Wednesday, January 16, 2008
The Boy in the Box, Prologue
(Poster of the boy mentioned taken from http://www.childseeknetwork.org/forum/viewtopic)
There was an article, some time ago, in the local paper about an unsolved crime dating back
50 years ago. The battered body of a dead kid was found, wrapped in a blanket in a box
dumped in a vacant field. His age was determined to be about 4 or 5 years old and he’d been
dead for about 3 or 4 days before a local resident found the body. The police printed about
10,000 posters of the child’s face and posted them around the city hoping that someone
would come forward with any information regarding his identity. Fifty years have gone by and
no clues have ever surfaced regarding whom the kid was.
I read the article several times and studied the picture that was in the paper. And then the
memories came flooding back to me, like the soft, quiet, shallow waves of the ocean coming
onto the beach. The memories of a childhood not too much different from the dead kid’s
except for the fact that I survived and he didn’t.
This book is about evil. Specifically, the evil that dwells in many human beings. By ‘evil’ I don’t
mean the obvious such as what we saw with Hitler, Stalin, and dozens of other despots
throughout history. I’m talking about the subtle kind, cloaked under so many things we
mistake for what I term ‘proper societal acceptance’. Things like patriotism or religiosity, or a
million other things that have nothing to do with sincere, human kindness.
This book contains numerous articles I’ve already written on various blogs along with
additional comments to show, hopefully, how some really rotten people are capable of
bullshitting so many others who don’t take the time to think for themselves. I’ll be especially
hard on the clergy, among others, because in my opinion they have failed miserably in their
pathetic and quite lame attempts to preach the allegedly ‘good news’ to the misinformed
masses. They have actually stood in the way of God and have distorted His true persona in
their teachings in order to push their own private agendas whether it is related to politics, or
bigger churches, or power, or a million other things that drive their egos.
I survived the hell of a childhood during what the right wing neocons call the good old days.
The boy in the box didn’t. Maybe I’ve lived 2 lives. Perhaps I survived because of him. As I put
the paper down, after reading his story, I thought about those posters of him and my own
reaction every time I saw the one taped onto a local supermarket I used to walk by. I walked
by the market almost every day and I made sure that I looked at his poster each time I
passed by. You see he and I were kindred spirits in a way. We were both victims of abuse –
his being the most extreme, being killed by a parent, perhaps both. I wasn’t killed but it wasn’t
for lack of trying on the part of a sick, twisted woman who should have been locked up for the
rest of her life instead of being allowed to practically destroy almost everyone around her.
The late Christian psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck, gave what I believe was one of the best
definitions of evil. He defined evil as ‘the killing of the spirit’ in a human being. (Source –
People of the Lie). I think that is the most profound and accurate description one can devise
because in actuality most evil acts do kill a lot, if not all of the spirit or human hope in a
person. In my case the parent did try that, day after day, week after week, on a non-stop
basis. I’ll elaborate as we go further in the book.
As I passed his picture I think I may have subconsciously promised him that if I survived, I
would try in every way possible, to fight evil in my own small way whenever I could. I don’t
remember actually saying this but my life has had ample opportunities to do this in some
small, limited ways. A Jewish survivor of the concentration camps once said that only people,
who have been around truly evil people, know what real evil is and can spot it in people in a
second even while others don’t. I think it’s called perceptional cognizance of some kind but I
don’t know for sure. I do know that I have recognized it in some people whom others literally
worshipped.
Am I saying I’m an expert on evil? Of course not! In fact, I have been guilty; of doing evil
deeds myself at times in my past, as I’m sure most of you have done. The difference,
however between rational persons such as you and I and truly evil people is that we have
probably attempted to correct those mistakes in some way whereas the truly evil people are
certain that they are 100% right in their actions.
I’m sure most of you know the story line in the movie ‘Saving Private Ryan’. At the end of the
film, the dying captain whispers in Ryan’s ear “earn it”. In other words, he told Ryan to live his
life worthy of the soldiers who died saving him from harm in the war. Decades later, the
elderly Ryan asks his wife if ‘he was a good man’ or, in other words, did he in fact earn the
right to live on while others died in his place.
I’d like to ask the boy in the box the same question in another way. “Did I keep my promise to
you?”, I would ask. I hope he would say I did. This book is dedicated to him and one other
person who I really do owe my life to. My best friend above all others – my wife.
Posted by raoul at Wednesday, January 16, 2008
From Blogging for Jesus by Raoul
copied by permission