Thoughts from August 14, 2001

And these things I say will be self-evident. If that were true, then my words really could hurt me. Words are powerful, words are great, words can heal, and birds can hate.

And now sentences that make sense:

My mom always told me not to say “hate.” You don’t hate a person you dislike them. What she meant was there is always another point-of-view. If you really got to know the person you say you hate, you wouldn’t really hate them. People we hate are concepts. You hate the idea of them. Just as Hitler had good sides to him, everyone has a point at which they are not being hated. I took my mom’s basic philosophy and applied it to good and evil. I don’t believe in good and evil. I believe things just exist. Individuals can assign good or bad traits to things, but they themselves are not good or evil. Nothing is inherently good or evil. We call something good or evil, but it’s just our opinion. It’s not a fact. Most people call others evil because of that person’s opinions. In my opinion, this is evil. Don’t be evil by thinking evil exists.

Evil comes out of thinking about the world as black and white. Even black and white are not really black and white. Strangely, true white comprises all colors together and true black is the absence of all colors. With evil, there is no true evil, because evil is a concept. If you add up all the bad deeds of someone over their entire life, you will never reach the point at which someone becomes evil where they weren’t evil yesterday. When I’ve brought this up to people, they can never answer my question of where the line of evil exists. When does someone cross the line into evil? Unless someone is 100% evil (according to a non-existent scale), they are not evil.

Speaking of evil, I’m going to Laughlin starting in about two hours. This really has nothing to do with evil, but I am tired of talking about good and evil. It’s obvious to me and if someone reading this doesn’t see that, screw them. Obviously, that comment was not meant for you (oh great and powerful reader). It was meant for some other reader. I also just wanted to say the words “screw them.” Actually, it’s only a half hour before I get off of work. I’m excited. Patti’s already excited. She’s called me more times than a toilet flushes at a Phish concert. It always comes back to Phish, doesn’t it? Not really. Besides, Phish is an evil band.

(Future note: Since this paper is a little short in terms of word count, I thought I’d talk more about something I only talked about in the last few sentences of this paper. It’s a reference that probably made little to no sense to young readers (all one of you). It’s the band Phish. If you read this side joke and laughed uproariously, you are probably me, so I will explain it to the rest of you. Phish was a band I knew very little about other than the band and their fans consumed large amounts of marijuana. I was well into my adult life before I learned the skunk smell I smelled by high schools was marijuana. I have never heard a Phish song and definitely have never been to one of their concerts. In my mind, I was picturing Phish fans flushing their drugs down the toilet to avoid being caught with their drugs by the police. Looking back, there are several problems with this thought. I’m sure most of the toilets at a Phish concert are inside porta potties. If the police are at a Phish concert, I’m sure they are mostly looking the other way at most drug use. Young people today are also questioning why anyone would flush marijuana down the toilet. It’s no longer illegal in many parts of America. I was originally going to make a Grateful Dead reference, but that would have been outdated even back then. I actually know more about the Grateful Dead because they had a hit song. I’m glad I could explain my joke to you. We all know those are the funniest kind. I could continue and add 420 words extra, but that would be a whole other reference I would have to explain. Later, Hippies!)