become involved with will be a real human being or another monster in disguise.

So . . . we end up having to recognize that there ARE people living among us who have no empathy, no compassion, no sense of ethics, no internal moral compass, and who cause a great deal of suffering for other human beings.

We can’t really call them, “evil,” in the ethical sense of their choosing to be rotten human beings. And we can’t really use the medical model and say that they’re, “sick,” because many of them live normal, productive lives and appear to be quite happy, making everyone around them miserable. And, thankfully, we’re evolving out of that primitive model of thinking that they’re possessed by demons or they’re servants of the devil.

But there they are, walking among us like human question marks. How can you be a human being and exist in that space? If you DO exist in that space, are you still fully human? It’s truly a conundrum that currently has no solution. Until there IS a solution, they can at least serve as a contrast for the rest of us. We can look at them and realize, “That’s what I DON’T want to be.”

Dan Adair is the author of, “Just the Tarot,” available on Amazon.com at a very reasonable price.

The Five of Wands, Compassion, and the Invasion of The Trumpster Amygdaloids

Developing compassion for Trump supporters based on their inflamed amygdalas.

I’ve been trying to reach a space of compassion in my heart for rabid Trump supporters and it hasn’t been easy. Any time that we see pictures of them, they seem to exist in a sea of snarling, angry, hate-filled faces. Their social media posts are contemptuous, bigoted, ill-informed diatribes that frequently feature images of people with guns, swastikas, and confederate flags.

They, “feel,” very much like the Five of Wands. A group of people swinging clubs as fast and as hard as they possibly can and rarely connecting with anything useful.

There’s not much there to love or empathize with. It became much, much harder to feel a sense of common humanity with them after they stormed the Capitol Building on January the Sixth. They exhibited all of the rage, fury, and mindlessness of a lynch mob and it’s plain that people would have been seriously injured or killed if the Trumpsters had been able to reach them.

I DO have a need and a perceived duty to feel compassion for my fellow humans. If we believe, as I do, that we are ALL Souls at our core – small sparks from the Sacred Fire of the universe – then we need to treat one another with the same respect that we would show for the origin of the Sacred and the Divine. The rabid Trumpsters, then, could be perceived as wandering, confused, temporarily misguided human Souls.

But they’re such assholes.

I mean, they’re really, really REALLY hard to like. I don’t like their politics, I don’t like their snotty, condescending attitudes, I don’t like their hatred or their guns or their racism. So I was having an extremely hard time trying to come up with one thing, just one thing, where I could find some common ground and tell myself, “Yeah . . . THERE’S something we have in common! There’s a basis for some empathy and compassion.”

And I finally settled on their amygdalas.

The amygdala, in case you’re not familiar with it, is a walnut shaped organ at the base of our brains. It’s probably the most ancient part of our brains which is why it’s referred to as, “the crocodile brain,” meaning that it’s on about the same primitive evolutionary level as a crocodile.

It’s also in charge of the fight, flight, or freeze reaction. If we’re confronted with danger, the amygdala fires off and our brains and bodies are flooded with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. We’re on full alert and we’re instantly ready to fight like hell, run like hell, or freeze in place.

Also – and this is VERY important with understanding the Trumpsters – when the amygdala is fully activated the prefrontal cortex, which is the THINKING part of the brain, the RATIONAL part of the brain, shuts down. Turns off. Quits working.

One other curious fact about the amygdala is that the more it’s activated, the more dominant it becomes. When we’re constantly frightened or angry, the amygdala actually GROWS in size and our bodies become like a sea of stress hormones.

Even to a rational, normal person, the last four years have been extremely irritating. Until they took Trump’s Twitter account away from him, there was a constant, never-ending barrage of Twisted Trump Tweets. Many times a day there were messages that basically said, “Be afraid! Be very, very afraid!”

The Socialists are coming for you!

The Communists are coming for you!

The Chinese are coming for you!

The Mexican rapists are coming for you!

The Anitifas are coming for you!

The Democrats are coming for you!

The liberals are coming for you!

Toilets that you have to flush twice are coming for you!

Be afraid! And – also – be very, very, very ANGRY!

For most of us the tweets went from being stupid to being annoying to, “Doesn’t that guy EVER shut the fuck up?”

But now imagine what those tweets must have been doing to the rabid Trumpsters. These were people whose amygdalas must have already been pretty active since they voted for Trump and his fear and his anger to begin with. Then add a four year stream of poisonous messages from the Tangerine Troll and they had to have gone totally into Tilt.

If the amygdala actually grows every time we get angry or become frightened, they must have amygdalas the size of freaking watermelons. And if the prefrontal cortex shuts down every time the amygdala fires off, well shit, they haven’t had a rational thought in years.

Bless their little hearts.

