Does “evil” exist? Buddhist theology doesn’t exactly hang labels onto actions- while there is a list of things that Buddhists are supposed to try and do, there’s no big master list of commandments that says “don’t do this, don’t do that”.

Instead, Buddhists tend to kind of say “look, if you do some things, you get a certain type of result; if you do other things, you get a different type of result. This is cause and effect, and the law of karma. You have to decide what kind of karma you want to have.”

In other words, if you don’t want to suffer, you shouldn’t do things that cause suffering. If you (for example) kill someone for their money simply because you want it, that’s going to lead to negative effects; if you get caught, you’re liable to go to prison for a long time, for the rest of your life, or even be put to death via capital punishment.

Buddhists also believe that your “soul” (for the sake of discussion, we’ll call it a soul) will suffer in future lifetimes, because you’ve dicked your karma all up by killing someone.

The point here, though, is that to some extent “good” and “evil” are judgements. Things are relative; what some people think of as “good”, others might say is “evil”.

What am I getting at? Well, it’s something that I have trouble with, because some stuff just seems flat-out evil to me.

Here’s a picture of what certainly seems like some evil people:

Who are they? They’re a couple who apparently starved a 14 year old girl, nearly to death. When she was discovered, she weighed just 48 pounds. They barely fed her, didn’t allow her water.

She was the size of an 8 year old. She had stopped growing. Many of her teeth fell out because her saliva glands failed from dehydration. Her room had scattered rodent shit; she drank from the toilet until she got caught.

From the news story:

For Rebecca Long, it was a “power struggle” intended to rein in an unruly stepdaughter. She’d lock the teenager in her bedroom and deny her food and water, according to court documents. To teach her a lesson.

For the girl, it was a nightmarish struggle to survive on toast and a half a Dixie cup of water a day. Desperate to slake her thirst, the girl reportedly told detectives she would sometimes suck condensation from the windows or sneak a drink from the toilet — that is, until she got caught.

Then, she said, she was forced to sleep on the floor in her stepmom’s room, a heavy dresser blocking the door.

The rest of the time, according to detectives, the child was locked in her room behind double deadbolts, her floor and clothing sprinkled with rodent droppings and every bite of her meager meals an agony because her teeth were rotting out.

Once, the girl told detectives, her stepmother duct-taped her hands behind her and dunked her head in the toilet, the charges allege.

To teach her a lesson.

Now, I’m not going to pretend for a minute that this woman isn’t sick. She is, horribly so. The thing is that there are cases like this where the line between “mentally ill” and “just flat out evil” is blurred. I have little doubt that her defense lawyer, if and when she gets one, will present a defense of insanity; how on earth, he’ll ask, could anyone deliberately do this to someone else without being really mentally ill?

But how did the Nazis do it? Were the all mentally ill, or were they horribly evil?

What about the husband, the little girl’s father (the woman is her stepmother)? Is he mentally ill, or just evil? How about incredibly stupid and spineless? Sooner or later, they were going to be discovered- either they’d feed the girl enough to survive and eventually she’d get out on her own, or at least get away from these nutjobs. Or they were going to kill her, at which point the odds of being discovered would grow.

So was he being evil in not saying anything? Or is he delusional too?

Questions like these are not easy. What does evil look like? Well, today, it appears it looks like a typical suburban couple, a software engineer and his wife that could be living right down the street from any of us. If, of course, evil exists at all.

A news item:

WASHINGTON — Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, on whom the GOP has lavished $150,000 for designer clothes and beauty services, says her family shops frugally back home in Alaska and her favorite store is a consignment shop.

Purchases by the Republican National Committee at high-end department stores like Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus appeared in spending reports filed with the Federal Election Commission. They offered a stark contrast to Palin’s image as a “hockey mom” who calls herself part of an average, middle-class American family.

Ah, I see. So she only blows 150 grand when it’s OTHER people’s money; when it’s her own, she’s all thrifty and stuff.

That makes me so much more likely to put her into power over my money.

I have a housekeeper. Well, a housekeeper-slash-dog-nanny. She comes once a day and walks Indiana the Wonder Dog, and then once a week cleans the place, does some laundry, that kind of thing.

I absolutely love it. I feel stupid paying for stuff that I could/should do myself, but you know what? I’m a slobby guy that wouldn’t do it otherwise. (Well, actually, that’s not entirely true- I never have minded doing laundry, and I still do at least half of it, if not more.)

Does it make me elite? Out of touch? Maybe, at least a little bit… but then again, I’m nowhere in this league (warning: Video below has some bad language):

$273 grand? Hell, I’ll clean McCain’s house for that much.

I just chatted with a guy at work who filed for bankruptcy today.

It’s a shame. Here’s a guy who makes a great salary, over 100K, but a pretty costly divorce and getting ensnared in the end of the real estate bubble combined to cook his goose.

He bought an incredibly nice house, on Lake Tapps, but when he went to sell his old one it didn’t sell… and didn’t sell… and didn’t sell. It’s been on the market for over two years; he’s cut the price hundreds of thousands of dollars, but just hasn’t been able to get it sold.

Considering he filed for bankruptcy today, he was actually in a pretty good mood. He’s been fighting this gunk for years, and as of now it’s gone; it’s a chance for a good, fresh start and to move on. His mortgages were over $5,500 a month and he can rent a house in the same neighborhood for 2500, so suddenly he’s got $3K a month more to invest. Even with the home mortgage interest deductions on his taxes, he’s still coming out way ahead on the deal.

It’s hard. I mean, we all know (or SHOULD) know when we buy a place that there’s a risk of it dropping in price. I’m pretty house-rich and cash-poor myself; I bought a place that’s right up towards the end of what I could afford, knowing that the market could flatten or even drop.

But even though we know we’re putting ourselves at risk, and knowing that we can’t absolutely count on prices rising forever, it’s still natural to feel some sympathy for my coworker. He’s a hell of a good guy and he’s not the type to blame anything other than a bad guess and bad luck; he has taken responsibility and is just determined to save harder and try harder from here on out.

Seeing this economic mess strike home, against someone I know and like and respect, is tough. It only reinforces my determination that we need change and we need to set up regulatory processes that yeah, might slow the greed and madness down some… but they might also keep more people in their homes and take the edges off both the up AND the down curves.