What if evil could be looked at with love and compassion instead of hatred and disgust?

A few years ago, I had a spiritual experience that started with a question.

I was lying in bed with the lights off, thinking about good and evil, and I wondered whether evil could be looked at with love and compassion instead of hatred and disgust.

That question did something to me.

It felt like it broke something open in my mind. Not in a metaphorical way, either. It felt like the automatic structure of good over here and evil over there loosened for a second, and I could suddenly see that maybe the way we perceive evil is part of the trap.

Once something is called evil, perception changes.

The label becomes heavier than the being underneath it. The wound, the history, the fear, the grief, the buried child, the conditions that shaped the person or force, all of it gets swallowed by the category. “Evil” becomes a final word instead of a doorway into deeper seeing.

And once disgust enters the picture, perception gets even more distorted.

Disgust is powerful because it acts before thought. It makes the body recoil before the mind has even finished forming an idea. It can make rejection feel natural. It can make condemnation feel clean. It can make hatred feel righteous. It can make revulsion feel like discernment.

I started to wonder if disgust is one of the hidden control mechanisms of this world.

People are constantly being divided through disgust.

Left versus right.

Good versus evil.

This country versus that country.

This leader versus that leader.

This faction versus that faction.

This religion versus that religion.

This group is pure.

That group is corrupt.

This side is righteous.

That side is disgusting.

At a certain point, it starts to look like a chessboard.

Everyone is told to pick a side and fight the piece across from them, but almost nobody questions the board itself. The pieces are moved around, sacrificed, turned against each other, and convinced that the other side is the whole problem.

But what if the board is the problem?

What if a lot of what we call good and evil has been turned into a divide-and-conquer tactic of the mind?

What if people have more in common than they think?

What if the person you were trained to hate is also tired, hungry, wounded, afraid, lonely, and trying to survive?

What if the way out is not another ideology, another leader, another faction, or another war?

What if the way out is much simpler?

What if we laid down our swords and grew food together?

That might sound simple, but I do not think it is small.

Gardening is one of the few things that cuts underneath ideology. Everyone eats. Everyone needs food. Everyone depends on soil, water, sunlight, seeds, and care. A garden does not care if someone is left-wing or right-wing. A tomato plant does not ask what faction someone belongs to before feeding them.

If people grew food together, maybe the labels would lose some of their power.

The enemy becomes a neighbor with dirt on their hands.

The stranger becomes someone watering the same bed.

The person from the other side becomes someone who also wants their children to eat.

One garden becomes ten. Ten become a neighborhood. A neighborhood becomes a town. People start sharing seeds, skills, food, tools, compost, knowledge, and time. Scarcity starts losing its grip. Fear starts losing some of its power.

Maybe the world does not need another throne.

Maybe it needs gardens.

Maybe abundance is one of the answers to divide and conquer.

I keep thinking about the idea that one seed could save the world. Not because one seed magically fixes everything, but because one seed can become food, and food can keep someone alive, and one life can carry infinite future branches.

To save one life is to save a world.

So I keep coming back to the original question.

What if evil can be looked at with love and compassion instead of hatred and disgust?

What if the deeper rebellion is to keep seeing the being underneath the label?

What if the real antidote to the control system is not winning the chessboard, but growing life outside of it?