I have not posted in a while due to some crazy times. My one past time has been listening to audio books on my commute. I recently finished Ken Follet's, Pillars of the Earth. It was a 1000 pages in print form and therefore took quite a while to listen to the unabridged audio version.I really like the book, but one theme really stood out for me. One person can do so much more evil in this life than they can do good. For example, in the book there is a character named William Hamleigh. He is an utterly evil person. In one day he gathered a bunch of others and ran through a village burning the entire town and killing several people leaving children without parents and raping some of the women that he let live. I know the story is fiction, but non-fiction episodes of very similar circumstances definitely do occur. Could one person easily do that much good in one day with similar resources?
I see negative waves of repercussions occur as a parent, brother, husband, son, etc. in my own life. I wish that the opposite were true and I think this is one of the main causes of this world's heartache. I can at least take consolation in knowing that circumstances and situations will be different in the next life to afford the opposite results.
On a side note, here is an interesting article on some good occurring...
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-morlims2apr02,1,2488142.story
3 comments:
I loved reading that article, thanks for sharing! Also, you point out an interesting thought with the ease of doing evil. I guess it's just how you look at it though. If someone has no emotion, empathy, or feelings, then maybe it is easier to do evil than good. But for someone with an actual heart, it is (or should be) much harder. I guess logistically setting a town on fire and killing hoards of people wouldn't be so hard to do but there are many more things involved that would make it pretty dang hard if you thought about all those repercussions. Hmmm, maybe it's true, maybe criminals really do have some sort of physical dissability that makes them less sympathetic and more cold hearted?
I didn't have much time to write that out so the ease came across wrong. I meant evil is easier to achieve results with, not evil is easier to do. If I put X amount of effort into helping people versus hurting people I think you can get more results when trying to do evil. That is sad.
Hey Carson! Brian Olsen here. It has been a while. Looks like things are going great for you. That is fantastic! Nice house by the way. If I ever make it up to Seattle I will look you up.
Take it easy.
Brian
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