Psychiatry & Human Evil

Sorry joe, I hadn't put together the blog as well as I wanted the first time out. Please read the updated version.

Yes, I believe evil exists inside human beings. I believe it manifests itself in the form of rape, murder, torture, terror, mulitation, molestation, etc, etc... Personally, I believe in capital punishment, but at the very least, once discovered, these types of people should be permantly imprisoned.

I don't think being immature on the internet, thinking they are better than anyone else, accusing someone of bigotry, or any of the other things mentioned, qualifies as evil. These people cannot draw anyone to "the same level of maturity that they themselves exhibit" unless that person allows them to do so. We are responsible for our own actions and no one can force us to respond in a similarly immature manner... we do that all on our own! :o)

When faced with a person displaying the behavior you described, I believe we should gracefully walk away before we allow ourselves to say things we will later regret; say your piece and let that be the end of it.

If these blog/forums/discussions become "life-draining" then I would seriously suggest taking a break and evaluating your priorities. I definitely understand being passionate for what you believe in, but when it becomes life-draining, interferes with your "normal" life, or when it causes undue stress then the price of that passion is too high. I'm not saying that anyone should abandon their causes, but I do believe that they should take a step back and evaluate what is going on and what those causes are doing to themselves - and possibly others around them. If it's doing more harm than good, then I think it's time to back out and find something new.

Sometimes our need to be right or to be "agreed with" frequently overrules our better judgement and leads us down a path we would not normally want to go. We need to understand that we will not convince everyone to agree with us and we will not always prove ourselves right. Sometimes people don't agree and that's just the way it is. This is true whether it be politics, religion, parenting, the best way to grow a tomato - anything!

Once upon a time far, far away, I was a serious drunk driver. I drove for a living, high as a kite. That’s evil. One night, the evil within me met the evil within someone else . . .

I drove a medallioned, New York City yellow cab. I drove both good and bad neighborhoods, alone, (before cell phones) with no 2-way radio. When it got hairy, I had no back-up. Drinking and smoking dope was my coping mechanism . . . I didn’t consider myself evil. I had an excuse. Every day, before hitting the streets, I needed a drink. The obsession, the evil obsession destroyed everything in my life. Like concerned person says, the definition of evil is anti-life.

On workdays, consciousness, for me, typically began around noon. My wife was already at work on Madison Avenue making twice the money I did. I saw once a week. When I crawled into bed at five in the morning she had an hour before her alarm went off. I awoke alone and so did she. Only on Sundays did our schedules match. As a result we got on okay. On average we only argued once a week. Mostly we fought over money. I drank and smoked dope which cut into our budget a tad. She just didn’t understand me. I needed to be stoned to do what I did. When I emerged from my daily coma, I was, naturally enough, hungover and dry heaving in the general direction of my bedside waste basket. My hands would tremble and I cursed the fact that my bar tab precluded funds for a .38 Special.

My dispatcher didn’t give a ****** where, what or who I did out in the street, as long as I appeared sober at his window. The day gamblers pulled in, engines running, while the night guys jumped in checked with their clipboards and gear. I was one of the latter. Each afternoon at four sharp, it was time once again to play “You Bet Your Life.” The Bet: A large, up-front fee. (The lease and gas.) The wager: I’d come out ahead twelve hours later. Why did I do it? Ask any cop, fireman or ambulance driver. Adrenaline was the name of the game. The drinker’s excuse? The rush was so intense I used booze to “knock off the edge.” If my meter and worked, I was good to go. Out of the gate, my first stop was the corner liquor store. Then, under the Westside Highway, my pre-flight check-off began: Music tapes? Check. Enough dope ‘til landing? Check. Tire iron under the seat? Check. Enough change for a twenty? Check.

Blast-off was uncorking a fifth of vodka and a few tokes off of my hash pipe. Then I’d wait for the shaking to smooth away towards false serenity. Back then, when asked by NYPD to do a roadside sobriety test, I was able to stand on one foot, close my eyes, touch my nose and sing “I’m A Yankee Doodle Dandy.” More than once, the cop had been drinking also. The bottom line: I was always given a pass. In my entire life, I have never been cited. God protects the drunks? I don’t think so. The father of all lies does that Evil loves drunk drivers. He wants to keep us on the streets until we kill some innocent somebody. At the time, I knew nothing of “how it works,” all I knew is booze worked it’s magic and made me fearlessness. After sitting awhile the frying pan of the Westside’s, Hell’s Kitchen, I was ready. When supreme confidence replaced sober doubt, I dropped the tranny into “DRIVE” while calculating where “the fish” were biting: Midtown. Rush hour.

