Last weekend, (has it been a week already?) my uncle and I touched briefly on Philippine politics and he used the phrase, “… the evil politicians…” I was never really able to conceptualize “evil” per se until I finished watching an episode of the HBO documentary, “Pandemic: Facing AIDS.”
The episode focused on the life of a Thai woman living and dying with AIDS.
Faced with no way to make money, this woman entered the sex industry at the age of 17. After contracting HIV and developing AIDS, she moved away to an AIDS hospice so her parents would be able to “save face.” The episode is very moving.
Evil, as I see it, is the embodiment of an utter disregard for the impact one’s actions on the happiness of another individual.
Specifically, how can politicians, charged with the welfare of an entire country and an entire people, allow conditions to degrade to the point where a 17 year-old girl feels she has to sell her body to provide money for her parents and her family?
