Jeffrey Dahmer and the Purpose of Evil

A listener asked me to talk about Jeffrey Dahmer and the meaning of evil, and at first it may seem like that has nothing to do with letting go, but actually it does.

For me, letting go is about getting to 0, or being in the hub of the wheel. At zero, you owe nothing. You are owed nothing. You’re both masculine and feminine.

You’re all things and nothing, so you’re your most authentic and whole self, and evil is an extreme. So when we let hold on, things can get extreme. When we let go, there are no extremes.

I will break that down in a moment, but before we get into today’s topic, I just want to give a disclaimer. I am an animist. That means that I believe that all things are energetic, conscious and connected, so my views on Jeffrey Dahmer and the meaning of evil reflect that. Feel free to take what works for you and release the rest.

So apparently there is a tv mini series that’s either on now or recently aired about Jeffrey Dahmer. I don’t have tv so I haven’t seen it, but I have seen My Friend Dahmer and read books about Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes, including Killing for Company.

Trigger warning for anyone who doesn’t know who he is. He’s a murderer who did some gruesome things. I’m not going to get into the details of his crimes, but the topic is unpleasant, so you’re fairly warned. 

So, let’s talk about the nature of evil. Is there such a thing? In my opinion, there is no good or bad. In Nature, everything just is. The lion doesn’t have guilt for killing an antelope.

He has to eat. Mushrooms don’t feel bad for decomposing dead trees. They just do it. When someone is cutting grass, grass lets out chemicals that tell the other grass that danger is around.

That fresh mown grass smell might be construed as a fear signal. Now grass can’t hide or move, so there isn’t a lot they can do about it, but some animals do react to signals like that.

Nature wants to survive, so most species have ways to send danger signals to each other so they can protect themselves. Humans do, too. We’re a part of nature. The difference between us and other organisms is culture. 

Culture decides what’s acceptable and where we draw the line. 

In some cultures, it’s perfectly correct to cut off the heads of your enemies.

The reasons varied. In some cases, it was done for psychological warfare. In others, it was to steal their spiritual essence and power because the power was said to reside in the head.

Sometimes it was done to keep them from resting in the afterlife or reincarnating and returning to wreak revenge. So there is a mythology around the practice that made sense to them.

In modern, western society, we see that as barbaric and frown on anyone who would ever do such a thing. For us, it’s evil. For them, it’s not. It’s fair play, I guess. 

So evil is cultural. One of the biggest perpetrators of evil, by modern standards, was the Catholic Church.

The Inquisition not only killed people, but they tortured far more. I don’t think the church set out to be evil. They thought they were doing right. I’m not defending it.

I’m just explaining it. We can all see there is wickedness in the world, right? But how does it get here and what’s the purpose? That was the question behind the question that the listener asked me.

In my view, everything is a reflection of us. We are the creators of our reality.

As within, so without. So, if we look around and see drive by shooting, homelessness, drugs, human trafficking, and serial killers, it’s a reflection of us and our society.

To me, that’s a giant signal to look inside and clean up what’s inside because I am a part of all this. I may not be shooting at anybody or cursing anyone out, but am I helping anyone? What am I consuming? Is that helping or hurting?

If I eat Frankenfood and watch tv that glorifies violence and objectifies women, I am contributing to a culture of convenience and cheap thrills. I am sustaining a culture of objectification.

And this is really important because when Jeffrey Dahmer was asked about how things got to the point where he was killing and eating people, he said, “It's a process, it doesn't happen overnight, when you depersonalize another person and view them as just an object.

An object for pleasure and not a living, breathing human being. It seems to make it easier to do things you shouldn't do.”

We are all doing that every day right now. Dating apps are a huge example of how we depersonalize people when we treat them like a menu where we can just order up what we want and pass on the things we don’t.

That’s not dating. Dating is taking the time to get to know someone by spending time, talking, and sharing ourselves. 

