Inconvenient Truth: There's a Little Bit of Evil Inside of Each of Us

I'd like to think that we're all born good. That we all start out our lives with good hopes, good intentions, and with complete innocence. And as for the people that aren't so good, well, society and the world around them must have made them that way. I'd like to know that there wasn't a driving evil force inside of everyone that could make them manipulative or cruel. But unfortunately, as we realize throughout Heart of Darkness, it seems that each of us is born with a soul that can quickly turn evil. When pushed to their limits, a good person can do some horrible things.

Take Kurtz, for example. He began his adventure in the Congo with good morals and good, altruistic intentions. Unlike most people who go to work in the Congo, Kurtz surely had no intention of killing and abusing the natives. But as we see when Marlow reads Kurtz' report, his ideas changed after some time in the Congo. At the end of a vibrant, beautiful and entrancing report, Kurtz scrawls the words "Exterminate all the brutes!" (50). Certainly, the original Kurtz who started his journey in Africa never would have written such words. But as his experiences progressed, his mind began to change. He was in a dark world completely foreign to his own, so he as a person was bound to learn new things about himself and evolve mentally, whether for better or for worse. He was being pushed far beyond his limits, so far that his mind and his soul couldn't take it, and the evil was exposed. Marlow talks about the wilderness and its impact on Kurtz throughout his journey, "This alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations...the soul had looked within itself and...it had gone mad." (65-66). So if a soul goes mad and turns to horrible ways when it's pushed beyond its limits, then it must be true that way deep down inside, all of our souls are evil. Maybe none of us have seen this side of ourselves because we haven't been pushed as far as Kurtz; perhaps living in our safe, comfortable, sheltered society has allowed our souls to build a sort of wall around the darkness. But who's to say that, when placed in a similar situation, we wouldn't change in the same ways?

I hate to say it, but after seeing Kurtz and Marlow's experiences, I have been led to the inconvenient truth that the soul may be inherently evil. But if this is the case, then what defines the breaking point? When does a soul suddenly shatter and go mad? Is it when a person has had to undergo so much pain that it simply cannot bear any more? Or is it when a person has inadvertently caused so much harm to others that the soul can't stand to look at itself any longer, and it just cracks? I like to think that I am a pretty good, altruistic person. I like helping other people, I like making others happy, and I feel awful when I upset anyone. So the fact that there's a part of my soul way deep down that is secretly evil is exceedingly hard for me to grasp. Am I really evil? Are you really evil? After reading Heart of Darkness, it seems so. Who knows if we will ever crack and see the dark side of ourselves, as I assume that most people never do. But it now seems inevitable that somewhere in each of our souls, we are all a little bit evil. Each of us has our own heart of darkness.

Blogging Around

The first blog I read was Anya's blog, 360 Degrees: Anticipation. Her blog considered different sides of anticipation; whether anticipation was good or bad, whether it could take away from an event itself, whether or not we can control it, etc.
I really enjoyed reading this blog. What I want to address in this response is one of the last questions that you brought up: Is any of this really under our control? Well, I don't think that we can control the fact that our minds are going to react to special events with anticipation. This is bound to happen as we look forward to anything. But what we can control is whether we anticipate the event with excitement or with dread. We do have the power to influence our minds in that way; even though we can't stop anticipation from happening, we can turn it into an exciting feeling.
In general, I enjoy anticipating events. The floaty-constant-joy feeling is well worth the price that it comes with. Because yes, even positive anticipation comes with a price: constant distraction. If it's for something really exciting, like an audition or a show or a contest, then it's all I'm able to think about. (I'm experiencing a glimpse of that right now with V-Show). And oftentimes, the time of anticipation leading up to the event is even more exciting than the event itself. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing, I can't really tell. But a feeling of good anticipation has the power to overcome all sorts of problems that happen leading up to the event.


Jack's blog, An Inconvenient Truth: Success, was about the future, and how we define success. The world's definition of success isn't always guaranteed, but is that an accurate measure of how we feel about our own success? Is it defined by money, happiness, etc? 

One thing you said was that none of this is set in stone. It's all deciding and guessing and uncertainty. The fact that anything can change at any given time makes me believe that everyone has a chance at success (unless, of course, they make blatantly unwise and foolish decisions). So maybe you're having a bad day, or a bad week, or even a bad year? Don't worry about that, it'll change soon enough. That's the thing about life, it's always changing, always throwing some people off, and always placing other people on the right track. We can't expect life to be perfect all the time, because then we wouldn't be able to feel "success" once we reached it. I think this is one way of knowing whether or not you've become "successful". Feeling yourself in a rut, lifting yourself out of that rut, and rising to new levels of happiness or intelligence or whatever else is important to you. I think that personally, I can measure my own success by how happy I am. If I'm miserable all of the time, then something's wrong with the way that I'm living, and it's time for a change. But if I'm feeling happy and full of energy every day, then maybe I should take a hint from myself and continue living this way, or at least incorporate these things that make me happy into my life as I grow older.

I've seen plenty of people that sacrifice their own happiness just to reach their own corrupt definition of "success". In most of these cases, their success was measured by money, or by something of that nature. But I don't feel that this is an accurate measure of success. You could be a billionaire and still be all alone and gloomy. Or you could be making just enough to get by, but have a loving family, a job that you love, and be the happiest person in the world. I guess the point is that not all of our futures careers are going to turn us into money making fiends. Some of us are going to be musicians, filmmakers, actors, etc. But as long as the career that we choose brings us joy and makes us feel content, then what else can we really ask for? If we aren't happy with our lives, then is life worth living at all?