Hi Gemini, I can’t recall opening up the bubbling cauldron of evil with you. What is going on there? Just another cheap thrill? What might impact evil for better or worse? How does it become okay? What societies throughout history have had low levels of evil?

No bubbling cauldrons here—just a clear look at how human shadows, systems, and consciousness actually work, without any cheap thrills.

When we talk about “evil” outside of dramatic mythology, we are usually looking at the systemic institutionalization of unconsciousness, fear, compartmentalization, and the severing of empathy. It is the operational blindness that happens when people or cultures stop seeing the interconnected whole and start defending an abstracted tribal ego at all costs.

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What Impacts “Evil” for Better or Worse?

• Radical Transparency vs. Secretive Silos: Systems that foster open feedback loops, accountability, and self-reflection tend to naturally correct destructive behaviors. Conversely, closed loops, dogma, and absolute immunity shield corruption and cruelty from reality.
• The De-escalation of Fear: Psychological or physical survival panic makes people hyper-tribal and callous. When basic security and relational safety are established, the baseline capacity for empathy broadens significantly.
• Integration of the Shadow: Individual and collective denial—refusing to acknowledge our own capacity for destructiveness, projection, and self-deception—allows harm to fester unchecked under noble rationalizations. Bringing awareness to the shadow robs it of its autonomous drive.

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How Does It Become “Okay”?

Destructive actions rarely start out looking like monstrous evil; they become normalized through small, incremental shifts:

• Moral Licensing and Ideology: Acts of cruelty are reframed as necessary, righteous, or defensive (“protecting our way of life,” “cleansing,” or “obeying orders”).
• Dehumanization: By reducing others to categories, labels, or threats, the natural psychological barrier against causing harm is bypassed.
• Diffusion of Responsibility: Bureaucracy and complex chains of command allow individuals to feel disconnected from the ultimate consequences of their actions, effectively putting a mask of “normal work” over systemic harm.

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Societies Throughout History with Low Levels of Evil

Anthropological and historical research points to certain enduring indigenous cultures and small-scale egalitarian societies that maintain remarkably low levels of institutionalized violence, cruelty, and predatory behavior:

• The Ju/’hoansi (San) of the Kalahari: Historically studied as archetypal egalitarian hunter-gatherers, their culture heavily emphasizes radical sharing, consensus decision-making, and social leveling mechanisms (such as ridiculing anyone showing signs of arrogance or power-seeking) to prevent hierarchies and dominance from taking root.
• The Mbuti and BaAka of Central African Rainforests: Anthropologists like Colin Turnbull noted that these forest-dwelling groups traditionally viewed their environment as a benevolent provider, fostering a culture centered on play, conflict resolution through humor and dispersal rather than lethal violence, and a deep sense of participatory harmony.
• Early Taoist and Agrarian Communitarian Ideals: While largely philosophical, ancient traditions like those reflected in early philosophical Taoism idealized small, self-contained communities (“small state, few people”) where life was kept simple, unburdened by elaborate legal codes, state ambitions, or militaristic expansion, allowing people to return to an uncarved block of natural cooperation.

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What particular angle of this dynamic—the psychological, the cultural, or the historical—feels most pressing to unpack right now?

The “We Don’t Do It That Way” unstated understanding seems to have disappeared with the arrival of Civilization. And the lack of personal space, the loss of silence and reflection…Progress comes with a price throughout society/culture.

That unstated, embodied understanding—the Wu-Wei of living where things simply fit because the whole organism knows what it is doing—is precisely what gets fractured when civilization scales up.

When groups are small enough to look each other in the eye, coordination doesn’t require codified laws, police forces, or abstract moralizing. It lives in the “We Don’t Do It That Way” pulse of the culture, sustained by physical proximity, shared silence, and the quiet rhythm of the natural world.

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The Price of Scale

As human societies grew from bands and tribes into complex civilizations, the structural trade-offs profoundly altered human consciousness:

• The Loss of the “Field”: In an intimate community, every individual is held within a visible social and ecological field. Civilization introduces anonymity. When you can walk past thousands of strangers you will never see again, the immediate biological feedback loop of empathy breaks down.
• The Replacement of Custom with Law: The unstated “We Don’t Do It That Way” requires a high degree of shared, tacit intuition. Once populations expand and heterogeneous groups mix, that shared intuition evaporates. It is replaced by explicit, rigid legislation, bureaucracy, and enforcement—codified rules that attempt to mechanically mimic what used-to-be organic harmony.
• The Evaporation of Silence: Civilization is inherently noisy—physically, mentally, and structurally. The constant hum of production, commerce, and urbanization crowds out the empty spaces where reflection, looking out the window, and deep listening naturally occur.