So I’m using that as my basis for compassion. These people aren’t just assholes. They’re actually suffering from extremely inflamed amygdalas, aggravated by shrivelled prefrontal cortexes. I’m even beginning to think of them less as rabid Trump supporters and more as Amygdaloids.

“Yes, it was tragic. When he was born he seemed perfectly normal, but sometime in his later development turned into an Amygdaloid. No known treatment for it, you know. Just . . . tragic.”

There now. I feel better already.

The Fool, The Buddha, and the Corona Virus

Some Tarot interpretations say that the bag or satchel that dangles from the end of the pole on The Fool card is his karma. That he is a new born soul dancing into life and the memories of his experiences and actions – both good and bad – are carried with him into his next incarnation in that little bag.

And that’s a good question for all of us as we face this very profound experience of a world wide pandemic: What will we carry with us when it’s finally over?

Shit happens. We all know that. A lot of the time we experience life less as the Captains of our Fates and more as the silver ball in an old fashioned pin ball machine. We aren’t thinking, we aren’t planning, we aren’t really conscious of what’s happening to us or why. We just keep hitting and being hit by those paddles, bouncing around from one place to the next until a bright, neon sign lights up and says, “GAME OVER.”

And then we’re dead.

Did it make any sense? Did our journey through all of the joys and pains, the triumphs and shit sandwiches actually MEAN anything? Or was it just a random series of events that left us bruised and battered and ultimately puzzled over why it all happened?

A large component in that equation is consciousness. Actually being aware of what’s happening to you right now, right this moment and actively SEEKING for meaning.

Let me give you an example from personal experience. My life partner, Carol, died a couple of years ago and eventually I joined a bereavement support group, also known as a Grief Group. Basically, it’s a small group of people who have lost a loved one and we sit down together once a week and talk about that experience. In other words, we’re trying to find some meaning, some understanding of what we’ve gone through and where we go from here.

One of the most positive things I’ve carried out of that group is the realization of how very much alike we all are in the face of something that is as monumentally dreadful as death. It doesn’t matter if you’re an 81 year old great grandmother or a 25 year old newly wed; death is experienced in much the same way. There are periods of shock, then numbing, then panic and horrible anxiety, overwhelming sadness, and the feeling of being totally lost in the world. There can be great nobility and growth in that process if you can somehow stay connected to your feelings and look for answers. What does it mean? Why did they die? Why am I still here? What am I supposed to do with my life now?

And, sadly, there are other people who experience very little growth and get no spiritual or emotional insights from the process. They throw themselves into a flurry of social activities right after the funeral and, when they have to be home, they turn the t.v. up as loud as it can go and stay on the phone as much as they can. They spend as little time as possible in that Sacred Silence that follows death and they think as little as possible about what it means. In a phrase, “they move on,” from the grieving period as fast as they can. If they’ve lost a husband or a wife, they remarry or re-partner within a year, as if their loved one was an interchangeable part rather than a precious human soul who intermingled with their life stream.

In other words, they don’t carry anything out of it.

Perhaps that’s a form of basic, animal wisdom. As the Buddha said, all sentient beings seek to be happy and to avoid suffering, so there’s nothing unusual about not wanting to hurt. But he also said that suffering is inevitable. No matter how much we might wish otherwise, we each have our portion of pain and how we deal with that suffering – IF we deal with that suffering – that moment in time is the anvil on which we forge our karma. It isn’t just what we go through – it’s how we consciously integrate what we go through. Did we learn anything from the experience? Did we grow and evolve as human beings? Did our compassion and ability to love others increase or diminish? Did we make what happened to us MEAN something in our lives?

So . . . here we sit in the midst of a major historical event. And none of want to be in it. I haven’t met one single person who has said, “Damn, this is exciting! I’m so glad I’m here to see this happen!” But, we’re still here, like it or not. A lot of people are going to die before this all over. Many more will lose people they love with all of their hearts and souls. There’s going to be suffering and we know that.

Right now, millions of us are locked away in our houses and apartments, waiting for the storm to blow through, hoping we won’t be one of the people who are swept out into eternity by this goddamned virus. I guarantee you that many of us are spending this time with the television turned up as loud as it will go, constantly on the phone, constantly on the internet, constantly trying to be too busy to think or feel. They can’t wait to, “move on,” and, “get back to normal.”

In other words, they won’t carry anything out of it.

Right now, we are ALL fools dancing on the edge of a cliff. We can take the time to sit down and meditate, to read, to journal, to REALLY talk with people we love, or . . . we can turn up the volume on the t.v. If there’s one thing we should all know right now it’s that life is precious, time is precious. We can fill that little bag The Fool carries with some new found wisdom, compassion, and meaning. We can actually ask what all of this means, why we’re here, and what we’re supposed to do next.

Or not.