Unfathomable Evil

A series of horrific events. Unfathomable.  You reach for words. You like words. Words are powerful, magical, they help you understand and describe the world and yourself.  But words sometimes seem inadequate. They both reveal and obscure.  Still you have this compulsion to somehow process these events of horror.  They are a challenge to you, they are a challenge to your understanding of the world.

So words flow out: horror, evil, extremist, terrorist, foreigner, sick, twisted, psychopath, sociopath, loser, alienation, rage, hate, fundamentalist, nihilist. All of these words seem inadequate. You can employ them, and they describe something, but explain nothing.  Really. You are left with certain unexplainable events.  They don't add up. They make no sense.

And you are left with carnage, pain, death, loss, suffering.  And it turns out the perpetrators of these horrific acts are human beings. Kids. Just kids. We can try to put them in a different box, but they are young human beings.  You want to make them something else, maybe it's sort of an irrational guilt by association, you don't want to be in the human race if these are the acts of fellow human beings.

So back to words.  I rarely use the word "evil," it seems so charged, and it is a word that reveals and conceals at the same time. But it is a powerful word. Maybe it will do. But this evil resides in the acts of kids... 

e·vil  

/ˈēvəl/

Adjective Profoundly immoral and malevolent.

Noun Profound immorality, wickedness, and depravity, esp. when regarded as a supernatural force.

Synonyms adjective.   wicked - bad - ill - vicious - malign - sinister noun.   harm - ill - mischief - wrong - disaster - wickedness