Change can come from struggle with good, evil
The timeworn black and white photo shows Adolf Hitler speaking to a group of visibly mesmerized and captivated supporters.
Oddly, I found myself just as mesmerized and captivated by the undated photo, one of 1,300 images that have been digitized from glass photo negatives by the National Archives. It’s not that I’m fascinated by yet another image of Hitler, a megalomaniac with diabolical power within the Nazi Germany regime.
No, instead I found myself engrossed by his eager supporters and followers who hung on Hitler’s every word. Look closely at their faces in this photo. Look at their eyes. Look at their grins, seemingly so excited to be close to what they figured was true greatness. Why were they so spellbound by something so evil?
They look as if they’re staring into the eyes of Jesus Christ, not Adolf Hitler, though both seem to have a similar effect on us. We are riveted by evil as much as we are by goodness. It’s a duality within us that we don’t freely admit to others, or even to ourselves, but it’s true.
All of us to some degree gape at the dark side of the human condition. We fear it and condemn it, yet we can’t turn away from it. It must tap into something deep in our psyches, something buried in our primal memories.
I pondered all this while staring at that old photo.
To be clear, I’m not fascinated by the Adolf Hitlers of the world. These evil-minded, power-hungry, ruthless people have obvious motives and agendas. I’m more fascinated by their awestruck followers and the blind loyalty they possess, during any era, including today.
The lesson we should have learned from Hitler is that such madmen in positions of dangerous power aren’t the real problem. It’s their gullible, sycophantic, lemming-like followers who empower them by believing them, by supporting them, by defending them. How can these otherwise sensible followers be so oblivious to the obvious?
It’s not simply their age, which
is a convenient excuse if they’re young and impressionable. People of all ages followed Hitler into the madness of justifiable genocide. And this is not something specific to that time period or a world war.
What I’m talking about is an ageless reflection of our inner battle between good and evil. Not in regard to gods and devils and heaven and hell. And not in regard to any other supernatural entities that can remove some of the responsibility from our own actions.
This mindset is too simplistic, too convenient, and filled with too many absolutes.
Contrary to what the Bible and other holy books have preached for centuries, I believe there will be no final, dramatic battle between good and evil. No ultimate apocalyptic conflict of biblical proportions between God and Satan, or any god and any devil.
I also don’t believe in ancient fables such as “End times,” or an evil antiChrist who has, or will, return to Earth, or the Battle of Armageddon as prophesied in the Bible.
I believe this long-anticipated battle instead takes place every day of our lives, within our own mind, or our heart, or our soul, if you will. We choose good over evil, or evil over good, with each thought and every action. Or with every inaction.
“We need to battle darkness with light,” Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein told the world last month after his synagogue near San Diego was attacked in a mass shooting.
Speaking in front of Chabad of Poway during his emotional news conference, Goldstein repeatedly raised his bandaged hand to punctuate his plea for humanness. He may have lost an index finger in the shotgun attack, but not his belief that goodness can, and will, conquer wickedness.
“We need to tilt the scale,” Goldstein insisted.
This phrase has stuck with me since I heard it. I envisioned a cosmic scale, of sorts, with good on one end and evil on the other. Some days, there appears to be more goodness in our world. Other days, evil appears to be weighing down our hopes or prayers.
Last week, I watched “John & Yoko: Above Us Only Sky,” a 2018 documentary film telling the story of John Lennon’s 1971 album “Imagine,” exploring the creative collaboration between the former Beatle and Yoko Ono with neverseen-before footage.
That classic song imagines a world with no countries, no possessions, no religion, no greed, and nothing to kill or die for.
“It isn’t hard to do,” Lennon sings at his piano in the film.
The song’s timeless plea to people is the polar opposite of Hitler’s hate-filled marching orders. Longtime social activist Tariq Ali, who appears in the film, describes the song as a “utopian manifesto for a progressive movement.”
Lennon’s son, Julian Lennon, said in the film, “We all really want what he’s singing about.” He’s right in theory. Yet he’s wrong, too. Not all of us imagine such a world of only good, without evil. It’s an idealistic dream, not a realistic scenario. For proof, look no further than the murder of John Lennon in 1980 by a madman.
In the film, Lennon admits that he borrowed the premise of “Imagine” from a book written years earlier by Ono, including her poetic musing, “Imagine the clouds dripping.”
Ono’s entire life materialized from such lofty thoughts that she transformed into artistic actions. “Imagine ... made a lot of things for me,” she said in the film.
Each day, all of us first imagine the world we want to live in, and then we act on it.
As Goldstein encouraged us, “No matter how dark the world is, we need to think that a little bit of light pushes away a lot of darkness. A lot of light will push away a lot more. There’s so much darkness now in the world, but you and I have the ability to change.”