Yes, taxis are dangerous. According to the U. S. Department of Labor, being in a cab is one of the ten most dangerous places you can be. Being in my cab worsened the odds. Why shouldn't it? I hated my life and myself. Evil was destroying me.

Other drivers, the riding public, and pedestrians characterize cabbies are “losers.” This rubs off. Spouses go for it. In the end, my wife was ashamed to introduce me to new people. A New Yorker’s first question is always, “What do you do?” To my wife’s chagrin, I told them. If she were asked, “What does your husband do?”she’d say, “He’s a writer.” This sort of thing wore me down.

You see, I met my (soon to be ex) wife at The Woodstock Festival. It was wonderful! At our city hall wedding a couple of months later, we vowed “to have and to hold through thick and thin.” Easy to do when things are thick with promise. Once, after I informed Ellie I’d refused my gay literary agent’s sexual advance, Ellie roared, “ I married a cab driver!” She was mad that I turned the guy down. He held out the brass ring of fame and fortune. I had already published a book. It was “evil” that my wife spit in my face and turned away. The agent was evil. He told me that if I didn’t go to bed with him I would never sell another thing. He was the biggest agent in New York and he could do (and did) what he said he could do: Make or break me. For me, as I wiped spittle from my eye . . . that was the day, “the music died.” My shining armor rusted, my steed pulled up lame, and I grew a whiter shade of pale.

Now, back when I was a rookie cabby, I was actually proud to be a taxi driver. It took guts, fortitude, geographic memory and knowledge. I had to drive aggressively and defensively at the same time. I had to act cool when struck with fear. I couldn’t freeze while pushing the envelop. I needed the hand/eye coordination of a shuttle pilot and had to know where to be (and when to be there). The constantly running tab: Money versus time. Where can I take a whiz?

I had my share of “run outs.” (Punks who ran without paying). When that happened, I had to calculate whether the chase was worth it. What would happen for instance, if I catch the mother and he pulled a knife? What if my cab was jacked while chasing some creep? In order to survive, I had to honor rationality over anger. Ever try to act rational while drinking? It can be done. I did it daily. Why not an astronaut?

There are a dozen ways to be robbed if you drive a cab: “Driver! Get me to JFK! And STEP ON IT!” (If I don’t speed, no tip). So, I speed . . . I get snagged. The cop: “You were doing eighty-five in a fifty-five! Sign here!" Another way to get robbed was contending with those who pretended you’d hit them in a crosswalk. Other problems: I had to grease palms at the garage or suffer the consequences. The dispatcher got five, the gas jockey and tow truck dudes got a couple. Then, when I cashed out, I had to pay a different dispatcher to keep him happy. The riding public doesn’t know it, but they aren’t the only ones expected to tip. ****** runs downhill.

In the beginning, when veteran drivers slack jawed me with, “What? You drive in Harlem?” I picked up everybody and took them everywhere. I opened doors. I never took “the long way,” short changed or ran lights. I was courteous to a fault. I carried a 35 mm Pentax on the seat and an imaginary .38 Smith & Wesson in my waistband. I kept my windshield spotless and took award worthy photos and wrote screenplays on the side. Before things “went south” in my marriage, Ellie proudly presented me to her co-workers as the writer who’d penned The Sign of The Fool. (thesignofthefool.com) She couldn’t wait to tell them that once a week her husband was on The Bob Fass Radio Show as “The Lonesome Cab Driver.”

By the time I left the taxi industry, I had three unsold screenplays, an unsold book (Cab Karma), a wrecked marriage and a severe alcohol problem. Alcohol dependant that I was, it was a short leap to death on the installment plan. At the end I didn’t give ****** about you or anybody. I was suicidal and didn’t care if I took a few folks along with me. I left New York for parts unknown without even a fair-thee-well to Bob Fass or anybody. I considered myself dead and would just as soon let everyone who knew me think of me in that way.

