More on the last entry.

Carrying on with the idea in the last entry, I think one of the problems people have, that makes them do the destructive things in the first place, is that they need so desperately to maintain an image, or keep control over what's going on in their lives to such an extent that they disregard the real feeling of others if it suits them and they can get away with it.

I read one time about a man who'd run someone over and injured them so badly that their leg had come off, and the driver threw the leg over a wall. I think people can be that callous, in the moment. I can picture the person just feeling it was so much the wrong time for the accident to happen, and just being so enraged that they'd throw the leg. Bizarre story, of course, but a true one.

I met a woman who confessed one time to accidentally hitting a Mexican woman when she was out driving. It was entirely the driver's fault, and she'd knocked this lady over and hurt her. Not all that badly, but she was hurt. The woman gave the Mexican woman $40.

She was a nice woman, in so many senses. I mean, she was just an ordinary person. Not "evil" or anything. Just ordinary. But her reality was very nearly completely changed, and she wanted to protect it. She did it with $40. Rather than going through the whole business of involving the police, and insurance, and hospitals and abulances and courts and time and worry, she gave the old Mexican woman $40.

We protect the illusions of what we are all the time, I suppose. "Very nice" people need to protect incidents that might be embarrassing, I suppose. Politicians do it all the time, of course, as do movie stars and anyone else in the public eye. The veneer of nicety and image has to be kept up, and who we really are as crazy, fucked up, occasionally raging lunatics has to be kept from everyone else, just in case the cat gets let out of the bag and everyone sees that we're just ordinary people, too.