Surprised by Evil

We are surprised by evil when it hits us in the face. We think of small towns as pleasant, safe places and are shocked to the core when two little girls are murdered by someone they obviously knew and trusted. We have no categories to cope with that; but neither do we have categories to cope with the larger renewed evils, with renewed tribalism and genocide in Africa or the renewed “Balkanization” of the Balkans themselves.

We like to fool ourselves that the world is basically all right, now that so many countries are either democratic or moving that way and now that globalization has…