When we run companies based on data, we aren’t caring about employees. I totally understand and support productivity.

A business has to make money to stay in business and a person should do a good job if they are being paid, but I have a lot of clients who work for companies who routinely fire the lowest performers.

This doesn’t necessarily mean they are slacking. It could mean that they were not well trained, have been sick, or needed some help. They are just a number.

They are always in danger of being fired, and that’s a horrible way to live.

In the United States, 17,000 people are enticed or forced into human trafficking. This means that they are performing forced labor or sexual acts often without pay and living in squalor.

We can’t do that to each other if there were no people willing to subjugate others and willing to employ them. That’s us, you guys!

We are doing that to each other by treating each other as objects. 

In some cases, we are seeing ourselves as objects. If I someone cat calls me, and I blame myself, I’m objectifying myself. I don’t see myself as human.

If I am a slave to my job and work, work, work, I may see my value in terms of what I produce or my job title. That’s objectification.

If I am looking for someone to complete me and be my soul mate, I might be objectifying myself. It’a a way of saying, “I’m nothing without you.”

If I am addicted to my appearance and have to go to the gym, I could be objectifying myself by overly identifying with looks and my body. Same with lots of plastic surgery. 

I say this to give us all a heads up on how we contribute to this. 

Another thing that Jeffery Dahmer said was, “The subtleties of social life were beyond my grasp.

When children liked me, I did not know why. Nor could I formulate a plan for winning their affection. I simply didn't know how things worked with other people. ... And try as I might, I couldn't make other people seem less strange and unknowable.”

I resonate with that a lot!

When I was a kid, I was super shy. I wasn’t low on confidence. I just never knew what people were thinking or how they might respond to me. I was objectified.

I was bullied because I was different. I looked different. I was culturally different. I was academically smart. I get that.

That’s what kids do. But when kids and adults were all over me telling me how cute I was, I felt like an object or a doll. That doesn’t feel good. I felt very unseen.

I wondered what people wanted from me. It was really weird. And how often do we do this to other people? 

So, I’m this kid who was always in the sides of the room watching and not participating, unless I was with friends.

I’d take a long time to warm up to the crowd because I wanted to know if I was going to be safe there. I wasn’t treated like an object at home. Socializing outside of home or with strangers was not comfortable at all.

I never knew what people wanted or how they might act because there are so many people out there who objectify others, see them as a resource, or just have such poor boundaries that they aren’t safe to be around.

As a little kid I knew this, but there are so many people out there today who don’t get it.

Now, in Jeffrey Dahmer’s case, his mother was mentally ill and his father was as socially clueless as he was.

This doesn’t mean he had to end up the way he did. Dahmer was a normal happy kid until he was 4 years old, then something happened and things were different.

Can you imagine how things might have been different if he had learned healthy boundaries, socialization skills, and emotional intelligence? 

Look at his face! You can see the trauma in his face. Anyone with a flat affect like that is at least depressed if not traumatized.

He could have and should have gotten some help. Instead, he was treated like a circus attraction as a child and laughed at.

People didn’t make sense to me until I took a psychology class. That’s when it clicked.

I minored in sociology and that gave me the perspective of how people move within the environment. I was kind of weird, but not in a deviant way, but had it not been for that, I would have felt as clueless as Jeffrey Dahmer. 

People lie. Their actions don’t match their emotions. Their emotions are all over the place, so how is a child supposed to figure that out? It doesn’t make sense. 

Another thing that Jeffery Dahmer said when talking about his motivation was, “It was not a case of hating them. It was just the only way I knew of to keep them there and keep them with me.”

He was lonely. His killing spree started when his mother left him alone in the house just after graduation. There was no furniture in the house. 

He was adrift, and didn’t have any way of making any connections, and we all need connection.

Humans are social creatures - even the introverted ones. We need other people, and the only way he knew how to assure that he would have company was to drug people, then kill them.

