Good and Evil, Nature Psyche #18

Who woulda thunk
America coulda sunk
To idiocy and hatred

Divorce from facts
An echo chamber of lies
Corrosion of truth

Unconscious darkness
Projected onto others
Unconfronted ignorance

Will this evil fade softly
As an awakening
From a bad dream?

Wood block painting by Kawase Hasui, 1933

Nascent flowers
Tendrils of democracy
Seeds that cannot die

Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains … an unuprooted small corner of evil.Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn possessed Ukrainian ancestry himself and wrote supportively of Ukrainian nationalism. During his 8 years in the gulag he pondered the often blurry distinction between good and evil.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it—always.Gandhi

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