How does evil happen?

I am watching another Nazi movie. This one is a few years older than the surplus we've seen come out over the past 2 months. (I still recommend you see Defiance, if only because it's a little different and my friend Troy worked on it.) Probably because they are supposed to, but I can't help think watching the film, "How does evil happen?"

Not bad, things. I firmly believe that sometimes, bad things just happen. Yesterday, I hit my head three times -- once so bad I fell to the ground -- but I don't blame an absent deity or spiritual forces. Sometimes, you just hit your head.

But how does evil happen? How do a few people lay out a plot so reprehensible that it turns most of the world away, but manages to rally a buffer of support? How does the Holocaust happen? How does something like the Armenian genocide slip by, even considered fictitious by some? What forces must line up together for slavery, or apartheid, or internment to occur?

Personally, Proposition 8 is reprehensible but what about teenage boys being hung in crowded squares to cheers because they are gay? Religions that speak in favor of violence and bloodletting?

How does evil happen?

Are we each culpable? What is happening in the world today, as I type this, that makes me ashamed of my shared humanity? I feel like I need to do something, something big, but I don't know how. I wonder if this is what good hearted Germans felt in 1938 as their government slipped away from them, or the eloquent but not-battle ready abolitionists of the nineteenth century.



UPDATED: What would you be willing to do in the face of evil? I can't help but think that if the Vatican stood up to Hitler, and called on the world's Catholics not to submit, then a difference could've been made. But would you be willing to trade the peaceful life, the easy answer? Knowing death is imminent, or poverty, or your good name was at risk, would you speak out or take action or lead for change? A bumper sticker won't do it. Would you stand outside a Church or City Hall or Television station and speak the truth?