I had visions
I was in them
I was looking into the mirror
To see a little bit clearer
The rottenness and evil in me
— Harvey Danger, “Flagpole Sita”

Best get this out of the way first: my bartender believes I’m not evil. Despite everything I’ve told him under the more lax interpretations of doctor-patient confidentiality.

If you’ve been on my blog before, you may know my general assertion that I am evil. Very often in an “eviler than thou” sense, which at least means I have morals, if not the spiritual fiber to actually follow through on them. Oh, I’ll help people out and try my best to be good, but when it comes down to it, I’m rotten to the core.

Apparently this isn’t really true, and I don’t know what to make of that.

Frankly, it’s easier to think of myself as evil than attempt to figure out the moral patchwork quilt that became my life post-haste during the Years of Zorn and Tharn.

But I suppose, as an exercise, let’s consider where I got my morals. Which is: from my father.

Yes, the man who violated just about every moral on the books cross-culture is the man who laid down the strictest ideals. But basically they boil down to:

Never, ever lie.

No exceptions.

No excuses.

If you lie—including the lies of omission—you are evil.

You should die before you’d lie.

A man can harbor a thousand sins, but a lie is the worst of all.

That said, I suppose my father took refuge in this.

And he believed I lied constantly. He’d tell me this even if I were telling the truth—even if, objectively speaking, there was no interpretation of my words as being other than true.

The result after years of this is: when I tell an objective truth, I’m lying and am evil. When I tell a subjective truth, I’m lying and eviler. When I’m lying, I am lying and evilest of all.

Really, in a system like that… well, it’s pretty much designed to crush all of your ego and attempts at individuality or escape.

But it did not crush me. And I did escape. And I did it through lying (but everything I do is a lie, so…).

Which makes me evilest of all.

My bartender asked me if I would apply this moral system to someone who had a similar situation and had to escape in much the same way.

I said, no, I couldn’t! I wouldn’t think of them as evil. And I believe that, inasmuch as it’s possible for me to believe anything I say or think.

And then my bartender asked why this rule only applied to me.

Well. He’s got me there. Except that everything I think of is a lie anyways.

Um. I can’t go on at this point. Anything else I tell will be in separate posts, if ever.

And yes. I could see a writer going wild with a character who has complexes similar to mine.

Hm. At least it helped to write that all down. I can tease apart my circular logic, if the term “logic” can be applied to any of it.

But… I do tend to circumvent thinking about any of this by simply assuming I’m evil and continuing to attempt to do good and thus fuck with God/the gods/the Universe. It hurts to think about any of this.

So here it is for future reference.