Finally, inevitably, I came to the end of the road as a N.Y. cabby. It was the end of the shift. Four in the morning. I’d stopped at the Fulton Fish Market to clean out the cab and smoke a joint. It had been a good night. I hadn’t killed anybody and I was still free without bail. I finished wiping down the upholstery, searched for change under the seats, took a whizz and pushed off. Just minutes from base, a Wall Street type hailed me. It never failed, greed slammed on the brakes. Torn between money or slumping in a coma, I feebly pointed towards my “Off Duty” sign. A ritual had to be played out. His part was to clasp his hands in a prayer gesture. Mine was to rub my chin and seem to consider the outcome. My window was down. I said the magic words: “Where you headed?”

“Just a few blocks. First and First.” He piled in. I hit the meter. So far, so good. It was a quick trip. Easy money. A hundred yards from our destination, the guy says, “ Near, left hand corner.” He was polite. He had his wallet out. Then, BANG! From up ahead, a sharp pistol crack reverberated between the canyon walls. “Ah oh” . . . I slowed to a creep, scanning everything. My head swivel danced in a continuous arc. I glanced in my rearview. Mr. Dow Jones seemed strangely oblivious as he poked around. Nothing stirred. The street was without movement . Dead quite. Maybe it’s me. “Yeah, I’m wacked,” I thought to myself. I’m hearing things. “This is good,” my passenger called out. We stopped. To my left, a neighborhood bar was closing up. I couldn’t help but notice the twenty something Latino was staggering towards me. BLAM! A blue flame from inside the bar, released it’s second payload. A beautiful woman and an angry old man emerged. He held a pistol in one hand and her hair with the other. The target of his rage fell against my door frame and flopped face up. Two neat little holes adorned his chest. From what seemed far away, I heard my passenger screaming “Get out of here!” My brain was offline. I couldn’t compute. My hysterical passenger was simultaneously clear and unintelligible. My “street smarts” were gone. I was no longer “hip.” For a heartbeat, common sense failed me. “GET OUT OF HERE!” I blinked. I re-booted. My fog lifted. I hit the gas. My cigar box flew. My cab spun wildly into the intersection. I took peek. We were headed for a row of parked cars. I sat up, regaining control. “Let me out! Let me out! LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!” My fare screamed. Yeah, okay already. My passenger threw a few bills and hit the ground running. I shot down the avenue a couple of blocks and parked. Couldn’t move for 20 minutes. That’s how long it took for my next shot of vodka to make me okay again.

I have shed my evil ways, the worst I do now is put down joespoon04. No, I don’t even do that any more. I will no longer answer or engage joespoon04. For I recognize a certain darkness in him that I recognize. I will not engage in it or be baited or pulled down to muck around with him. If someone wishes to engage me in a positive, constructive way. I’ll engage them. If it is divisive name calling and negative wailing . . . well then, I’ll just lay back and let them gnash their teeth. I’ve been on that dirt track, I’m on the high road now and intend to stay the course that leads my soul upward and into the light of Christ. Shadows and darkness, name calling and evil can stagnate in the scum ponds below. I have reached downward, been rejected and must let it go. That or tumble back down the ladder into drinking and drugging and all manner of false things that lead to destruction and anti-life. Death.

Mongo makes a very good point. And Joe seems to it because he is still under the illusion that people want another Kerouac and another Jim Morrison and another Cobain. The drug-addled self-destructive rebel writer is a tired trope of American pop culture. "Bland, uneventful life at the end of highway 53?" Enduring writers tend to find places like that -- Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul, Walker Percy's Mississippi, Faulkner's Oxford Mississippi, Thomas Mann's Luebeck, Jane Austen's Bath. Minnesota's finest writer of adolescent fiction is living at the end of highway 53. Bill Holm, Robert Coover, Tim O'Brien, and Sinclair Lewis have all come up 53 for a chapter in their writing lives. I would be less surprised if Mongo wrote the next great Minnesota book than if Joe Spoon did. I suspect, however, that the blogging life is taking the writing energies of most of us and squandering them the same way the drugs and alcohol did for young Mongo.

Two of the five I listed drank. And it shortened their careers the way it shortened Hemingways. And it only seemed to them to make their writing better as they got deeper into the bottle. Kind of the way Hunter S. got more profound at the end --but only to himself. I believe the topic of this is the psychology of evil. Good writers certainly explore it; succumbing to it is not, however, the requirement of the profession.

Runawaysandwich
M. Scott Peck, M.D. wrote a book " People of The Lie " Perhaps you'd like to read it. Good Read.