I know it’s an extreme and horrible thing to do, but everything we do is motivated by a desire. 

When we don’t have the skills to get what we need in a healthy way, we go with what we know. When someone hits their child, it’s their way of venting frustration and trying to find some control.

When someone steals something, sometimes it’s a way to feel powerful and in control. Sometimes because they don’t know how to provide for themselves.

You know narcissists love bomb people to seduce them and appear attractive to them. They do this to feel loved by someone they feel is important because they get status through affiliation.

It ends up going terribly wrong, but the motivation behind it is actually sweet. They are lonely and want to connect.

When it comes down to it, all hurtful things have several things in common: fear and ignorance.

I am afraid of being exposed, unloved, abandoned or something like that- and I don’t know how to change that or what I would do if it happens. That’s pretty much the root of all negativity.

Do companies need to defile the environment with pollution?

Absolutely not, but wealth is power and what would they do if they didn’t have that power? They’d have to trust that someone with more power won’t come along and do things they don’t like. 

We’re all in this life together and ultimately that is the only way to win the game - it’s working together and trusting that you’re not going to get stabbed in the back for cooperating.

If you’ve ever played the game the Prisoner’s Dilemma, you know what I mean. There are two teams and a moderator. The goal is to get the most points.

There are five rounds of play. There are lots of variations of this, but the gist is that in each round, each team chooses red or black.

The teams cannot talk to each other. If both teams choose black, they both get 3 points.

If both teams choose red, they both lose 5 points. If one chooses red and the other chooses black, the red gets 5 points and the black loses 5 points.

I have played this game and also facilitated so others could play. What happens every time is that a vote for black is a vote to cooperate.

A vote for red is either a gamble that I can take advantage of your goodness and win over you, or that I will get to take a stab at you.

And the first time a team is on the losing end of going with black, they tend to stop going with black.

So, the game ends with both teams in the negative range. Since the objective is to finish the game with the most points, both teams lose. The only way to win is to work together and trust.

So, things like Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes become possible because we don’t work together. We don’t see each other, love each other, support each other, or even know ourselves.

We’re too wrapped up in hiding from our fears and coping the best way we can. Coping is not healing. Until we do the work of healing, the load just gets heavier.

But zooming out, the darkness that we call evil happens because it’s part of the natural process. There is no creation without destruction.

The coin has two sides. There is always a yin and a yang. We cannot stop hurricanes and death. We can accept it. We can not take it personally, and we can not let it upset our own rhythm and balance.

You see, you are everything and everything is you. There is a great Cherokee story that illustrates this. A grandfather tells his grandson that a great fight is going on within him.

There are two wolves battling it out to the death. One is goodness, light, truth, kindness, love, peace, generosity, and harmony.

The other is death, destruction, sorrow, regret, guilt, resentment, lies, and inferiority. The grandson is alarmed by this, and after a moment, he asks his grandfather which one will win. His grandfather says, “The one I feed.”

Everybody has challenges. What we make of them is up to us. Nobody has to let a traumatic childhood turn them into a monster.

Oprah Winfrey was molested by a family member and had a baby at 14. Charlize Theron saw her mother shoot and kill her father in a domestic violence act of self-defense.

Benjamin Franklin had to drop out of school at age ten because there was no money for him to continue. Everybody’s got stuff. It’s not a reason to stop living, give up on trying, or let yourself slide down into the dark side.

But if you do, don’t get discouraged. The wheel of life says that excessive yang turns to yin.

What that means is that things can only get so bad before they turn good again. It’s like a pendulum that is always in motion. If you look at the Taiji sign, that’s the yin and the yang, it’s a symbol of wholeness.

If you cut that circle in the middle anywhere, there is always going to be some light and some dark. It never goes completely out, and that seed is enough to nurture anyone back to life. That’s just the nature of life.

I have worked with people who didn’t think they had any in them, but we go inside and see it.

