A Story of the World, Part I: LESSONS ON GOOD AND EVIL

Over the period of a year I have interviewed several female prisoners in the Departmental Prison of Mokolo, Cameroon, in order to document their personal narratives.

While writing their stories, I began to consider another story, a story once called “the world’s story.”
Whenever I have mentioned the interviews, someone always asks what the women did.  But underneath the question is a more important question.  Each of us, at some moment will ask ourselves about our own lives: “was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?”

Previously, spiritual texts had led me to believe that humans were inherently good.  Christianity had taught me that we all have souls, and similarly Buddhism stresses that each of us has the “heart of bodhisattva,” where our basic human goodness is found. 

Each time I would hear about a horrendous act I would ask myself, “what was done to that person to make them that way?” Or sometimes, if it was too horrible to justify by their life’s suffering, I simply found it unexplainable.  I wanted to believe that criminals were created not born.

The women in prison seem like any other women in the Far North.  They have adhered to the cultural roles by wearing traditional clothing; most are married with children; and they have strong faith in their religion. 

In the U.S., it was easy to believe that I was a compassionate person.  I fought laws that harmed the vulnerable, occasionally walked a dog or painted a wall for community service, and gave a percentage of my earnings to charities.

I have often said that living in Cameroon has made me see what a bad person I actually am. As I studied teachings on compassion, openness, and understanding, I grew more and more frustrated with my inability to be the type of person about whom I read and imagined I could be. I failed each time there was another knock at the door or another open hand in my face.

Several months ago the book, East of Eden landed at the top of my reading list.

“Humans are caught – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too – in a net of good and evil…There is no other story.”
And so I was caught in this net, writing the same story.

“And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born?” asks Steinbeck. “The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”

The query unsettled me. It went against everything I had previously believed and for which I had strived.  To consider that some men are born evil, perhaps with a malformed soul - or no soul at all - destroyed my belief in the inherent good of humanity, and maybe even the good in me.

Then I found out about the psychopathy test. The test, which measures a set of genetic personality traits, was created by Canadian psychologist Robert Hare, and it is able to determine whether or not a person is a psychopath.  His findings estimate that 1% of the population may be psychopaths: egocentric, incapable of emotion, remorseless, and impulsive.

“As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience.”

I was horrified by the discovery.  I felt disappointed in humanity, in my naiveté, and most of all, I wondered whether all my efforts to be a better person were in vain.

When I was nine years old, I stole candy and cigarettes from the local supermarket, set things on fire, and played with an Ouija board. In middle school, I tormented a girl at school by stepping on her heels, pulling her hair, and calling her names. I once started a fight with a girl at a college party because I “didn’t like the look of her.”

Nearly every one of the women prisoners in Mokolo has committed some form of murder. One stabbed her husband to death, another killed her mother-in-law, and one woman poisoned a baby.

I also felt liberated by the idea that we are the way we were born.

The Minnesota Twin Study, published in 1986, found that one’s personality may be more highly influenced by genetics than one’s upbringing.  The most genetically-influenced traits are leadership and traditionalism or obedience to authority, a sense of self-control, and a sense of purpose. Other characteristics include a sense of well-being and zest for life; alienation; vulnerability or resistance to stress, and fearfulness or risk-seeking.

I’ve never considered myself a “nice” person. I can be aggressive, selfish, judgmental, and sometimes just plain cruel.  But now, I could finally accept that I was just the way I was supposed to be. I didn’t have to feel like I was failing anymore.

Humans are not good or bad.  We are both.

On a scale of good and evil, the majority of us probably fall somewhere in the middle, but there are certainly outliers as well, like Mother Theresa and Hitler.

I realized that I had confused spiritual teachings on ‘human potential’ with ‘human nature.’

“Thou mayest rule over sin…What Glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all that we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jaw-bone, some broken teeth in strata limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice…the choice of winning!”

Egregious crimes of violence such as genocide, murder, and rape are outliers in the norms of human behavior. But the feelings that motivate the deeds are understood and shared by us all.  The women in prison are no different than anyone else.  The only thing that distinguishes them from others is their choice to commit a crime.

Buddhist teachers emphasize that the practice is not about trying to be a better person, but working with one’s confusion, aggression and passion. These are considered opportunities, the materials with which one works to become enlightened.  If we were flawless, life would be boring and fruitless.

We must accept what we are, no matter on which end of that scale of good and evil we fall. Even if we are the angriest, most selfish and unfeeling person in the world, we must work with that. We cannot ignore those qualities, but we also cannot allow them to overpower us.  There is both good and bad in all of us, but it is our choice as to what we do with that - our deeds - that make us who we are.

So in the end, Steinbeck’s and my conclusions are the same.

“Tishmel." - Hebrew for "Thou Mayest."