There are many evils in the world, but there are a few which are so perfectly perverse that they argue for the existence of Pure Evil, of perfect rebellion against Absolute Good. I call these the fingerprints of the Devil.

The easiest of these to recognize is inversion. An evil person–or rather, the evil in people, for there is evil in all people–twists logic, twists morality, twists behavior from its natural and holy form. Hunger and appetite become gluttony, love and passion become lust (and gluttony). Desire for success (for oneself and others) becomes greed and jealousy. Evil literally “perverts,” from the Latin “pervertere,” meaning to turn something the wrong direction or to turn something off of its proper alignment. To turn it askew. Evil takes something good and bends it out of shape.

Sometimes, though, one encounters a perversion that is perfect in its realignment: the original thing has been turned perfectly around, or perfectly upside down, so that it now means or represents the exact opposite of what was intended.

In politics these inversions are easy to see. Remember that politics is what “we” do (collectively) so that we don’t have to kill each other. It is the word we use for cultural processes short of warfare which are meant to resolve disputes. Culture, of course, is the average of a population’s behavioral habits, i.e. the average of the character of the populations individuals. In political activity, we see the average of the character of a people in the most critical, demonstrative phase of character, that of resolving disputes with other individuals. Because politics is a cultural activity (one of these averages of the character of the masses) and it is heightened by its inherent circumstances (it deals with conflicts that stem from the basest animal motivations and inspire the most extreme animal emotions and behaviors), politics paints in starkest relief any perversions. It is easy to see the politician who talks endlessly about helping “the people” but really helps himself first, or the government that claims to be working for “the environment” but really is working to empower and enshrine its own bureaucrats at the expense of everyone else. The perversions are made obvious by the grandiose nature of politics itself. Therefore, among these perversions, you will easily spy the perfect inversions. For example: a faction of “antifascists” who wear uniforms, believe everything should be within the state and nothing outside it, and seek to physically maim anyone who disagrees. For another: a faction of “antiracists” who believe the key to overcoming racism is to divide people into racial groups, assign different rights and privileges to each group, and to justify this on the basis that certain races are more or less moral than others, more or less human than others. For another: a faction that removes certain individuals, or eliminates entire swathes of a population, in service to “inclusion,” and whose primary means of advancing “tolerance” is to destroy or kill anyone who differs from that faction in certain unapproved ways. These groups have not only perverted but perfectly inverted political virtues and now fly them as standards over their own exact opposites. Only the Devil could manage turn things so perfectly upside down.

(I might add one other example: has any institution done a better job of turning people away from the Christian Gospel than has the modern Christian church? Pick your denomination. Which of the great organized Christian churches of the world is not at least perverted and possibly, now, perfectly opposed to its charter?)

Politics makes these things obvious, though. Perversions and inversions are harder to perceive in the personal lives and behaviors of individuals, and it is our individuals lives, our individual quests for our ultimate destiny, which matter. Here is where you must be on your guard, a thoughtful and incisive analyst of your own thinking and that of people around you. C. S. Lewis approaches a good example of a perversion in “the gluttony of ‘all I want,'” a person whose desires are so small but precise that she can never be satisfied. As another example, you have probably met plenty a churchgoing or social-justice moralist who has learned only judgement and condemnation of others, and is devoid of love. You’ve met plenty of people who turn work ethic into workaholism, and you may be guilty of the same, or who have turned “a healthy perspective on work and ambition” into “work/life balance,” and then the latter into a simple excuse for laziness, or an intolerance for any hardship or real labor. But what about perfect inversions? Do we see any of those in the individual moral life? Only rarely, I think. A perfect inversion is pure evil, and pure evil cannot express itself as easily in an individual as it can through the aggregate behavior of masses. They do exist, though, these wholly evil people. The purported master of charity or community service who in truth is devouring (often sexually) the vulnerable people he claims to be helping, or whose very giving is tailored to destroy its recipients for the pleasure of the giver, but who believes and will argue to his grave that no one has ever been as charitable or giving as he. The mother whose purported self-sacrifice and smothering care are really a means of devouring her children, but who will argue to her grave that no mother has ever mothered more. The church pastor whose enlightened, reformed interpretations of scripture push a congregation toward self-justification, self-satisfaction, and depravity.

Real evil of this kind does exist in individuals, but it is rare. Most people are merely perverted, rather than inverted. Most people are not really demoniacal. If you encounter such a person, you might consider yourself lucky to have witnessed it, but having recognized it for what it is, take heed. Such a person will be very dangerous. In the meantime, we come back to the safer world of the collective, the world of politics, where perfect inversions can emerge from the behavior of massed millions of imperfect people. The Devil’s hand in the collective may be more crushing, it may produce global atrocities, but it is less a threat to your soul, as long as you remember that you don’t live in this life to prosper in this life. The lesson is that we don’t win politics. If the Devil can turn the civil rights movement into a tool for slaughtering innocent black children, and can turn Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood into a rallying cry for apartheid and genocide, then there is nothing we can build in the political world that can possibly remain good. So, live in this world, and do what you can, but don’t live for this world. Build your noble institution, your house of God, but as you lay the last brick in it, as you complete it and set it to work in the world, step back and say to yourself, “Here is a place where evil will gather, and in time it will serve the exact opposite of the mission for which I built it. In time, it will serve the Devil.” All earthly collective institutions will eventually be his.