Even then, they think they can’t keep that little light burning. And as we do the work of healing, it becomes easier and easier to see and one day, they know it’s inside all the time.

And as they know this, the outside changes to reflect it. It really is inside all of us. 

It’s up to you to find this and know this because only you can do your own work. Yes, it helps to have someone who cares and sees the light inside of you when you don’t.

It helps to have a cheerleader, but there isn’t enough love in the world to make you change if you’re not willing.

I’ve seen lots of people get burned that way, trying to love their sons, daughters, or spouses into being happier, healthier people. I’ve never seen that work.

We have to be able to stand on our own two feet because darkness is always with us. Tornadoes come. It’s part of the plan.

But there is something else too in indigenous culture that helps us to understand the randomness, shocking sudden changes, and things that are hard to understand, like Jeffery Dahmer.

That’s trickster energy. 

Tricksters are in every indigenous culture. Loki is the trickster god of Norse mythology. He’s a chaos god. You don’t want him showing up.

You want him to stay away. That’s the nature of the trickster. They make things right by destroying them. Or they give you something by taking something away.

He’s not a bad guy because he doesn’t usually intentionally harm anyone. He’s charming, but mischievous.

Loki’s also a hermaphrodite. He fathers most of his children, but gives birth to one. When he turns himself into a horse, he gives birth to an 8 legged horse. that’s the type of energy that comes along with a trickster.

Not so glamorous or desirable, is it? Yes, not a lot of indigenous people signing up for that life. Unless you’re Ikotomi, who is vain.

Iktomi is a Lakota spider man trickster. One day Iktomi was looking at his reflection in a pond and couldn’t tear himself away.

He just thought he was so amazingly beautiful. So the next day he decided what better way to spend the day than to do the same thing. So he went to the pond, but this time something was different. This time, he wasn’t so lovely.

He gazed and gazed, but the distorted face didn’t change. He left frustrated and decided to get some food, then go back to his den, but before he got there, he stopped at the pond once more to take another look.

This time, he only saw a dark blob, no eyes, no nose, and no mouth. Frightened, he ran back home, wondering whose reflection that he saw because it certainly wasn’t his!

The next day, he was angry because he thought the pond must surely be playing tricks on him. He decided to go back and saw Rabbit on the way.

Confused and wanting someone to talk to, he told Rabbit all about his encounters and asked him what he thought.

Rabbit pondered for a moment and said that he thought Iktomi’s reflections were indeed his own, but they were changed by the sun, wind, and rain. Iktomi replied, “which of those reflections is the real me?”

Rabbit said, “There is no choice but to believe them all. no matter how good, strange, or distorted they seem to be.” Sensing that Iktomi was not satisfied, Rabbit added, “If you don’t know who you are, then it doesn’t matter what you believe.”

So you see, sometimes the trickster tricks and sometimes he’s tricked, but either way, there is always the opportunity for wisdom in the end. That’s really his function.

He either blows things up so that they can be rebuilt or rebirthed. He tells the truth that no one else will tell, he does something foolish that makes us all laugh, or he does something foolish that we can all learn from.

Are you familiar with Anansi the spider or Brer Rabbit? they are tricksters. Coyote is a Native American trickster. The hare is a Celtic trickster. Fox is a Japanese trickster. Bugs bunny is an American trickster. 

Tricksters are liminal creatures. They go between this world and the Otherworld. They maintain communication between the earthly beings and the heavenly ones.They are teachers.

In the Anansi stories, Anansi started out life as a man. His father turned him into a spider. He was part of the folklore as a teacher.

I see everything as a teacher, but particularly tricky, extreme things like Jeffery Dahmer. Everything in the universe makes sense. It is sometimes tricky logic, but it all makes sense.

It’s like when people ask God, “Why did you let 6 year old Bobby die?” Life’s not fair. It’s not always kind. I am not sure where we got the idea that it was supposed to be happy, love filled, and goodness and light or even that that is the ideal.

