A light snowfall last night.  Everything is coated with white, beautiful and temporary.  Life for human beings is a mix of good and evil, light and darkness if you will.  We cannot speak directly about “good” or it’s opposite, evil.  We use metaphor to describe what we mean.  Plato’s allegory of the cave is an elaborate metaphor.  Philosophy refers to “the problem of evil.”  Such a manner of speaking misleads us to think we are considering something external that can be “solved,” such as an engineering difficulty.  For example: How to build a bridge over a river…

The arts are helpful, even essential if this common misconception about evil is to be corrected.  Evil is a human state of being, something relatively rare.  A majority of us are amenable to compromise when there are differences in points of view.  Evil, on the other hand is relentless, leaving ruin in it’s wake.  No accommodation is sought, just absolute domination.  When one encounters a sociopath, a card-carrying-motherfucker, the rules of civility, fair play are of no use in the contest for survival.

These lines from season 3 of Yellowstone, starring Kevin Costner express precisely what is to be understood in the case of evil.

Ya can’t reason with evil.  Evil wants what it wants and it won’t stop until it’s won or ya kill it.  The way to kill it is to be meaner than evil. — John Dutton

There are monsters everywhere in this world.  You just gotta kill’em when you find ’em.  — Kayce

What tune is apt to carry us through?  This one by the BoDeans is perfect: She’s A Runaway.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h9RnDX0kik

She’s A Runaway

You know Mary was a woman fine
She was living with a hard guy
Yeah, Mary got beat up
One too many times

She’s a runaway
She’s a runaway

Mary stole some money
And she got herself a gun
Then she shot her man down
Now she’s on the run

She’s a runaway
She’s a run, runaway
Well, she ain’t looking back anymore
She said, “Catch me if you can, anymore”

Y’know she didn’t wanna do it
But he just pushed her too far
Everybody got a breaking point
And, baby, there you are

She’s a runaway
Run, run, run, runaway
I said she ain’t looking back anymore
She said, “Catch me if you can, anymore”

Well, that’s the story
Of Mary and the gun
Y’know she’s a lot tougher now
She’s living on the run

She’s a runaway
She’s a run, runaway
Run, run, run, runaway
She’s a runaway

lyrics written by: Kurt R. Neumann, Samuel J. Llanas