I don’t watch much news anymore

Every time I open my phone or switch on the television to play Youtube videos I am constantly confronted with some new horror, perpetrated chiefly by powerful people doing their best imitations of cartoonish ghouls. It’s quite easy to despair and think that our society has fucked up beyong all repair, and I struggle everyday keeping that thought at bay.

“What’s the point of it all if the worst people are constantly trying to tear everything apart?”

I remember back in 2016 and 2020 being on the edge of my seat terrified about something I had little individual control over. I cast my vote, but was located in areas where my votes did not matter a great deal, and while I did donate, all I felt I received in return for that money was a bumper sticker which I was never going to use and the construction of a new bridge in Corvallis. Last year was a bit different in that I actively turned off most social media on election day and only received updates in frenetic texts from others. But still, I was absolutely gripped by something I had no control over and in the morning after had a small mourning period of sorts for the country I thought I knew.

Heading into 2025, I expected the absolute worst and it was more or less delivered. So asking what it’s all for makes all too much sense to me. But I also wonder what’s in it for the villains of these stories. Of course, someone’s villian is another person’s hero, but if the majority of humanity thinks you’re being an ass then maybe it’s worth some self-reflection on the possibility you really are one. Is it really as simple as the craving to dominate everything, and see your supposed enemies driven into the earth? Or do they really think they are the chosen ones who have the miraculous plan to save humanity (or at least those they think deserve it) and this inhumanity is merely the small upfront cost to an amazing payoff of a promised future? Given the words and actions of those in the highest offices, I could easily buy that it’s just pure stupidity which motivates them to grab power, but for others I’m not so sure. I think they know better, but they go along with it just for the small chance they can pick up the pieces when this is all over and reassemble society with some of their design choices in mind (that’s the making the world better part, in their mind).

Maybe their motivations are irrelevant, I might be going at this from the wrong angle. Maybe the real questions is why does this world keep producing such twisted people? It’s like they’re an intrinsic feature of this planet, but why would the Universal Dev design it like that?

Ravana, King of the Rakshasas

I’ve never properly read the Ramayana, but I enjoy listening to white hippies recount their versions of it. My favorite version is from Ram Dass, where he describes all the machinations of Ravana, the demon king who steals the beautiful Sita, who is the wife of Ram, the human avatar of Vishnu. The adventures that Hanuman, Ram’s monkey servants undertakes to get information, magical herbs, or the grand alliance of animals to help in the fight against Ravana. Eventually of course, Ravana is slain by Ram, wiped out with magical brahmashastra. Sita is rescued, Ravana is buried with the proper customs because Ram is a good guy (he is God after all), they story ends happily ever after.

But there is one thing Ram Dass said when describing the defeat of Ravana. It was Ravana’s dharma to be slain by Ram, in other words this was all predetermined, and being slain by Ram’s hand was a fulfillment of his dharma which helped him become one with God. I remember being baffled when I first heard that, wasn’t this supposed to be a typical good versus evil, save Helen of Troy kind of story? What’s with all this talk about dharma, and why would Ravana’s destiny be to abduct the wife of God and start this horrible war, surely he must have misunderstood something when they were handing out destinies that day in Heaven. Or maybe Ram Dass was just making this part up, typical westerner going to Asia and soiling all the cultural artifacts.

It was only sometime after that I learned more about what he was talking about.

Jaya and Vijaya

I’m not a Hindu anything, but I’ll do my best to tell this prologue of sorts for Ravana. Vishnu, lord of everything, has two doormen in heaven named Jaya and Vijaya. You can think of them like Hindu bouncers, big dudes, blue skin, maybe rocking some sunglasses. One day, four powerful beings named the Kumaras arrived at the gates, and claimed they had business with Vishnu Here was where there were two problems:

The first problem is that Jaya and Vijaya don’t know who the Kumaras are e.g. you just let them in.

The second problem is that the Kumaras look like little kids, apparently this has something to do with their meditation practice, but in any event they don’t look like they should have any business with Vishnu. Jaya and Vijaya have a good laugh at the Kumaras, ridiculing their youthful appearance.

Jaya and Vijaya accordingly don’t let them inside, thinking these guys are trying to crash Vishnu’s heavenly palance or sometihng. The Kumaras are incensed, after all they are THE Kumaras, who are born directly from Brahma and knew the Vedas at age five. Thus, they put a terrible curse of Jaya and Vijaya which not even Vishnu can remove.

Jaya and Vijaya shocked to find that they offended the Kumaras.

The Kumaras’ curse is that Jaya and Vijaya will have to spend time on earth, away from their beloved master Vishnu. In a show of mercy, they are given a choice: to either live seven lifetimes on earth as a devotee of Vishnu or three lives on earth as an enemy of Vishnu and be slain by him in some form The gruesome bluesome choose three lifetimes on earth, since being away from Vishnu was the worst kind of torture for them and they wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. They are subsequently reincarnated three times, and each time they become some famous villain in Hindu mythology. In particular on Jaya’s second human life, he reincarnated as Ravana. When Ravana was eventually slain by Ram, Vishnu’s avatar, at the end of the Ramayana it was actually more than a mercy. It fulfilled the terms of the curse for another generation and Jaya was one step closer to getting back to heaven, seated next to Vishnu.

Now do I think that the villians of our modern era are on some cosmic penance trip and that they are really good guys who belong in heaven?

Dear reader, I honestly don’t know what I believe in these days.

I just find this story compelling since from the moment of the curse it was predestined that Jaya and Vijaya would take these three births, turn into these horrible monsters each time, and then finally make their way to heaven. In other words, there was no getting around it, it was a canon event to their story that simply had to happen. And since each birth they took affected the world by presenting a new villian for everyone to band against, it was also just a general canon event for the world. There was nothing that could have diverted this path, no single action or individual that could have changed to rise of Ravana or any of the other evildoers.

Isn’t this just a question of free will?

If we don’t get the choose if we become evil or become good, everything is planned out, then there is no “free will”. It’s impossible to deviate from some cosmic screenplay, and we are simply acting out roles that have been assigned to us in this life. The more I think about it, maybe it’s plausible that we don’t have free will and that this is all already decided by some Unknowable Author. The story has already been decided on, it’s just being written right now and our lives are the ink. How else could explain how all this anger and hatred keeps being manifested on this plane as an endless supply of human-shaped ingots? The purpose is because if this is a story, every story needs antagonists.

When it comes to my own life, it’s impossible to know if I’m going to end up a good guy or a bad guy and maybe it doesn’t even matter on some level. If it wasn’t Ravana, Jaya and Vijaya were going to be born as someone else who would become an enemy of Vishnu, the story would go on. And we mustn’t forget taht villains beget heroes as well, they are mutually arising, and you can’t have one without the other. The villians are winning, but soon the story will flip the other way, the heroes will be in charge, and then after the cycle will repeat into eternity, and endless story with infinite heroes and villains.

What’s it all for? Does the author have some incredible fan-service payoff at the end of the universe? Impossible to say, all I can do I guess is listen very, very quietly for my lines and then play my part as best I can.