What to Say?

Mom, I feel like the world is becoming evil.

The Son of Never Stops Eating and I were driving around town on a treasure hunt for something called "pre-cooked farro".  Because there is an unwritten parenting rule that all deep philosophical conversations with your offspring must take place in a moving motor vehicle while the parent's attention is directed elsewhere, his timing was exquisitely perfect. 

What do you mean? I asked him.  What's on your mind?

North Korea, he said.  I don't want to die.

Here is the challenge I face as the parent of an adolescent with autism and intellectual disability: How do I explain the world in a way he can understand and relate to? If you know enough to ask a question like that, you deserve to have your question taken seriously.  He needs to know that the world is not a protective cocoon.  He needs to know that there are people who are dishonest, people who will cheat and steal and take advantage of others or engage in cruelty just because they can, and that sometimes they will get away with it.  He has to know this for his own protection.  The world is not always a safe place for people with developmental and cognitive disabilities. 

But how to explain evil? Pure, unmitigated evil?  How to explain to him that evil is not a new thing, that since the dawn of time humankind has perpetuated evil against its own? How to explain the persecutions over religion, slavery, the many famines and genocides throughout history that have been perpetuated on people, often by their own governments? How to explain the Holocaust? How to explain that this is by no means even a comprehensive list of evil?

If you think that some or all of these things did not happen, or that they don't represent evil of the worst kind,  then the Mom of No is not for you.

What do I tell him? Not to worry about it, that he will be taken care of and protected? That's an answer to give a toddler, not an adolescent- even one with a cognitive impairment. 

I'm a middle-aged white woman who spends a lot of time hiking around in the woods looking for dragonflies and fungi, nagging her teenagers, and slinging band nachos.  I am certainly not any kind of political animal. Sometimes I attend church, sometimes I'm out looking for birds on Sunday mornings- so matters of faith are not exactly my area of expertise either. My overarching philosophy on life is basically, "Take care of your business and try not to be a jerk to other people".  I feel unprepared to deal with "Mom, I feel like the world is becoming evil".  Explaining North Korea and white supremacists was not covered in the How To Mom Manual.

I could tell him that love and goodness usually win in the end, or that we need to pray that things will change, or that, while we cannot control what other people do, we can be responsible for ourselves and our actions, and therefore the way to counteract evil in all forms is to be our best, to be kind and loving towards others.  I could tell him that the way to counteract evil is to welcome others into our lives and be willing to walk through our lives hand-in-hand with those who are unlike us, to be generous, to respect that others have different stories to tell, and that these stories are beautiful and wondrous and heartbreaking and worthy, to stand up against hate when we see it or hear it, no matter what, knowing that sounds easy in principle but can be difficult in practice.

I could tell him all these things.  I do tell him all these things.

Yet, somehow it doesn't seem like I'm fully answering his concerns- perhaps because I feel like I'm not completely answering the logical follow up question. 

The world is becoming evil.

What do we do about it?