Life is brutiful. Without the brutality, we couldn’t see the goodness and appreciate the love. That’s the whole point of having a human existence - to have it all. 

The purpose of evil is to create balance. Extreme evil ushers in a growing of peace and love. It has to because that’s how the world works. Look to nature.

Going back to the Prisoner’s Dilemma, if you know this, it’s easier to trust and play the black card and be cooperative. It’s easier to keep your heart open when you’re hungry, angry, lonely and broke.

It’s easier to keep going and not go down the self-destructive, selfish path that will end up not only hurting you but other people, too. 

There really is no way to hurt other people without harming yourself. Sometimes we are aware of that, and sometimes we aren’t, but even when we aren’t, the universal laws still apply.

We’re never going to eliminate vulnerability. There isn’t enough money or muscles or beauty in the world to make us safe. Living is inherently dangerous.

We all die in the end. And even if we plan incredibly well and do all the right things, the possibility that trickster will come along and blow it all up is real.

So, my strategy is to do what I can and let go of the rest.  I accept the way the world works and don’t expect it to be different.

That’s a recipe for disappointment. That’s like saying, “I hope I don’t get old.” The only way that will happen is if I die first. So, I encourage people to work with the universal laws. 

And since you know that you are everything light and dark, stand in the center of the hub where it’s not so turbulent.

If you live on the extremes, you’re going to have a more exciting time and a lot more upheaval. Nothing wrong with that.

Just remember that the wolf that wins is the one you feed. And if you bring others down with you on that ride, you have to carry the burden of that. 

In my experience, that’s what karma is about. It’s not some god in the sky judging us. It’s us living with our own conscience.

Power is balanced by responsibility. To be at the center of that means that I don’t use my power to dominate others, but to help them. I don’t take more than I need so others can survive and enjoy too. 

So the meaning of evil is that when it shows up, we are way off balance. One of my go to things I ask myself in every situation is, “What does this say about me” or “What does this mean for me?”

If I do that, then everything has meaning, and nothing is more depressing than not having any meaning. When I look at Jeffrey Dahmer, it says that creating opportunities for people to connect remains a priority.

Helping people who feel lonely and isolated is important. I want to reflect that all people have value, so that this can be averted in the future. 

I want to live in a world like Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, in October 2006.

A milk truck driver pulls up to the one room school house and went inside. After letting adults and the boys go, he lines up ten little girls in front of chalkboard and shoots them all before he shoots himself. 

What happens next is astounding. The shooter’s family wants to leave the community, but the Amish ask them to stay.

One Amish man consoled the shooter’s father for over an hour while he cried.

They all immediately publicly offered forgiveness for the shooter. Some even went to the shooter’s funeral. This was after losing five of their own children to this man.

I know that that went a long way in healing the damage that was caused by one person who was upset with God that his daughter died ten years before, shortly after being born.

That forgiveness changed the whole story and energy around it. We have a choice of how to respond to the undesirable things that happen to us.

If we fight it, hold on to resentment and fuel it, the evil wolf wins. If we remember the love and light inside and accept and forgive, we return to the balanced center. 

So we can learn something about compassion and letting go from Jeffrey Dahmer and all of life.

We don’t have to wait for the extreme things or horrible things. We can see it in the sunshine or the birds flying overhead. Just look for it.

Everything is whole and One. You see what you look for. So, see the love.

And think about where you want to draw the line. If evil is cultural, then standards differ from place to place. In some areas, it’s totally okay to buy a ten year old girl as a bride.

I draw my line at sovereignty and respecting personal boundaries, not at what is culturally acceptable.

So, if the person is of age and sound mind and agrees to whatever proposal I have, and it harms no one in the long term or short term - including the environment, and any peripheral players, I feel good about my choices. 

Thank you all for listening this week. Please support the show by reviewing the podcast wherever you listen. And keep letting go. See you next week.