Thread by Erik Hoel

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1. Recently the Karen meme instantiated itself in my life in a very real way, taking the form of a car chase followed by a police report.

And it got me thinking about the nature of evil. erikhoel.substack.com/p/karens-and-the-nature-of-evil
2. See, I normally take my dog Minerva to the dump, a ritual she loves. Over the summer I stopped on the way back at a local market, ran inside, grabbed what I needed, left quickly.

Outside, a woman confronted me.
3. Karen: THIS IS ANIMAL ABUSE!

Me: What???

Karen: YOU LEFT YOUR DOG IN A HOT CAR. I SHOULD CALL THE COPS.

Me: The windows of the car are down, the AC was just blasting, I was inside for a minute. Also, it's only 80 degrees out. It's just a sunny summer's day with a *breeze*
4. Karen: I WILL CALL THE COPS ON YOU

My dog: [happily sitting in the car with windows down, not even panting]

Me, incredulous: My dog goes to the beach in way hotter weather. You can't be mad for someone merely having their animal out in the summer. She's cool and hydrated
5. Karen: I'M CALLING THE COPS

Me: FINE CALL THEM KAREN

Karen: CALL ME A KAREN. FUCK YOU YOU LITTLE BITCH!

Me: gets in the car and begins to drive home. The Karen started following me, recklessly tailgating me. I swerved onto a dirt road. She swerved to block the entrance.
6. At this point the Karen realized she made a mistake. If the cops came, why had she followed me in her motor vehicle? Why was she blocking the entrance/exit to an entire street like a madwoman? Etc.

So she left.
7. Knowing she would call the cops, so did I, and reported her driving. Soon, a cop called me back.

He was, luck would have it, a K9 officer.
8. The woman had gone to the police station and filed a report. The K9 officer said he kept waiting for her to explain where I did something wrong. He explained to her that the weather was fine, just a sunny day, and the windows were down, and that the dog hadn't been in distress
9. He told me I was not at fault, and not to worry. (PS: I love my dog more than pretty much anything, she sleeps next to me in bed, and I try to not just keep her safe but enrich her life with outings, frisbee, runs, beach visits, swimming, hiking, restaurant visits, etc)
10. Personally, I don't think negative memes like "Karen" should be associated with a particular demographic or even name. It's unfair. Anyone, from any demographic, can be a "Karen." But my Karen happened to have the exact haircut from the meme
11. It got me thinking about the nature of evil. America's notion of evil is always that there are obviously "bad guys" and the "good guys" have to stop them. It starts with Disney, which are all simplistic hero stories.
12. But Japan's Disney, Studio Ghibli, is not at all like that. Their plots are often about the dangers of violence, how there are often multiple sides to each conflict, and the protagonists are peacemakers, not righteous warriors justly killing their antagonists
13. Disney is the childhood version of what Richard Hofstadter famously called the “paranoid style” of American politics. And it's also where Karens come from - who are 100% sure they are the good guys while also often being the bad guys.

How is this possible?
14. Because the truth is that, even when considering the most atrociously evil acts, like the Holocaust, the people who did them were *convinced* they were the good guys, and they people they were doing it to, their victims, were the bad guys
15. Here are the words of Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz, one of the most evil people to have ever lived.
16. Höss was originally destined for the priesthood, and had a "fanatical belief" about living a moral life.
17. He was, in other words, a moralist. And being a moralist is pretty much the only way you can do things like get on a plane and kill yourself and thousands of other people.

Even Putin paints himself as the victim, the good guy fighting against the corrupt Western regime!
18. The desire to do good, a burning desire for it, is the most fundamental root cause of evil.

Devils were once angels, orcs once elves, Darth Vader once Anakin Skywalker.

But the lessons of these myths are slippery to hold onto. It's an uncomfortable fact.
19. The Karen meme, in its tiny way, is a defense against moralism. It is a reminder that those most rapturous with the desire to make the world *just* are left open to a sort of demonic possession, willing to bring the full force of the state onto those they view as evil
20. And the true history of the world is these demons coming and going, fighting on one side and then the other. All while the wheel of history remains stubbornly blind to the wisdom that the most common source of evil is good
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