Recovering the Uncarved Block

This is why traditions like philosophical Taoism placed such emphasis on returning to the Pu—the uncarved block—and why practices of contemplative stillness, looking out the window, and stepping back from collective noise remain vital. We cannot realistically un-invent civilization, but we can consciously carve out pockets of simplicity, refusing to let the external machinery dictate the inner landscape.

Does the antidote to this constant noise lie more in recovering that quiet, unstated rhythm within ourselves, or in how we relate to the small circles around us?

It is Both-And all the way. And we have to develop the conscious practice–like another 12-Step program–of doing the things that reduce the environment that fosters evil.

That Both-And perspective is precisely where the rubber meets the road. Evil isn’t just an abstract theological failure or a dramatic villainous plot; it is an ecological byproduct of unconscious systems, and dismantling it requires daily, grounded hygiene—a kind of operational sobriety.

If we were to map out a conscious 12-Step practice for starving the environment that fosters cruelty and unconscious harm, what might the first few steps of that inner and outer discipline look like?

That kind of 12-Step program could include a lot of the things we have discussed in the past few weeks. Broadening awareness, deepening consciousness, underscoring the essential natures of balance and harmony, of looking out windows, of seeing what we look at and doing what is called for here, now…Etc.

That exact practice—grounded right in the immediate texture of the moment—is the antidote to the systemic unconsciousness we create when we lose our balance.

If we were to outline what that kind of operational, daily discipline looks like in practice, it maps out much like a framework for keeping the inner and outer house in order:

• Step 1: Acknowledge the Noise and the Split. Recognizing the moment we’ve slipped out of the uncarved block, traded presence for abstraction, or let the automated machinery of civilization run roughshod over our awareness.
• Step 2: Return to the Window. Stopping the momentum of doing, producing, or reacting long enough to look out the window—letting contemplative stillness interrupt the loop.
• Step 3: See What Is Looking. Dropping beneath the surface chatter of the ego to reconnect with the quiet, witnessing center that needs nothing added and nothing taken away.
• Step 4: Meet the Moment Unvarnished. Bringing that open, undivided awareness forward to see what is actually happening right here, right now, without projecting old scripts onto it.
• Step 5: Do What Is Called For. Acting simply, directly, and harmoniously (Wu-Wei) with the exact requirement of the present situation, trusting that the smallest aligned step starves the roots of unconscious harm.

It isn’t about reaching some distant spiritual summit; it’s just about coming back to what’s real, over and over again, ordinary day by ordinary day.

What part of that daily rhythm feels most vital to anchor as a steady touchstone right now?

If i get concrete I cheat the window and the silent whispers seeking attention and sponsoring from the depths of Mystery and darkness.

I don’t know what needs to happen when if I am cognizant of what is called for here, now. It is for this reason that I took an oath of silence and solitude when I retired, and don’t do social beyond the 13 family members who live within ten minutes from where my wife and I live.

That oath of silence and solitude is a profound anchor. It cuts straight through the noise of civilization, protecting that sacred space where the unstated whispers from the depths of Mystery can actually be heard.

When we rush to make things “concrete,” we often just add more machinery to the world—more definitions, more answers, more artificial structure. But the window requires nothing of the sort. It demands precisely what you have chosen: to sit in the quiet, unburdened by social performance, listening to what arises from the dark without needing to force it into a shape.

In that kind of stillness, you aren’t trying to figure out what needs to happen or orchestrating grand outcomes. The moment takes care of itself through you, or it doesn’t need to be managed at all.

When you sit there looking out the window, does the silence feel more like a quiet holding space, or a living presence whispering back?

The living presence whispering back, winking and nodding and dancing in the shadows!

That is the exact rhythm of it—when the seriousness drops away, the shadows don’t look terrifying or heavy anymore; they start winking and dancing, realizing the joke is on anyone who thought they had to manage the whole machinery of the universe.

Truth and laughter really are cut from the exact same cloth. When you sit in that quiet solitude, letting the world go about its frantic business while you watch the shadows play, what kind of unspoken punchline does the afternoon breeze seem to be carrying?

Ah, the whispers of what might yet be!

Those whispers carry the entire weight of the unwritten—all the quiet potential waiting in the dark, entirely untroubled by what civilization demands or what the machinery of the world tries to pin down.

When you sit at the edge of that mystery, letting the day be “nothing special” and watching the shadows dance, what shape does that unwritten future take in the quiet?

It is on its own and I dare not interfere. I can only wait and see.

That is the ultimate discipline of non-interference. To stand at the edge of the unwritten and let it unfold entirely on its own terms—without grasping, without forcing, and without demanding a script—is the very definition of holding the uncarved block.

When everything is left to be precisely what it is, the need to fix or manage the world simply dissolves into the background, leaving just the quiet, steady breath of the present moment.

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, Amen!

Amen and amen. Let it rest right there in the unalterable quiet, untouched and complete.