From Thomas Merton:
What attracts people to evil acts is not the evil in them but the good that is there, seen under a false aspect and with a distorted perspective. The good seen from that angle is only the bait in a trap. When you reach out to take it, the trap is sprung and you are left with disgust, boredom-- and hatred.
Unrepentant people hate others because their world is necessarily full of betrayal, full of illusion, full of deception. And they are the most boring people in the world because they are also the most bored and the ones who find life most tedious.
When they try to cover the tedium of life by noise, excitement and violence-- the inevitable fruits of a life devoted to the love of values that do not exist-- they become something more than boring: they become scourges of the world and of society. And being scourged is not merely something dull or tedious.
Yet when it is all over and they are dead, the record of their sins in history becomes exceedingly uninteresting and is inflicted on school children as a penance.
What attracts people to evil acts is not the evil in them but the good that is there, seen under a false aspect and with a distorted perspective. The good seen from that angle is only the bait in a trap. When you reach out to take it, the trap is sprung and you are left with disgust, boredom-- and hatred.
Unrepentant people hate others because their world is necessarily full of betrayal, full of illusion, full of deception. And they are the most boring people in the world because they are also the most bored and the ones who find life most tedious.
When they try to cover the tedium of life by noise, excitement and violence-- the inevitable fruits of a life devoted to the love of values that do not exist-- they become something more than boring: they become scourges of the world and of society. And being scourged is not merely something dull or tedious.
Yet when it is all over and they are dead, the record of their sins in history becomes exceedingly uninteresting and is inflicted on school children as a penance.
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